There's Something about Mary

 

Many traditionalists are angered by the recent document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Mater Populi Fidelis.” They call it insulting to Mary, because it discourages use of the titles “Co-Redemptrix” and “Mediatrix of all Graces.”

On this issue, I am entirely in agreement with the Dicastery and the Vatican. It feels good to say that.

I have always been disturbed by those very titles. “Co-Redemptrix” sounds blasphemous to me. Jesus is uniquely our redeemer. It sounds like a feminist attempt to subvert this truth. “Mediatrix of all Graces”? So the saints must petition her, and have no direct line to God? Did she mediate the graces she herself received? We are to go to her of necessity instead of Christ?

No; this is paganism.

Mary is the paradigm of the perfect disciple soul. Elevating her to some more active role violates her immaculate nature. Subservience is her essence, and it is this she models for us. “Let it be done unto me according to thy word.”

Thank you for the clarification, Pope Leo.

Listening

 

The main theme of the current “synod on synodality” at the Vatican, which just wrapped up its 2023 session, is listening: it seeks “a Church of sisters and brothers in Christ who listen to one another and who, in so doing, are gradually transformed by the Spirit.”

But this is fundamentally backward. 

The point of a church is not to listen to one another; that’s a social club. One does not need a church to have a chat with a neighbour. Mainstream Protestant denominations have gone down this road, and it leads to irrelevance, then extinction.

And if this is what the seeker wants, why be Catholic? Lots of other churches will offer exactly the same: agreeing with your opinions and endorsing your wants, whatever they might be.

One needs a church to listen to God, and learn what God wants. The revelation we have been given in the gospels, in the Bible, and in the apostolic tradition. Some may have special expertise in this: we listen to them. Just as, if we are ill, we do not discuss it with our neighbours; we go to a doctor.

Granted, we should also listen to the Spirit, as the synod documents aver. 

But that does not mean listening to anyone. That means the prophets, who are, literally, “inspired,” channeling the Holy Spirit. You find them, too, in the Bible, the deposit of faith.

Might that include prophets alive and speaking today? 

Sure; any great artist is also “inspired,” and at least some will be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Martin Luther King Jr., or Gandhi, also probably counted as modern-day prophets. However, such prophets do not lay down new doctrine or alter morals; God would not have concealed truths from us until now. The prophet’s job is to call on us to repent, and to adhere to the established doctrine. Already in the Old Testament, that was their function.

There are, of course, false prophets—those who claim to be inspired, but for ulterior motives. The gospel warns us of this, repeatedly. 

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits."

I take “good fruits” to mean beauty; the alternative explanation that it means “good deeds” is inconsistent with what Jesus says soon after this, that one must do one’s good deeds in secret.

Accordingly, no doubt the Church, and certainly the individual believer, must respect and attend to the message of great art, of Shakespeare, say, or Dante, or Dostoyevsky; or the beauty of King’s rhetoric. God raises such prophets as the times demand

But one does not listen to the Spirit by breaking into small groups, as the synod proposes. Just the reverse; the artist always works alone. He is out in the desert eating locusts. He needs solitude, precisely to drown out all other voices.

The very voices the synod wants us to listen to instead.

Chronicling the Collapse of Civilization

Or that is how it is beginning to feel.

Item: two leading Italian newspapers report that Cardinal Becciu, recently dismissed from his Vatican position by Pope Francis, actually put 700,000 Euros of Church funds into bribing witnesses to get Cardinal Pell of Australia charged and convicted of child sex abuse. This was because Pell was in charge of cleaning up Vatican finances. It was to get him out of the way.

If true, it sounds as though the Mafia had taken over the Vatican. It seems good news that Becciu was ousted, but disturbing that he got this far. We have discovered recently that we cannot trust even cardinals: they are entirely likely to be criminals.

But at least we can trust the Pope, right?

Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, while perhaps theologically unobjectionable, looks very political in its interests: “The document focuses on contemporary social and economic problems.” It calls for a world government and open borders. It calls for reform of the UN. Francis writes, disapprovingly, “Certain populist political regimes, as well as certain liberal economic approaches, maintain that an influx of migrants is to be prevented at all costs.” And the timing looks like an attempt to influence the US election.

This reinforces a growing sense that Francis’s primary concerns are political, not spiritual. He is a politician, not a religious man. And his politics lean left—in an essentially irreligious direction.

Martini Passes

Rest in Peace

Cardinal Martini of Milan has died.

His death has gotten a lot of play in the secular media, in which he is invariably cited as the leader of the “liberal” faction in the college of cardinals. They also commonly refer to him as papabile, though we really have no idea whether he ever came close to being selected pope.

On Catholic websites, on the other hand, his death seems to have passed with very little notice. At most, a link to some news story reporting his death.

In an interview published posthumously, Martini lamented the emptiness of European churches, and said the Church is too pompous, too bureaucratic, and “200 years behind the times.”

I would lament the same things. But what is the solution, and did Martini have it?

As for the emptiness of churches: Martini seemed to think that being more relaxed on the morality of contraception and divorce would make those who are not now interested in Catholicism, the authors of the secular reports, flood into the church. But surely we know from the experiments of mainstream Protestantism that this would not be so. Religions live not by broad appeal, but by deep appeal. Nobody, certainly including the lukewarm, is impressed by a lukewarm faith; while the devout would probably leave for something more intense. The prime beneficiary would be the Society of Pius IX; just as the evangelicals and the Pentecostals have been the prime beneficiaries of such “liberalization” in mainstream Protestantism.

In any case, this is not an option. No pope or council has the authority to change church teaching on either faith or morals. To do so would be to kill Catholicism itself. Truth does not change over time, or because people want it to.

And a Church that simply tells you that whatever you are currently doing or want to do is what you should do is worthless. It would be like a doctor who simply tells all his patients, regardless of their symptoms, that they are perfectly well. Of course, nobody wants to hear that they are sick; but you cannot make a thing so by saying it is so.

As for the church being too bureaucratic, this has also been publicly lamented by such worthies as Pope John XXIII and Pope Benedict XVI. It probably bothers everybody in such a big organization. But Martini’s solution seems to be to make it more collegial, perhaps hold a third Vatican Council. This is, in effect, handing the church over to the bureaucracy, to the committees. The special privileges of the papacy are there precisely to cut through the bureaucratic tangle.

As for the church being “behind the times,” this cannot be said of church doctrine, of its teachings on faith or morals. Otherwise, one is guilty of the heresy of Modernism; again, truth does not change over time. No doubt this is what journalists thought Martini meant, and perhaps it is what he meant.

But it can fairly be said of liturgy and of making full use of the new media for evangelization. The Vatican itself is pushing for more use of new technology. Why shouldn’t sermons, for example, be multimedia? There is no reason to hold back on this score: the Catholic Mass was the original multimedia experience, in 4D complete with bells and smells. The Catholic cathedral was the original “megachurch.” We ought to blow a few more minds of a Sunday.

As for the church being “pompous,” this is an eternal problem for any elite professional group like the priesthood. It is, however, a problem the Catholic Church understands and defends against better than any other organization. It is a central issue, after all, in the New Testament—the issue of hypocrisy and “Pharisaism.” It is countered by the Christian teaching of humility, following the example of Jesus--something broadly lacking in other religions, let alone secular organizations. It is countered by the discipline of obedience within the priesthood. And it is countered by the discipline of priestly celibacy, as a test of sincerity.

Unfortunately, Martini himself, by more or less talking out of turn, himself betrays a certain self-importance, a certain violation of priestly obedience to the Vatican. This, if he had his way, would probably spread through the priesthood—priests would become less answerable to anyone. He was also not a strong supporter of the discipline of celibacy.

But we should speak no ill of the dead—no doubt why other Catholic commentators have had the wisdom to simply maintain silence. Martini had his own struggle, no doubt, with the angels, as we all do. If he was right, he knows now.