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October 16, 2014 Church

In These Strange Times

As expected, I have engaged in well over a dozen “Synod Talk” threads, e-mail exchanges, and conversations. Because Michael Voris did not invite me to accompany him and Church Militant TV to Rome, I have no “inside information” to give. I don’t even have a compelling analysis to offer of what has been reported in the secular and Catholic media. There’s simply not enough time to read it. It may take months, perhaps even years, to know exactly what transpired at the “Extraordinary Synod on the Family,” including all of the events leading up to it. Perhaps Roberto de Mattei will pen The Extraordinary Synod: An Unwritten Story someday. For the moment, what I do know is that the Synod is not an “event” which can be dismissed lightly. Even if the conservatives “win the day” (whatever that means in this context), poison is flowing throughout the Corpus Mysticum. Doctrinal changes are off the table, but “practical reforms” in the name of “the pastoral” will remain in play indefinitely. As we have seen play out since the Second Vatican Council, a shift in praxis becomes a de facto shift in doctrine. We can scream “The doctrine still exists!” until we’re blue in the face, but that hardly means it matters.

October 15, 2014 Church

Undignified, Shameful, Completely Wrong!

Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has given us a new slogan for the “Extraordinary Synod on the Family.” In Italian, the Prefect’s words read, “Indegna, Vergognosa, Completamente Sbagliata.” Fr. John Hunwicke has furnished us with a Latin translation: Indigna, Inverecunda, Omnino Falsa.

Use one or use the other. Use them all. Every battle needs a cry. Ever banner needs a slogan. Remember dear Catholics: On the day of your Confirmation (Chrismation), the Holy Ghost came into your soul and made you soldiers of Jesus Christ. You must not be silent. You must not give way to indifference or despair. Pray for an end to this despicable Synod. Pray for good shepherds like Cardinal Mueller. And above all pray that the Pope recalls his duties as the heir of St. Peter and comes out on behalf of the Truth. He is the Vicar of Christ, not God’s oracle. It is his duty to defend the Church, not let the wolves run wild.

October 14, 2014 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church

Orthodox Glibness Toward the Synod

In certain corners of the Internet, along with the half-dozen geographic locales where they are still thought to exist, certain Orthodox Christians are smiling bright over the troubling “first fruits” of the Catholic Church’s ongoing “Extraordinary Synod on the Family.” (If you want to peek into the rotten basket, go here.) They’re smiling because right now it appears as if the Church is on the cusp of contradicting itself, of falling into the chasm which opened up at the First Vatican Council when the dogma of Papal Infallibility was solemnly defined. Nothing could be further from the truth — and they know it.

October 13, 2014 Church, Theology

Choice Cuts From the Synod

I know I wrote that I was not going to discuss the ongoing “Extraordinary Synod on the Family” — a promise which I found impossible to keep. At the time it seemed prudent, especially since, much to Cardinal Gerhard Mueller’s chagrin, the first rule of Synod Club is you don’t talk about Synod Club. (This rule does not apply to media outlets being leaked tainted liberal tidbits on a daily basis.) Now the mid-synod report is out and, well, I think, in the interest of trying to hold fast to my previous pledge of omerta, I’ll let the document speak for itself with some choice cuts. (H/T to Mr. Milco of Ursus Elisei for yanking some of these out.)

October 9, 2014 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church

Thirsty Thursday

Somewhere in the world a Synod is taking place which has captured an uncomfortable amount of attention from the secular media. Since I promised not to comment on this Synod, I won’t. I will, however, express my extreme disappointment that this “event” is overshadowing the horror which is still unfolding for Christians in the Middle East. The Islamic State hasn’t called a ceasefire simply because a bunch old prelates in Rome are squabbling over how to circumvent settled dogma with specious reasoning. Some are still fretting that the Synod will lead to a rupture in the Catholic Church, maybe even a full-on schism. Would that be so bad? Yes, schism is always a tragedy, but it’s not without certain upsides. The departure of the Old Catholics in the 19th C., for instance, wounded the Church, but not deeply. Look at where the Old Catholics are today. But the Old Catholics were always an extreme minority; it’s not clear at this point who will go where and what their numbers shall be. That’s because it’s not clear yet who the Synod will shake out. Maybe, as some have predicted, it will just weaken the Church more, make her look even more unnecessary and foolish in the eyes of others, and limp onward toward further occasions for self-destruction in the name of “renewal.” Thankfully Catholic Answers and other neo-Catholic apologists will be on hand to explain it all away.

October 7, 2014 Church

Till Tuesday

In a recent interview on his meeting with Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Society of St. Pius X’s Superior General, Bishop Bernard Fellay, had this to say on what he sees as a connection between the Second Vatican Council and Cardinal Walter Kasper’s troubling proposal to overhaul Church praxis with respect to divorced-and-remarried Catholics:

October 6, 2014 Church, Eastern Orthodox Church

For Monday

Some years ago an online acquaintance of mine suggested that one of the attractions of Roman Catholicism for converts is that it provided something like “philosophical certainty” in a radically uncertain world. In short, if you can’t handle the soft nihilism of mass consumer culture or the more full-throated nihilism embedded in any number of mainline academic disciplines, then the Church is the place for you. I was Orthodox at the time he pitched this idea to me, but even then I thought he was probably onto something. I don’t think Eastern Orthodoxy enjoys such an “exalted” status. Without trying to pass over all of the genuinely good things Orthodoxy provides to those who enter her doorway, I think it’s safe to say that “philosophical certainty” isn’t one of them. In many respects, Orthodoxy, whether it intends to or not, merely reaffirms the popular fideism which runs through large currents of conservative American Christianity. The suspicion of reason which, if pressed far enough, becomes the denigration of thought, plays nicely into certain myths about what an “authentic Christianity” ought to look like. For more “sophisticated” types, intoxicated with the ways and means of postmodern thought and positively indignant toward the idea that unaided human reason can tell us much of anything, the “mysticism” of Orthodoxy provides something resembling stability. In other words, it makes one’s religious solipsism look grounded.

October 6, 2014 Church

Synod

The Synod on the Family has opened. Will this be the end of the Church as we know it? Will it be a moment for “traditional values” to be affirmed? Shall we be treated to a mountain of neo-Catholic claims that everything which transpires is in perfect continuity with the past? Etc., etc., etc.

Regardless, I have no plans whatsoever to discuss the Synod on Opus Publicum. If something truly notable — and verifiable — emerges from the meeting, then maybe a word or two is in order. Otherwise, I am content to leave it to the “experts” to prognosticate and/or panic about this needless and confusing Synod.

September 26, 2014 Books, Church, Politics

A Man of Another Era

Juan Donoso Cortes would likely have been lost to that most obscure sector of intellectual history, the one reserved for prophets of a doom that didn’t quite come to pass, had it not been for the terrorist attacks which transpired on 9/11/01. In the months, then years, after the tragedy, theorists of different stripes began mumbling something about the U.S. — if not the Western world — being in a “state of emergency” or an “exceptional state”; that’s when folks started remember, or discovering, Carl Schmitt. The intellectual banalization of the opening line of Schmitt’s Political Theology — “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception” — is worth 10,000 words, but it’s not my concern here. What is of concern is how Schmitt, a theorist of dictatorship and decisionism, reopened interest in Cortes, a man whose writings clearly influenced Schmitt enough to where the latter, in 1950, devoted an entire book to the former. Unlike Schmitt, who received a mixed, but mostly fair, hearing from the professional academic community, Cortes became a subject of pure opprobrium. As a Catholic reactionary who believed that history could only be understood through a theological lens, there wasn’t much room in the theoretician’s toolbags for what the Spanish diplomat had to say. Still, “Schmittians” of various stripes have, from time to time, felt compelled to say a word or two about Cortes. Perhaps it’s time for traditional Catholics to as well.

September 24, 2014 Church

SSPX/Rome Talks – Fallout

Allow me to make a bold, even wild, prediction: Should the officials at the Vatican grant canonical regularization to the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), there will still be a contingent of neo-Catholic gripers claiming that “regularization” does not mean “full communion.” If the Pope were to do the unlikely and, say, give Bishop Bernard Fellay the red hat, these same neo-Catholics would declare that being in the College of Cardinals does not entail being in “full communion” with the Bishop of Rome. And if the late, great Marcel Lefebvre were to be canonized a Saint in St. Peter’s Square, those indefatigable neo-Catholic naysayers would confidently assert that the archbishop remains an excommunicate who is, more likely than not, burning in hell.