Friday, September 14, 2018

Popes are Dispensable; Christ, His Church, and Peter, Remain

Some are saying that if you remove the Pope you remove the Church. Not true. Look at Pope Emeritus Benedict. He removed the Pope, and the Church, well, goes on. A sequel to the great abdicator Pope would be just fine. And it is quite OK for faithful Catholics to call for the Pope to resign for the good of the Church. And it would be just fine for the Pope to heed that call of the faithful for that same good.

Why is it that when the secular world calls for a resignation the Church authority capitulates, but when the faithful Catholics call for a resignation it is deemed somehow inappropriate? Whom is the Church serving? And, anyway, aren't "we the Church?"

Recall canon 212 §3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, [the Christian faithful] have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.

Blog on Christian faithful to put an end to the heresy and immorality of the Catholic hierarchy. For over fifty years they've been fagging the sacred doctrine, fagging the sacred liturgy, and now we discover, surprise, surprise! that they've been fagging themselves! If it quacks like a duck...!

And we need to call it out!

All the heterodox Catholics who were always so keen on lay involvement in the Church are now somehow squeamish when the laity are finally speaking out for the good of the faith and morals of the ages. We simply demand that our clergy promote the Catholic religion and condemn whatever is contrary to it, especially within their own ranks. And we shall not desist, lest we betray the Lord of all Popes and priests.

What is presently being borne out for the whole world to see is the competence and driving force of the sensus fidei fidelium.

The crisis/scandal is not in the reports but it the sins. To my mind the far greater crisis was from 1960 through the 1990's, when the sins were being propagated and roundly ignored and the innocent were being systematically corrupted. From around 1990 to the present much of that filth has been coming to light, thank God, and we must have it out! But, make no mistake, that immorality was programmatic, for it follows very logically false doctrine.

I'll give one example. The year was 1990. A "retreat" of all the seminarians of a small US diocese with the bishop and his entourage. The main feature of the retreat was worship of the elements. Gathered at a beach house, we prayed around a bowl of sea grass and sand and prayed a Native Indian prayer to the four winds, standing to face the respective winds as we did so. All of it was very queer, including the pontifical mass which we systematically had on the cottage coffee table, never in the local Catholic church. I never again went on a retreat with that diocese which I left the following year.