Month: August 2021

Pope Francis’ motu proprio on the Latin Mass defeats its own stated purposes

In the document, “a shockingly draconian exercise of papal authority, one that strikes at the heart of the spiritual life for millions of Catholics . . . the pope is seeking to exclude from parish churches – and ultimately to eliminate – a liturgical usage that has defined the religious culture of Catholics for centuries, a tradition stretching back in an organic continuum to the earliest days of the Church.”

If Pope Benedict’s own motu proprio Summorum pontificum is to be taken seriously, the legal validity of such a move would seem be inadmissible, and many bishops appear to be dumbfounded by its implications.

What’s more . . .

. . . this strange document, so filled with contradictions and unanswered questions, is no less shocking for its self-defeating nature. It appears to be designed to achieve precisely the opposite of its stated goals, principally the defense of the Second Vatican Council.

It seems that after so many years of suspicion regarding Pope Francis’ ultimate agenda, he has finally shown his hand, and his hand is nothing less than a souped-up version of the “hermeneutic of rupture” that unleashed chaos in the Church during the 1960s and 70s, and has continued to undermine the credibility of Vatican II since the council’s completion in 1965.

In effect, he embraces the post-council revolution.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger (emeritus Benedict XVI) in 1988 identified this revoltion, citing “a mentality of narrow views that isolate Vatican II,” he told the bishops of Chile. “There are many accounts of it which give the impression that, from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and that what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II.”

Indeed, the gauntlet has been thrown.

more more more here. . .

Cardinal Cupich Reportedly ‘Leaning Hard’ on Bioethics Center to Retract Stance on COVID Vaccine Exemptions

He wants them to change their position about allowing for reasons of conscience in people’s deciding whether to be vaccinated.

Amid disagreement among Catholic leaders over whether there is a moral obligation to receive a coronavirus vaccine, board members at the National Catholic Bioethics Center have told CNA that Blase Cardinal Cupich has urged that the center retract its guidance against mandated immunization.

One board member told CNA that Cardinal Cupich has been “leaning hard” on the bishops and some prominent lay board members, but did not elaborate on specific names.The NCBC board members spoke with CNA on the condition they not be identified by name.
The Archdiocese of Chicago did not respond to CNA’s request for comment.

The board members who spoke with CNA said that they would oppose the change they say the cardinal is seeking.

“I think everyone should be vaccinated,” said one of them, “and Catholics should be the first to give a good example. . . . but the conscience of religious people should be respected.”

Cupich has been applying “tremendous pressure” on the board “to retract its support for conscience or religious exemptions from coronavirus vaccine mandates,” wanting them “to argue in favor of such mandates.”

The NCBC, a bioethics think tank, has as its mission “to provide education, guidance, and resources to the Church and society to uphold the dignity of the human person in health care and biomedical research.” Its board, which includes bishops, a deacon, and lay persons, is chaired by Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans.

When Benedict resigned the papacy in 2013, did he weaken it?

It’s something this scholar wrote about in 2015. . .

I do not think that the implications of his abdication have yet been fully recognised. Not since the Council of Constance had a living pope receded from the See of Rome. In 1415, the Council deposed the ‘Pisan’ pope John XXIII, and then accepted the resignation of the ‘Roman’ pope Gregory XII on 4 July. In 1417 it deposed the ‘Avignon’ pope Clement VIII, and elected Martin V.

[Until 2013] No subsequent pope has abdicated or been deposed. Since then, the assumption that the pope is a Given whom only God can loose from his pontificate, has, surely, been one of the most potent protections of each succeeding pontiff.

After Benedict’s abdication, nothing can ever be the same again. No future pope can ever be as immovable as every pope was from Constance until Benedict. . . .

Having offered samples of custom or episode in English history, in education and politics:

Eventually, this will sink in. Eventually, popes will become as disposable as head masters and Mrs Thatcher.

And this implies a consequential loss of power; a vulnerability.

He muses on it in 2021:

I wonder if (I wouldn’t put it past him) Pope Benedict XVI realised all this.

I wonder if his abdication was his last and most masterly coup to undermine the post-Vatican II construct, against which he had so vigorously argued, of the Pope Who Can Do Anything, who is an Absolute Monarch; and to restore the Vatican I model of a strictly limited papacy with its limitations clearly and lucidly described.

His resignation, in other words, spelled the death of The Dictator, or dictatorial, Pope?

From Harvard about lockdowns and the like as public non-health

Common sense, anyone?

  1. Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single disease like Covid-19. It is important to also consider harms from public health measures. More.
  2. Public health is about the long term rather than the short term. Spring Covid lockdowns simply delayed and postponed the pandemic to the fall. More.
  3. Public health is about everyone. It should not be used to shift the burden of disease from the affluent to the less affluent, as thelockdowns have done. More.
  4. Public health is global. Public health scientists need to consider the global impact of their recommendations. More.
  5. Risks and harms cannot be completely eliminated, but they can be reduced. Elimination and zero-Covid strategies backfire, making things worse. More.
  6. Public health should focus on high-risk populations. For Covid-19, many standard public health measures were never used to protect high-risk older people, leading to unnecessary deaths. More.
  7. While contact tracing and isolation are critically important for some infectious diseases, it is futile and counterproductive for common infections such as influenza and Covid-19. More.
  8. A case is only a case if a person is sick. Mass testing asymptomatic individuals is harmful to public health. More.
  9. Public health is about trust. To gain the trust of the public, public health officials and the media must be honest and trust the public. Shaming and fear should never be used in a pandemic. More.
  10. Public health scientists and officials must be honest with what is not known. For example, epidemic models should be run with the whole range of plausible input parameters. More.
  11. In public health, open civilized debate is profoundly critical. Censoring, silencing and smearing leads to fear of speaking, herd thinking and distrust. More.
  12. It is important for public health scientists and officials to listen to the public, who are living the public health consequences. This pandemic has proved that many non-epidemiologists understand public health better than some epidemiologists. More.

From Martin Kulldorff, Senior Scholar of Brownstone Institute, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

The Heart of John Henry Newman: Beating with the Spirit of the Liturgy

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Here on what’s called on for the worshiper:

Newman preached regularly and therefore commented upon much of the Biblical text having to do with ritual and liturgy. The sermon entitled, “Reverence in Worship,” takes up the “forms of worship—such as bowing the knee, taking off shoes, keeping silence, a prescribed dress.” These and the like are “considered as necessary for a due approach to God,” even from the standpoint of natural religion (310).

But:

While reverence is “one of the marks or notes of the Church,” the world teaches man to be “familiar and free with sacred things” (310), entering the Church “carelessly and familiarly” (311). While Newman opposes the approach of the world, rather than simply adopting rote ritual postures “for their own sake,” he challenges the faithful to keep in mind the fact of being in the very presence of God and so to “allow the forms…

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