Synod 2015: Traditional Catholics are The Prodigal Son's Brother

Two of the best thinkers and writers who regularly publish on The Catholic Thing, wrote today with their final impressions of the just completed Synod 2015 in Rome.

Professor Anthony Esolen's essay is entitled: "A Parable for the Synod," and is an astute response to the unfair, and unfounded, dispersions being cast from the Synod toward traditional Catholics: "People who try with all their hearts to honor the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage have been cast as the elder son in Jesus’ parable, who resents his brother, the penitent wastrel."

Fr. Mark Pilon, a priest in the diocese of Arlington, Virginia, offered his assessment in an essay entitled: "What a Strange Conclusion." Here's just a bit: "How did we arrive at the point where we are rejoicing that a Synod didn’t overthrow the teachings of the Church, and the Synod turned out to be much better than we had feared? That’s quite a commentary on the state of the Church today."

Interestingly, Fr. Pilon states that one of the most promising revelations at the Synod was the performance of the American Bishops "with one notable exception, and he was the first major U.S. appointment by our present pope."  Poor Francis Cardinal George (R.I.P.).  Remember his famous quote about how his successor would die in jail?  That's very much in doubt.

Finally, if you will click, HERE, you can read both essays.

Cardinal Arinze Explains "Conscience"

This is a from a post today on Fr. Z's Blog with reference to Lifesite News.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, reminds everyone of what real primacy of conscience is in the Church’s teaching.  He clarifies that we have the responsibility to have a properly formed conscience.

We cannot simply claim “conscience” as justification for sin.

He speaks of the responsibility of bishops and priests to form people’s consciences properly.

He explains (perhaps to Synod members along with everyone else) what “adultery” is.

Bishop Robert Barron Clarifies Pope Francsi

On October 13, 2015, Bishop Robert Barron did what most Traditional Catholics have been waiting for someone among the prelature to do: he clarified what Pope Francis has often been quoted, and most always misinterpreted, as saying concerning mercy and inclusivity, and being judgmental about sin itself.

Here are two excerpts from the essay, which was published in the National Catholic Register, that could not be clearer:

In speaking of mercy and inclusivity, he is decidedly not declaring that "I'm okay and you're okay." He is calling people to conversion. As my mentor, Cardinal Francis George, said, "All are welcome in the Church, but on Christ's terms and not their own."

Nowhere has the confusion on this score been greater than in relation to the Pope's famous remark regarding a priest with a homosexual orientation, "Who am I to judge?" I would wager that 95% of those who took in those words understood them to mean that, as far as Pope Francis is concerned, homosexual activity is not really sinful. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Pope was responding to a hypothetical involving a priest with same sex attraction, who had fallen in the past and who is now endeavoring to live in accord with the moral law, a sinner, in a word, who has been looked upon by the face of mercy.

You can read the entire essay by clicking HERE.

The Vortex—"Failed’ Marriages": No Such Thing!

The Vortex—‘Failed’ Marriages | The Vortex


TRANSCRIPT

There's a lot of talk going on in Rome during this synod about failed marriages. But that's the kind of talk that's not really all that helpful. It's exclusionary. It's unwelcoming. In fact, it sends the message that not all are welcome.

And exactly who is it that's being excluded, being not welcomed? Well, God — that's Who. See, to speak of a sacramental marriage as having failed is not welcoming to God. A sacrament that is valid and licit, cannot fail. It is an insult to Almighty God to even mention that. That's because it has the imprint of God on it — so everything Our Lord has promised in connection with that sacrament remains; it succeeds, it does not fail. It cannot fail.

Sure, the human component can fail and fail spectacularly, but not the divine part. We would never imagine speaking of a failed baptism, or a failed ordination, or a failed anointing of the sick. And if we did, many Church leaders should look out, because we could certainly start reeling off zillions of examples where the sacrament of ordination clearly looks like it failed. But Catholics don't speak in these terms.  

We speak in terms of individuals failing to live in such a manner so as to cooperate with the grace given through the sacrament — but we cannot speak in terms of the sacrament itself failing. Impossible. The term of marriage is for life — until death us do part. That is the amount of time that God has bound Himself to that particular sacrament — until one of the spouses dies. In the instance of ordination, God has bound Himself to that sacrament forever. You are a priest forever, a priest like Melchizedek of old. Once a priest always a priest. As the Irish say: A priest in Heaven, a priest in Hell; you are a priest forever. Same with baptism. The term for baptism is forever. You are never without baptism once baptized. 

So sacraments, depending on which ones they are, each have a term, a length of "time" in which their effects remain operative. The same applies to marriage. The graces available to a husband and wife are sufficient to them for them to cooperate with and merit Heaven — so to speak of the possibility of failure is not Catholic vocabulary.

We can speak of the failure of the husband or wife to live a life or lives corresponding to those graces, but we can never speak of the graces themselves failing. Yet this is exactly the tone, the undercurrent you hear around Rome from various prelates at the Synod. And they are wrong, perhaps even heretical. They are campaigning for an unCatholic interpretation of marriage — the sacrament itself. That is not possible.

When the human relationship fails, that is not the fault of the marriage sacrament. It is the fault of the human beings involved. Granted, there could be outside situations that bring great stress on the human relationship, like a psychological illness that develops only after the wedding, or a physical condition along with the emotional stress that makes the relationship very difficult to endure on a daily basis. It may in very rare circumstances even be necessary to separate for a while, but none of this undoes the sacrament of the marriage. It means necessity of clinging even more tightly to the graces of the sacrament.

But let's be honest, shall we? While these issues do happen, they are not the primary cause of so-called failed marriages. Lust is the primary cause. One or both spouses simply get "bored" physically with the other and get a roaming eye. They might have personality issues that precondition them to get bored. They could be going through the infamous second childhood or menopause, or the new secretary is just very attractive. Whatever.

Things are unhappy at home and one or both spouses is not cooperating with the graces to endure and work through the unhappiness, so instead of turning to God and His sacramental graces, they turn their eye to someone else, and adultery soon occurs. And this is the reason most marriages "fail." The other woman, or the other man, comes strolling in right at the perfect moment. So divorce eventually happens, then civil remarriage — and then exclusion from confession and Holy Communion.

It is preposterous and spiritually monstrous to consider granting the Most Blessed Sacrament to those who have failed to cooperate with graces from another sacrament and call it "mercy." It is not mercy or compassion — it is condoning adultery, the very opposite of marriage. Marriage is fidelity, through thick and thin. Adultery is lack of fidelity.

The idea that a sacrament can fail is a horrible thing to ponder. We simply cannot live in an existence where we do not have the guarantee of the fidelity of Our Lord to the sacraments. Imagine what would happen to the idea of confession. What if we could not be certain that the graces or effects from absolution "stuck"? First they are there, then they fail. How about confirmation, or baptism, or for that fact, Holy Communion itself?  

This kind of discussion is totally off-base, missing the mark, unCatholic to the extreme. The failure is on the part of the humans to not live up to the sacrament. This is how this must be spoken of — not in terms of a "failed marriage." No such animal exists, nor is it even possible for it to exist. Moreover, to turn around and reconstruct the Church's vocabulary, or try to smuggle in a new one, so as to essentially reward adultery is beyond the pale. It is wicked and diabolical. People living in adultery cannot be admitted to Holy Communion any more than two men or two women in a civil same-sex marriage — which a number of people here in Rome say is the real goal — with heterosexual couples in adultery simply being used as guinea pigs.

Stay with us all this month as we continue to bring you news from Rome about the Synod and the drastic approaches being discussed.

Fr. Schall: Our "This-Worldly" Oriented Pope.

Fr. James Schall posted yesterday at CatholicWorldReport.com an essay on the Pope's just completed visit to Cuba and the United States (in that order for some reason).  The entire essay can be read by clicking HERE, but herewith some excerpts that many of those who attended part or all of the three stops in the USA might find enlightening.

I am not sure with what to compare the Pope’s passage here. Was it like the triumphal entry of a Roman Emperor after conquering half of the world? The Holy Father is clearly a “personality”. His smiles and gestures are winning by any standard. I have never been much a fan of the Fiat as the official Papal vehicle. Most think it is a sign of humility. It seems a bit ostentatious to me. But I do have a capitalist observation. If I were the owners of Fiat in Turin, I would quickly rename the little four-seater “Fiat Il Papa” or perhaps “The Papal Fiat” and promise to contribute half the sales to the poor. A “papal fiat” after all is a phrase of classical legal meaning, “let it be done.”...

Pope Francis put great emphasis on “social friendships”, whatever they are. Where they fit into Aristotle’s classification of friendships of utility, pleasure, and the highest sort, I am not clear. Perhaps they are the sort of things Aristotle talked about when people from the same country meet in a foreign land. They greet each other as brothers, having things in common. “The friends with everyone, friends with no one” still holds, but the virtue of friendliness to everyone (amiability) is probably what he had in mind. The Pope used the phrase “social friendship” again in a talk to Cuban youth where it seems to mean what John Paul II meant by “solidarity”, where everyone puts aside differences and talks...

The Pope’s remarks to the students on environment contained these gems: 1) “The polar bear in Alaska has to go even further north. Why? Because the glaciers are starting to melt.” The implication here, I take it, is that human beings are causing this melting, not natural changes. So if you want to save the polar bear, refreeze the North Pole.

But the polar bear is a “big” problem. The young can deal with “small” problems. Like what? “We can always use biodegradable materials. You know that a non-biodegradable plastic bag stays there for millennia and this brings damage to the environment.” Whether plastic wraps and bags have been responsible for many good things like protecting us from germs, keeping things fresh, and so forth is not considered. Just why we cannot teach people to pick the plastic bags up instead of destroying the whole plastic industry and its jobs, I am not sure. Paper biodegradable bags are made of wood pulp which is made from trees that are found in forests, etc. The “waste of paper” the Pope finds “shocking”; he does not seem to know of reforestation. We have more trees in this country today than we evidently did before Columbus discovered  the place.

Next the Pope tells the students of a conversation with a man who is supposed to know about these things. He tells him that “the Islands of the Pacific Ocean, while they are independent states, within 20 years,” are evidently to disappear. If Julian Simon were still alive he would probably make a bet with the Pope on this assumption. Simon once bet Paul Ehrlich, who was at the time preaching massive starvation, that in several decades there would be more available supply of every mineral than when the bet was made. Ehrlich lost.

I mention all these things not because I think the Pope said too much about the environment in his trip, but because he didn’t. In fact, he finally seems to have realized the connection between environmentalism and the totalitarian views of those who want to control population. He knows that massive strides have been made through normal methods to clean the environment and reduce poverty. There is no real crisis that cannot be dealt with, unless perhaps we so empower governments that, through the power given to them, they exercise absolute control over every movement of the citizenry. His talk to Cuban youth on hope and jobs did not seem to recognize that in Cuba all jobs are in government control...

During the return flight, Maria Antonieta Collins of Univision asked the Pope about forgiveness. I was pleased to read his remarkable response:

If a person has done wrong, is conscious of what he has done and does not say sorry, I ask God to take him into account. I forgive him, but he does not receive that forgiveness; he is closed to forgiveness. We must forgive, because we were all forgiven. It is another thing to receive that forgiveness. If that priest is closed to forgiveness, he won’t receive it because he locked the door from the inside. And what remains is to pray for the Lord to open his door. To forgive you must be willing. But not everyone can receive or know how to receive it, or are just not willing to receive it. What I am saying is hard. And that is how you explain how there are people who finish their life hardened, badly, without receiving the tenderness of God.

That may be the best passage of this pontificate! Everything is forgiven by Christ’s sacrifice, but forgiveness necessarily follows on admission of guilt. Without it, nothing can be forgiven. This is what free will means.

This “refusal to be forgiven” is the status of much of the modern world, which also denies that there is anything to forgive. All is permitted. This refusal to accept the “tenderness of God” is what we ultimately call hell (see my essay “A Second Look at Hell"). This Pope seldom draws out the logic of this conclusion, but here it is quite clear. No one can be saved without repentance which comes from the inside. Social structures, good or bad, do not excuse personal sin...

Pope Francis does not seem to like normal Catholics, clergy or laity; he opts for sinners and heretics. While here, he did not support in any vigorous manner the efforts of the pro-life movement. He does not seem to admire intellectuals in any shape or form. He has distanced himself from John Paul II and Benedict XVI in many ways, not just in style. Many of his appointments are strange and definitely “left” leaning, as they say. As to his job, he certainly seems to enjoy being pope. He has become a “star”, a world-class figure, to use Hegel’s terms. He thrives before an audience. He seems uncritical about so many things—large government, the United Nations, climate change, criticism of capitalism, and Islam.

As I see it, the key to Pope Bergoglio is that he is primarily “this-worldly” oriented—this is his bent, his priority. The curious notion of making ecology a kind of ethics is most instructive. His eschatology seems centered on this world’s ongoing processes. He spoke to the youth in Cuba about hope. As far as I could judge, there was nothing in this discourse that transcended life in this world, though he would probably be surprised if one took this as a denial of anything transcendent...

Now, I am the first to say, for instance, that the issues of “gay marriage” or contraception, are not primarily issues of revelation but reason. They should be argued at this level. So one can go before Congress, as the Pope did, and not mention the name of Christ; popes are supposed to know about the things that congressmen deal with. But, no doubt, every member of Congress and every representative at the United Nations knew that the man who stood before them in a white cassock had something to do with Christ. However you mix it, without this Christ-overtone, he is just a man from an Argentine immigrant family. In any case, it is not, as in many lands, against the laws to speak the name of Christ in our Congress. The Pope surely knew that.