There is also a good --if sometimes edgy--critique of Paul Kingsnorth's First Things lecture at Morello's *Gnostalgia* podcast. I was very grateful for their critique, and Emily Finley's as well. But I have just been reading and listening to some of his other Christian writings and lectures so I want to go on record that he remains a prophetic voice about where technology is driving our fallen world.
Another riveting Tradition and Sanity weekly roundup!
My primary concern arising out of Leo's interview with Crux is the following:
As he specifically expressed it, the Pope operates on the notion that moral doctrines can be changed if enough attitudes change toward them and the actions they pertain to. Somewhere along the way it appears he became convinced that such doctrines are merely based on how the faithful viewed and view such things, even after hundreds and hundreds of years of them being taught as definitive and everlasting. As such, since attitudes toward sexuality have changed significantly as they have over the past 60 years or so throughout the broader population, the Pope does not condemn such changes despite their objective sinfulness, but instead states, essentially, that if more and more people accept and promote such changes, and if a certain threshold is reached (real or imagined*), then he can change the doctrines that pertain to them.
All of this smacks of the modernist ideology guided by relativism that proudly declares everything involving human relationships change sooner or later, and so, too, should any morality that purports to govern them.
And it also sadly dovetails in with the Fr. Martin mission of changing minds (attitudes) to gain more acceptance of sinful sexual behavior as just another form of "love," which is pure yuck. Nevertheless, isn't it amazing how the Pope expressed a sentiment of changing attitudes needed to change doctrines that could have also been presented by Fr. Martin?
Lastly, did we not just go through a dozen years of a Pope first making troubling and ambiguous statements that show up in due course as part of various proclamations that do not honor perennial Church teaching, to say the least about them?
I hope Pope Leo proves me wrong, but for now, how can any Pope even mention the possibility of changing attitudes before doctrines can change?
*An imagined threshold will do as evidenced by the imagined and even dishonest threshold reached in prompting Francis to issue Traditiones Custodes.
My only point would be, Leo doesn't seem to be very adept as an interviewee (unlike Benedict XVI), and so I attribute some of this to clumsiness on his part. As if one were to say: "I don't expect this law to change any time soon," where his meaning is, "It's not going to change, sorry." Sometimes people speak with a kind of understatement, thinking it's a gentler way to get the point across. Now, I would be the first to say a pope should not do this. But popes in general shouldn't be giving spontaneous interviews.
Thanks, Dr. K: I hope you are right, but the specific terminology employed by Leo sets forth the false requirement of "before any doctrine can change, attitudes need to change," and this was in response to the possibility of making some changes. So if he botched, he's not even as good as Benedict probably was at age 10, which leaves me with hoping for a kind of invincible ignorance involved, which I would not hope for any Pope, but under the circumstances, such would be much better than the alternative.
By the bye, didn't many also complain about the alleged media sloppiness of Francis, and then too much of it somehow turned into dubious Church documents?
And once more, the affinity to the kinds of statements we get from Fr. Martin who is media savvy does not inspire confidence, but again, perhaps you are correct and it's much ado about nothing. We shall see.
Look: I'm ready to part ways with Leo XIV if I cannot find any way to read his words in an orthodox key. But as with Francis, I will give him the benefit of the doubt to the last bitter moment.
The article from Filemonas, with its claim that the “institutional Church” can fail while only the mystical body endures, reproduces Protestant ecclesiology and is heretical. It flatly contradicts the Roman Catechism, Vatican I, and Mystici Corporis by Pope Pius XII.
It effectively denies either the indefectibility of the Church, her visible nature, or both. To suggest that Catholics have misread Matthew 16 for 2,000 years by applying Christ’s promise to the visible Church is itself heretical.
It is fine to critique the exaggerations of Vatican I that led to hyperpapalism, but one must not overreact by falling into older errors long since condemned.
I do not think Filomenas is saying there is no kind of protection for the institutional Church. Rather, he is questioning whether this is the most sensible reading of Matthew 16. And frankly, if you look across the Church Fathers, you'll find a lot of readings of Matthew 16 that will sound "Protestant," but that's only because that passage of the gospel is not EXCLUSIVELY about the pope. It's about the Faith; it's about Peter's confession; and it's about the papacy. Moreover, we do know that the institutional church can fail here and there in the world (e.g. North Africa, Turkey), even if it will never cease to exist somewhere until the end of time.
Hi Dr. Kwasniewski! What you’ve written here is true — Matthew 16 does have multiple layers, and of course local churches can vanish while the universal Church endures.
The difficulty is that this is not actually what Filemonas said. He explicitly wrote: “Christ makes no promises in this passage about the Church as an institution” and that “the Church in its earthly form can completely disappear.” He even admitted he was departing from the traditional Catholic interpretation.
That position is the Protestant “invisible church” error, directly rejected by the Council of Trent, the Catechism of Trent, Vatican I, and Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis.
Quoting him without correction risks giving scandal, since it makes a condemned error appear to be a legitimate Catholic option. Orthodoxy is a narrow path, and in defending tradition we must not fall into the opposite errors already condemned.
It's not even close - the "greatest liturgical disaster of the twentieth century" was not perpetrated by Saint Pius X; it was the fabricated liturgy approved by "Saint" Paul VI. The proof is in the apostasy.
I think what Pius X did was intrinsically a worse precedent to set, and was more extreme in the effect it had on the transmission of an ancient tradition.
I think what Paul VI did was intrinsically graver because it affected the Holy Mass and all the sacraments AND the breviary, which he destroyed; but he could not have done this without the precedent established by Pius X, Pius XII, and John XXIII.
Great news about Sebastian Morello. Only yesterday, I bought Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries. I think it's have highlighted more text than otherwise.
Of the three Catholic writers and commentators I patronise by subscription: Dr. Kwasnievski, Timothy Flanders, and Joseph Pearce; my ears are wont to prick up when one recommends another. I will most certainly have to explore further. Oh, why not? A cheeky wee plug dropped here for Joseph Pearce's 'Inner Sanctum' to complement Dr K's T&S.
Though Paul VI never officially abrogated the TLM, there is no evidence whatsoever that he and his minions gave it any oxygen to survive. They thought they could suffocate it to death. The whole RC world was told to stand down with the TLM and install Paul's new Mass. If that weren't true, tens of millions (in the US alone) wouldn't have abandoned the faith.
There is also a good --if sometimes edgy--critique of Paul Kingsnorth's First Things lecture at Morello's *Gnostalgia* podcast. I was very grateful for their critique, and Emily Finley's as well. But I have just been reading and listening to some of his other Christian writings and lectures so I want to go on record that he remains a prophetic voice about where technology is driving our fallen world.
Another riveting Tradition and Sanity weekly roundup!
I quite agree, Kingsnorth at his best is glorious. But there was something really off about that lecture...
Thanks, as always, for being a reader!
My primary concern arising out of Leo's interview with Crux is the following:
As he specifically expressed it, the Pope operates on the notion that moral doctrines can be changed if enough attitudes change toward them and the actions they pertain to. Somewhere along the way it appears he became convinced that such doctrines are merely based on how the faithful viewed and view such things, even after hundreds and hundreds of years of them being taught as definitive and everlasting. As such, since attitudes toward sexuality have changed significantly as they have over the past 60 years or so throughout the broader population, the Pope does not condemn such changes despite their objective sinfulness, but instead states, essentially, that if more and more people accept and promote such changes, and if a certain threshold is reached (real or imagined*), then he can change the doctrines that pertain to them.
All of this smacks of the modernist ideology guided by relativism that proudly declares everything involving human relationships change sooner or later, and so, too, should any morality that purports to govern them.
And it also sadly dovetails in with the Fr. Martin mission of changing minds (attitudes) to gain more acceptance of sinful sexual behavior as just another form of "love," which is pure yuck. Nevertheless, isn't it amazing how the Pope expressed a sentiment of changing attitudes needed to change doctrines that could have also been presented by Fr. Martin?
Lastly, did we not just go through a dozen years of a Pope first making troubling and ambiguous statements that show up in due course as part of various proclamations that do not honor perennial Church teaching, to say the least about them?
I hope Pope Leo proves me wrong, but for now, how can any Pope even mention the possibility of changing attitudes before doctrines can change?
*An imagined threshold will do as evidenced by the imagined and even dishonest threshold reached in prompting Francis to issue Traditiones Custodes.
These are all serious worries.
My only point would be, Leo doesn't seem to be very adept as an interviewee (unlike Benedict XVI), and so I attribute some of this to clumsiness on his part. As if one were to say: "I don't expect this law to change any time soon," where his meaning is, "It's not going to change, sorry." Sometimes people speak with a kind of understatement, thinking it's a gentler way to get the point across. Now, I would be the first to say a pope should not do this. But popes in general shouldn't be giving spontaneous interviews.
Thanks, Dr. K: I hope you are right, but the specific terminology employed by Leo sets forth the false requirement of "before any doctrine can change, attitudes need to change," and this was in response to the possibility of making some changes. So if he botched, he's not even as good as Benedict probably was at age 10, which leaves me with hoping for a kind of invincible ignorance involved, which I would not hope for any Pope, but under the circumstances, such would be much better than the alternative.
By the bye, didn't many also complain about the alleged media sloppiness of Francis, and then too much of it somehow turned into dubious Church documents?
And once more, the affinity to the kinds of statements we get from Fr. Martin who is media savvy does not inspire confidence, but again, perhaps you are correct and it's much ado about nothing. We shall see.
Look: I'm ready to part ways with Leo XIV if I cannot find any way to read his words in an orthodox key. But as with Francis, I will give him the benefit of the doubt to the last bitter moment.
Indeed. In large part because of Francis, the red flags are raised sooner, but I will happily take them down if Leo gives me any cause to do so.
The article from Filemonas, with its claim that the “institutional Church” can fail while only the mystical body endures, reproduces Protestant ecclesiology and is heretical. It flatly contradicts the Roman Catechism, Vatican I, and Mystici Corporis by Pope Pius XII.
It effectively denies either the indefectibility of the Church, her visible nature, or both. To suggest that Catholics have misread Matthew 16 for 2,000 years by applying Christ’s promise to the visible Church is itself heretical.
It is fine to critique the exaggerations of Vatican I that led to hyperpapalism, but one must not overreact by falling into older errors long since condemned.
I do not think Filomenas is saying there is no kind of protection for the institutional Church. Rather, he is questioning whether this is the most sensible reading of Matthew 16. And frankly, if you look across the Church Fathers, you'll find a lot of readings of Matthew 16 that will sound "Protestant," but that's only because that passage of the gospel is not EXCLUSIVELY about the pope. It's about the Faith; it's about Peter's confession; and it's about the papacy. Moreover, we do know that the institutional church can fail here and there in the world (e.g. North Africa, Turkey), even if it will never cease to exist somewhere until the end of time.
Hi Dr. Kwasniewski! What you’ve written here is true — Matthew 16 does have multiple layers, and of course local churches can vanish while the universal Church endures.
The difficulty is that this is not actually what Filemonas said. He explicitly wrote: “Christ makes no promises in this passage about the Church as an institution” and that “the Church in its earthly form can completely disappear.” He even admitted he was departing from the traditional Catholic interpretation.
That position is the Protestant “invisible church” error, directly rejected by the Council of Trent, the Catechism of Trent, Vatican I, and Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis.
Quoting him without correction risks giving scandal, since it makes a condemned error appear to be a legitimate Catholic option. Orthodoxy is a narrow path, and in defending tradition we must not fall into the opposite errors already condemned.
I agree. He should correct his view on this point. Thank you for commenting.
It's not even close - the "greatest liturgical disaster of the twentieth century" was not perpetrated by Saint Pius X; it was the fabricated liturgy approved by "Saint" Paul VI. The proof is in the apostasy.
I agree with both of you, in a way.
I think what Pius X did was intrinsically a worse precedent to set, and was more extreme in the effect it had on the transmission of an ancient tradition.
I think what Paul VI did was intrinsically graver because it affected the Holy Mass and all the sacraments AND the breviary, which he destroyed; but he could not have done this without the precedent established by Pius X, Pius XII, and John XXIII.
Fair enough, but since when are revolutionaries constrained by precedent?
Great news about Sebastian Morello. Only yesterday, I bought Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries. I think it's have highlighted more text than otherwise.
Of the three Catholic writers and commentators I patronise by subscription: Dr. Kwasnievski, Timothy Flanders, and Joseph Pearce; my ears are wont to prick up when one recommends another. I will most certainly have to explore further. Oh, why not? A cheeky wee plug dropped here for Joseph Pearce's 'Inner Sanctum' to complement Dr K's T&S.
Though Paul VI never officially abrogated the TLM, there is no evidence whatsoever that he and his minions gave it any oxygen to survive. They thought they could suffocate it to death. The whole RC world was told to stand down with the TLM and install Paul's new Mass. If that weren't true, tens of millions (in the US alone) wouldn't have abandoned the faith.