What Is Happening In the Vatican?
June 7, 2012 3 Comments
What is happening in the Vatican? Catholics all over the world are in consternation and wondering what sense to make of the news that has broken out in the press and that appears to reveal the existence of an ecclesiastical war going on inside the Leonine Walls, the consequences of which are being deliberately exaggerated by the mass media. Nonetheless, even if it is not easy to understand what is happening, we can make an effort to do so.
More at Rorate Caeli here.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
This really has been an ongoing debate and even problem with this part of Vatican II, i.e. the Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes, for years! This part of the Four Apostolic Constitutions in Vatican II, has certainly not been a favorite for Ratzinger/Benedict! And it is here I have myself stated my own problems for thus belief in the authority and infallibility of the papacy itself! I mean how could the church authority itself open this Pandora’s box? Here again, I am speaking of the pastoral Gaudium et Spes. And note here too I have extended Irish family who are both “Religious” (a young Nun, and priest. I had one Nun, a Great Aunt who was a Carmelite Mother Superior, she is before the Lord now, RIP.) And neither are the younger, really classic traditionalists. I would myself be more conservative than they are! And sadly, many Religious Catholic Nun’s are simply liberal now. So here we can see where modernism has become postmodernism, now in our time. Indeed what to do now these 50 years later with the Pastoral Constitution of Gaudium? The debate continues!
As a mere youth I was as one stuck…in the confusion and the subsequent flotsam and jetsam of the late 1960′s. Within this carnage of an ‘Identity crisis’, my character was forged…as trampling upon the grapes of wrath, purging my Soul. As now a survivor, yes even a Victor…hopefully coming out of the wine press labeled a fine vintage wine–but unbeknownst to me, save Jesus Alone.
as in Rorate Caeli: “…But if the church turns its back on the supernatural and the transcendant in order to turn toward the natural and the circumstantial, the teachings of the GOSPEL, that one needs to be “in the world, but not of the world”, are turned upside down, She stops Christianizing the world and is made worldly by it”.
So very TRUE! I do believe the crux of the problems that the Church is engaged in the world today (e.g. the health care mandate for one, here in the U.S.) is a piercing cry and attestation that the GOSPEL had not been preached (we are reaping what we FAILED to sow)…to the degree and intensity of the Gospel’s ALL encompassing and Transforming Power! If we lived out and up to–our Christian heritage and profound calling, the Church would now be on the Offensive–moving mountains, securing more ground; instead of on the defensive, weathering one storm after another.
but also as in Rorate Caeli: “…The hour of darkness is always accompanied by the hour of light which has kept shining brightly throughout the history of the Church”.
We are called to be Immersed and Absorbed into the LIGHT–so as to BE LIGHT, or risk becoming absorbed into the darkness, blinded by the LIGHT. Yet still is our HOPE: “The LIGHT shined in the darkness and the darkness grasped it not”!
Margaret: I am glad that you can call yourself a “survivor” and even a “Victor” of Vatican II, and yet in “Jesus Alone”? I am sure however you include the RCC. I myself cannot say the same of the Papal Church, but certainly some in that “Body” of Christ! I must in all truth and conscience be critical myself of the whole pilgrim Church Catholic!