Creative Minority Reports has is apparently running scared. Patrick apparently fears the accuracy of what I have to say to him, he deeply fears public chastisement and correction. He told me as much in a private communication to me.
Why?
Well, because he's acting like a Protestant. Protestants proof-text Scripture. He proof-texts the Magisterium, choosing papal quotes without benefit of the context in which they were presented or the audiences to which they were addressed.
Just as Freemasons try to subtly undermine Church authority, so he attempts the same by pretending that one Pope can be set against another.
The sedevacantists (i.e., Protestants) LOVE what he is doing. Yes, there is a lesson in this. He is drifting away from the Church and taking a lot of ambivalent Catholics with him.
This post of yours is nonsense. You claim Patrick fears the accuracy of what you have to say in a private communication to you, but how do me know that's even true? There's no way for us to check it because it is private communication.
ReplyDeleteAll of the papal quotes were ex cathedra statements. The meanings was pretty clear to me and most of the other commentators on that article. Pat wasn't setting one Pope against another, Francis already done that himself by his idiotic statements.
Pat drifting away from the faith?! You're the one who has been doing Mark Shea type attacks on people in your own sites com boxes, as well on com boxes on other sites like CMR. You're the one who praised that blasphemous statue of the BVM in your article, yet you dare criticize Pat for raising some very legitimate concerns about Pope Francis's erratic statements.
You used to be a good commentator, but now all you do is make snarky and sarcastic remarks that are total non-sequiturs. What's going on man?
I follow the Church. I'm not a fan of those who don't.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Pat doesn't like comments directed towards him, but he's fine with similar comments directed towards the Pope.
He's a sede-in-process, drifting away from the Faith. As you are.
I'm not afraid of commentators. In the entire history of this blog, I have deleted perhaps five comments (posts that consisted of nothing but curse words) and blocked no one. The truth isn't afraid of commentators. Pat is afraid.
A question in all sincerity....
ReplyDeleteTraditionalists and reform of the reform types tend to blame the declines in attendance, vocations and other measures of participation in the Church on confusion following Vatican II. If traditionalism is not the answer do you think there was a misdiagnosis?
Yes, there was a misdiagnosis, but only by the laity. The Pope got it right. The problem was precisely the pre-conciliar Church, just as Pope John XXIII said prior to calling the Council.
ReplyDeleteIf the pre-conciliar Church were really as strong as was claimed, it never would have collapsed following the Council. No one could have "hijacked" the Council because everyone would have known the Faith well enough to recognize the post-conciliar heresies for what they were - heresies.
The very fact that the Church collapsed after the Council shows how weak the pre-conciliar structures really were, how ineffective the Tridentine liturgy and praxis had really become.
Oh, really?
ReplyDeleteWithout prejudice to J23's statement, I find yours take to be just another 'post/propter.'
Since VatII, the Church in Africa has grown substantially. It did not shrink, nor did the Church in PRChina.
It shrank in the West, and I think there are causes which have nothing to do with VatII, one of them being the Disease of Prosperity.
Oh--let's not forget--the Church in Bergoglio's South America is losing members like crazy, too.
Hmmmm. That's cause for thought.
Most of the bishops at VC II - all Tridentine trained - were from Europe and North America. They all came from the rotten pre-VCII college system.
ReplyDeleteThe African and Chinese bishops were never infected by the western philosophies promoted in the university system created by the pre-conciliar Church, so they stayed faithful. The problem was never the Council - the problem was the pre-conciliar educational structures and the false ideas they promoted.
And yet the issues that required Dominus Iesus came from....... The Near East.
ReplyDeleteAnd one of the leading lights in saying the birth control pill was morally licit....... was the Melkite Patriarch. (A man who otherwise did a lot of good.)
So the idea that it was just "Tridentine trained" bishops that were problematic.
And while one doesn't have to say "the problem is with the Council", there clearly was a way the council was implemented, and the "council of the media" that Benedict spoke about. To blame the continuing problems on the "prevatican ii system", when we've now had 50 years and sweeping reforms, is just being ideological to the core. One could even say that some of the reforms of the Council, while well intentioned and maybe even great on paper, turned out to be disastarous in reality.
Such as "maybe it wasn't such a great idea to choose the Low Mass as the template for reform, and then put in our liturgical rulebooks a thousand exceptions from the norm"
Then factor in the gradually increasing secularism noted (and warned about) by Leo XIII, profound demographic changes, and maybe the idea that most if not all of the problems were of the "preconcilliar structures" is as dumb and sophmoric as the idea that the problems facing the Church today can be entirely blamed on the Council.
And I also don't know any trad who says that the structures of the Church around the time of the council were fortress strong. Has anyone actually ever backed that up with evidence?
ReplyDeleteYes, it can be said there was a golden age. And why not? Most seem to acknowledge the reign of pontificates from Blessed Pius IX to Pius XII was a pretty solid one. (some would want to continue this up to the present popes, and I wouldn't be opposed, but I'm building consensus here) Yet that doesn't mean that everything in the Church was great.
Take a historical example: You have the 5 good emperors of the Nerva-Antonian Dynasty. Most consider that a golden age of Roman civilization. Right after Marcus Aurelius died, Commodus took over..... and blew the empire straight to hell. Does that take away that things were actually pretty darn good during that previous time, even if afterwards it collapsed?
Or to take a biblical example(s), look at the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah. Both were viewed as pretty strong golden ages for Judah in fidelity to God. Yet within one generation of Hezekiah's death, Israel had become so apostate, that any copies and knowledge of the law were driven underground.
Does the Bible say that maybe the Judah's fidelity to God wasn't real during Hezekiah's reign because right after it immediately imploded?
Somewhere the conduct and behavior of the present rulers has to account for some of the problem, even if they were mostly holy men doing the best they could.