I must admit that I am confused by Pope Francis’ closing speech to the Synod on Saturday. For me, some of the language of the speech serves only to further muddy waters that were already impenetrably murky. Many people who read the speech seemed to read it as a criticism of the excesses of both sides of synod debate and a call to find a healthier and more productive “middle ground.” Yet, looking at the words employed by the Holy Father, I am having trouble finding that middle ground.
The Pope classified one of the temptations of the Synod debate as “a temptation to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises, (the spirit); within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve. From the time of Christ, it is the temptation of the zealous, of the scrupulous, of the solicitous and of the so-called — today — “traditionalists” and also of the intellectuals.”
If this was truly the case, I certainly didn’t see it. The Pope even used the unhelpful word “Traditionalists” with all its negative connotations. Were there those firebrand Vatican II-hating, Latin Mass-only types at the Synod? If so, I am unaware of it. Or are we to understand that those few bishops and cardinals who spoke out about the excesses of the interim relatio and its novel and frankly un-Catholic formulations had succumbed to “hostile inflexibility?” Are we to understand that those bishops who defended the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Church and its equally long-standing pastoral application had fallen prey to the temptations of “the zealous, of the scrupulous, of the solicitous” and thus are to be considered “traditionalists.” Are we to understand that Cardinal Müller or Cardinal Napier who spoke out against the interim relatio, and thus simply for an orthodox understanding of the Church’s teaching, are considered by the Pope to be hostile and inflexible “Traditionalists?”
Further, the Pope characterized the progressive element as having an excess of mercy and “do-goodism.” I think this is potentially media and world-friendly characterization of the so-called “progressives and liberals,” but ultimately an inaccurate one. What was contained in the interim relatio that resulted in the heated debate cannot be classified in any way as mercy. As any orthodox Catholic should know, there is zero difference between God’s mercy and His Law.
The Pope characterized this debate, a debate which unfortunately pitted God’s mercy against God’s law as ultimately healthy. This might agree if the bishops were having this conversation with the world. But this conversation is among the successors of the apostles, the defenders of revealed truth, where at least some of them advocate for what can only be classified as untruth. The middle ground between untruth and truth is just “a little untruth.”
Whatever path there might be to improve the pastoral care for those in irregular and sinful relationships, it cannot be found in some mythical middle ground between orthodoxy and unorthodoxy or between truth and untruth.
To characterize the Church’s current and timeless teaching and its current application as rigid and inflexible is to set up a pursuit of an intolerable middle ground. For nothing truly pastoral can ever be untrue. Of course the Pope knows this. I just wish he said so.
I was also extremely troubled by the overt political tone of Pope Francis’ closing address. Hearing labels like “traditionalist,” “progressives”, “liberals”, from a pope is really stunning for me. When is the last time we heard such language from a pope?
I’m going with “never.”
Unfortunately, the God of surprises, the God who is not afraid of new things, sounds a bit like Allah, who is not bound by reason.
As Benedict said in his 2006 Regensburg address, “for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality… Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word….”
As Fr Schall put it more recently, for Muslilms, “truth (logos) is not recognized in a voluntarist setting. If Allah transcends the distinction of good and evil, if he can will today its opposite tomorrow, as the omnipotence of Allah is understood to mean in Islam, then there can be no real discussion that is not simply a temporary pragmatic stand-off, a balance of interest and power.”
Benedict continues in his address, “From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act ‘with logos’ is contrary to God’s nature…
God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has
revealed himself as logosand, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, ‘transcends’ knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos.”
So needless to say, I’m kind of concerned when Francis asks us all to sit back, relax, and prepare to be surprised.
Historically speaking, Jews have been the greatest enemies of Christians.
The Pope’s keen framing of terms invalidates as insensible (in the vast mind of the public) any Churchman who was formerly (correctly) understood as a centrist…yes, Vatican-2-upholding yet liturgically sane Cardinal Burke wasn’t actually a traditionalist (that is, until now). In this age of immediate headlines and social media ricochet, these cardinals are just proxies for us on a chessboard. Disgrace one and immobilize whole swaths of unnerved Catholics left with nary a bishop to plead their case. Seriously, even if episcopal reaction to synodal shenanigans hadn’t risen above a rumor of quiet muttering between two Cardinals at a café, the Pope could have trotted out this same dialectic with equal effectiveness. Any way you slice it, word has gone out – “progressives” are called to be less exuberant with their virtue (mercy) and “traditionalists” are called to just crawl under a rock and die. All you self-satisfied middle-roaders (deftly sidestepping the clutches of soulless “traditionalism”) can keep gorging yourselves on the 24-hour buffet of synthesizing “formerly-known-as-conservative” punditry until kingdom come.
“Francis would like to liberalize church doctrine on marriage, the family, and homosexuality, but he knows that he lacks the support and institutional power to do it. So he’s decided on a course of stealth reform that involves sowing seeds of future doctrinal change by undermining the enforcement of doctrine today. The hope would be that a generation or two from now, the gap between official doctrine and the behavior that’s informally accepted in Catholic parishes across the world would grow so vast that a global grassroots movement in favor of liberalizing change would rise up at long last to sweep aside the old, musty, already-ignored rules…”
Read more: Pope Francis’ Machiavellian strategy to liberalize the Catholic Church
Patrick, this is one of the best, most important articles you’ve ever written. I don’t think that’s overstating it. Thanks for your contribution to analyzing this awful period in Church history, this could be read in years to come as an important witness to what was going on now.
“God’s surprises,” “God is not afraid of new things!”, “newness” [cf. Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis Closing Mass of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family and Beatification of the Servant of God Paul VI, Sunday, 19 October 2014]. The drumbeat continues. Pope Francis is fixed on his purpose and proceeding undeterred, rushing headlong to where he is rushing to.
“And so even what Pope St. John Paul the Second The Greatest Pope EVAH said just a few years ago about the indissolubility of marriage, heck that was SO THIRTY YEARS AGO, dude. And tomorrow, when Sister Joan wants to marry a dead female poodle, or whatever, then this will be fine because “the rhythm of the time” and the acrid stench, er, excuse me, the perfume of the people will be different than it is today, and WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE anyway, because there is no such thing as universal, unchanging truth, therefore the entire notion of judging particular situations and actions is completely IMPOSSIBLE. How can anyone, including God Almighty, possibly say that ANYTHING is “intrinsically disordered” if there is no referential matrix that we can judge any particular thing against, because EVERYTHING is constantly changing? New Spirit. New Springtime. New Pentecost. Let us “Sing a New Church into being”, as the common Novus Ordo hymn says. ” — Ann Barnhardt
The speech was a retreat to the rear and from where Our Pope and our Cross will regroup, rearm, ice his most effective critics (reassignments etc), and revive his revolutionary war.
M.J.’s uncle used to say, It is always darkest before the storm; he was right.
We are now hearing about the cleric who wrote the section on sodomites; get a load of him,
http://athanasiuscm.org/2014/10/21/aude-sapere-006-meet-archbishop-bruno-forte/comment-page-1/#comment-362
Such men are too intelligent for their own good and their choice to remake the Church according to their malformed intellects means that they have picked a fight with Jesus; good luck with all of that, men.
Our Pope and Our Cross has made the fatal error of opposing Christ and who of us ever thought we’d be alive to see such madness?
The Vicar of Christ opposing Christ; well, the Bishop of Rome has only a short time to repent and reform or God will withdraw His providence from him and he will die in office for there is no way in Hell that Jesus will let these men destroy His church.
The Holy Father was exactly right and reading the comments here proves it. But luckily, he knows the authority given to him by Christ and is not afraid to use it which is why he stressed that he has, ““supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church” in the speech.
What does the Pope mean by “hostile inflexibility” ?
Thou shall not commit Adultery” – GOD’s Commandment
Ex 20:14 ; Deut 5:18.
“Thou shall not covet thy Neighbor’s wife” – GOD’s Commandment
Ex 20:17 ; Deut 5.20.
Teachings of JESUS about divorce and remarriage – Mk 10:6-12; Mt 5:32.
Teaching of JESUS about adultery, mercy, and required repentance – “Go and Sin NO more”
Jn 8:11.
Teaching about homosexual acts:
Gen 19:1-29; Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10; Jude 1:7
St Paul – 1 Cor 11:27-30 about condemnation for receiving Holy Communion unworthily.
CCC: ” 81 Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the
breath of the Holy Spirit.
And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its ENTIRETY the Word of God which has been
entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.
It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the
Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by
their preaching. “
.
If you read “Jesuits” by Malachi Martin, dare you, you will immediately understand this confusing Pope.
As any orthodox Catholic should know, there is zero difference between God’s mercy and His Law.
That is not what Jesus told the people: ‘Do what they tell you, but not what they do.’ pointing out the way they had overlaid his Law with ‘the traditions of men,’ ‘the traditions of men’, which so hideously blemished the Synagogue of his own day, and which so wickedly thwarted God’s purpose. What makes you think, Patrick, that the latter was unique to the Synagogue, and would not be replicated in his holy Roman Catholic Church?
We were not reminded by Vatican II that ours is a Pilgrim Church, for nothing. A power structure will always attract psychopathic worldlings as well as holy men and women, an issue I believe Jesus’ parable about the tares addresses. Of course, he foresaw it; it is part and parcel of his divine Providence. Judgment awaits us, for better or for worse.
“The Pope classified one of the temptations of the Synod debate as “a temptation to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises, (the spirit); …”
But what if the God of surprises is planning on surprising the world by showing that his Church is going to stand by the truth about human sexuality (and human nature in general) which he created, after all, while the rest of the world is merrily jettisoning any sort of rational thought when it comes to those truths? Shouldn’t we be prepared for that kind of surprise, too? You might as well say that fidelity to one’s marriage vows shows a hostile inflexibility to your spouse.