Look, every time someone in our family was wrong, my wife would say "this is embarrassing." I would reply "I'm not embarrassed." She would say "Why?" and I would answer "Because I didn't do it." Eventually she got the point.
I have several adjectives in mind over this incident, but 'embarrassed' is not one of them.
The thing that ALL Christians, not just Catholics, have to understand is that before Jesus returns, the world will endure a Great Apostasy. This is told to us by Scripture. Personally, I believe all this is a part of it. I could be wrong. The point, though, is that we must be prepared for everything to fall apart around us, in terms of the Church. We might not be the generation to which it happens, but that generation will one day be here.
Personally, I think that it is something that always has happened and is happening and will happen, insofar as time doesn't work the same way over there. It seems to me like part of the general tragedy of living at the nexus of the chronos and the kairos. But whatever challenges we happen to be given, we must meet them the best we can—just like every generation, from the first to the last.
I think that sometimes we think of vertical eternity as the horizontal "future" because eternity is literally incomprehensible: our minds aren't capable ot the concepts needed to grasp what that could mean. Talk of the "future" might be a sort of translation into terms we can understand, like a sphere trying to talk to a circle.
It is possible for both to be true. We are always in the great deception, but there will be the Great Deception in the future. Just like there is the end for each of us, and there will also the End.
Yes, but I find it fruitless to contemplate "the End"; and I also find that such thoughts typically bring out the most paranoiac tendencies among the worst of us. So, I think it's better to leave it alone. I'm an existential thinker, and I have no interest in purely speculative questions with no possible practical import. We do not know, and we cannot possibly know, and even if we did know, it would have no meaning. So leave it be.
I think that He's like a sphere talking to us circles: we don't really comprehend the dimensional parameters He has in mind. He walked through walls because our walls are like fog to Him; we don't even have a conceptualization for what we're dealing with, here.
Oh, it goes back farther than that. One bright spot (!) is the perspective this gives on the events of the past 250 years. Here is T.S. Eliot on Baudelaire:
"In… an age of bustle, programmes, platforms, scientific progress, humanitarianism and revolutions which improved nothing, Baudelaire perceived that what really matters is Sin and Redemption…and the possibility of damnation is so immense a relief in a world of electoral reform, plebiscites, sex reform and dress reform, that damnation itself is an immediate form of salvation — of salvation from the ennui of modern life, because it at last gives some significance to living."
How cranky and over the top that sounded when I first read it. And now?
I don't think it's ENTIRELY fruitless; I think it's important, because one of these days, there will be an End, and the churches of that day need to be prepared to read the signs of the times. That said, most speculation on The End is lurid and pointless.
My view is that if our own theosis isn't taking up enough of our attention, then we're probably not trying hard enough. And moreover, I believe that the best thing we could for anyone else is to become a saint: as some cool guy said, "Become a saint, and thousands around you will be saved." I think that if every man lives toward his own last day, then the actual Last Day will take care of itself. So, a lot of the speculations just seem like a lurid distraction from the actual existential responsibility that God has given each of us; and perhaps it is particularly tempting because fantasizing about the Last Day feels more epic than doing the laundry.
Opportunity cost: every moment we spend thinking about one thing is a moment not spent on a better thing.
Dec 19, 2023·edited Dec 19, 2023Liked by Rod Dreher
The falling apart of the Church is precipitated by the falling apart of society - same-sex marriage, transgenderism, all that used to be considered sinful now considered virtuous (and you WILL "celebrate" it if you want to keep your job), etc. So even as Christians struggle with the Church falling apart, many of us unchurched also perceive society to be falling apart and realize there are going to be consequences for it, that in fact those consequences are already manifesting themselves. They may perceive that the traditions being discarded were the threads holding civilization together. They see some members of that society saying the "answer" is to cut even more of those threads. But then they may see Christians pointing out that the reason for the great unraveling is that the threads were severed in the first place.
I suspect some/many will gravitate toward that port in the storm as the storm grows worse around us.
675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The Supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in the place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
676 The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism..
677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fuifilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.
This was an excellent read! Thanks for sharing. This was the best pry for me. Well worth the cost of admission...
“For Tyconius, it is the new Israel who must depart on her new Exodus. The true Church herself will effect the great apostasy as a way of salvation[38] from her enemies. In a real sense, the true Church will force the apostasy into the light, for the body of the devil, present in the false brothers inhabiting the Church, is already, and always has been, apostate. That fact has merely been concealed.”
I believe the untruth of the extra special spiritual position and authority of the Bishop of Rome is a long ago lie planted in the church by the Father of Lies now ripening that will end in disaster for the Catholic Church for that non-negotiable lie is foundational to the Roman church. The pope who is supposedly the special unique vicar of Christ will become a false “angel of light” and perhaps already is.
"He who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves" (Luke 22:26). . . . So, that means he gets the extra-bedazzled tiara, right?
To read the first few pages of Karl Adam's Roots of the Reformation gives some perspective on just how low those entrusted with the papal office can sink and have sunk. From the full embrace of worldly power, to a complete lack of faith, to secret concubines, to pagan idols supplanting the holy elements in sacred spaces. By all accounts the Church in the West should never have survived quite so long as this, if abuse of truth was the indicator of impending collapse. Francis is careful not to undermine his credibility with official distortions of teaching, but still, we have endured stronger contradiction and scandal. I'm not justifying. It's bad. But I am going to wait and see. It could be the death throes of the specter of the Council that has robbed the Church of its intended Spirit these last fifty years.
So I think I heard Peter Kreeft talking about the popes with “suspect morality”, Borgia example I think. His comment, somewhat in defence of the papacy, “at least, thank God, they did not change teaching”. So now we have someone who has changed teaching. Worse?
I see the problem in the "pastoral" approach. He attempts to make as much concession as possible toward being "welcoming" that he allows for the appearance of changed teaching. He rejects being a sign of contradiction toward serious error and sin out of what seems to be a naive compassion but many people suspect is sinister. No official teaching has been changed and the document does address constant Catholic teaching about marriage, sex, etc.. It also shores up against a lot of possibilities for abuse for blessing saying it can't look like a ceremony or draw parallels to marriage etc. But the problem is it doesn't seem to give a satisfactory answer as to why it is bending over backwards to make sure that the possibility for this blessing exists. The answer is it is a response to what has already been happening in Germany with efforts to recognize gay unions within the Church. But approaching a refusal from this posture is confusing. Remember when Pope John Paul II publicly scolded the priest supporting a heretical presentation of liberation theology in South America? That looked like love to me. This looks like dereliction.
Honorius I and John XXII both changed teaching. John retracted on his deathbed and Honorius' change was rejected after his death (his 'change' may have actually have been in part a misunderstanding due to a translation issue and so was not well thought out).
This history demonstrates this is a rare situation which has been dealt with before.
No. Honorius' change toward monophysitism was eccentric and convinced no one. John XXII's change brought massive opposition, because it sabotaged the comfort of the intercession of saints, especially the prospect of becoming one upon death.
It was a different world than ours'. We know practice will be affected this time. Still, from a doctrinal view this is not new.
Hi Rod. Haven't read the whole post yet (I will, right after I write this), but I need to say something. You keep saying that "non catholic Christians cannot rejoice because the catholic church is the mother church of the west". Of course no sane Christian can rejoice in no way, shape or form. But. But the western church, for a thousand years, has been intertwined with a story of empire and persecution. The book "the formation of a persecuting society" by R I Moore is a great resource on the deeper layers this. His main point is that persecution, inquisition, crusades etc was much less a genuine religious phenomenon, and rather a continuation of the tribal politics and mores of western societies through their newly acquired institution, the catholic church. (BTW, everyone in the eastern Mediterranean, Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim, finds this painfully obvious.) As I assume you know, many major differences from the orthodox were introduced after the schism, as means of division and social engineering (eg the disastrous policy of celibate clergy to discontinue the lines of village priests etc). Don't get me wrong, I'm not just plainly hating on catholics. As orthodox we know many sincere catholic brothers and sisters who try their best to live out the faith. However, most of us don't see catholicism of 50 or 100 years ago simply a "sister church". What is happening now is just the logical conclusion of the catholic church becoming a major political institution in the west. We are sad, and it is a bad thing what happened - but this could be the way for (yet more) catholics to study more carefully their own traditions and exactly what they subscribe to.
Some people will take this as an excuse for "grave depravity", however it is hard to believe that this kind of people would practice chastity and repentance if it wasn't for this development... After all, if they take the position of the catholic church seriously, they should be still troubled.
PS: yes, it is an attempt to normalize homosexuality, but in case anyone hadn't noticed, it is hypernormalized all over the west already...
Take it down from the level of geopolitics, or even theological debate, and you will see fellow Christians who are suffering. That's what I care about. And I would add that even if an Orthodox Christian doesn't care about that, if he thinks that the Catholics are getting what they deserve for their errors, that Orthodox should STILL be alarmed and grieved over this, because if the Catholic Church falls, all of us Christians living in the West are going to be in much worse trouble. The situation would be similar if one were a Catholic or a Protestant living in Russia: you might be tempted to think that if the Russian Orthodox Church capitulated to the Sexual Revolution, it was the Church's fault for this or that -- but your own attempts to live faithfully in the face of this Revolution would be immensely worsened.
None of us live in a vacuum. What Francis is doing strengthens with Archbishop Elpidophoros seeks to do with the Greek church in America. Thank God we Orthodox don't have a pope, but still, the Elpidophorosites, and the Fordham Orthodox, will draw strength from Francis's move, and contend that we Orthodox must not fall behind the times.
I'm one of the house Protestants who was shaken but not surprised by what happened yesterday. We all knew it was coming.
We all know there needs to be an ecumenism of orthodoxy, as others have called it, but several things stand in the way as I see it: the Catholic refusal to acknowledge the primacy of Scripture over Magisterium, to grant that we Protestants have a valid Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and to acknowledge that our clergy are legitimate. How these are overcome, I can't imagine.
I confess I have had an inadequate understanding of the Catholic view of the Magisterium and of the Papacy, and when a decade ago, "Who Am I to Judge?" Bergoglio became Pope, I expected that if I lived to see what I have lived to see, the world's faithful Catholics would be shattered and that would be that. I'm delighted that it hasn't been so, that instead, the Pope's destructiveness seems to have thickened the grit of Catholics who love the Church and want to preserve it.
I'd be grateful if theologically educated, faithful Catholics would teach me about this. Sedevacantism. Fascinating, but how would it happen? What would the leadership of Benedict XVI.'s envisioned Marine - like Church be?
Well, neither the Catholic Church nor the Orthodox churches can give you want you want regarding primacy of Scripture, because we are not Protestant. We also can't give you what you want regarding the Eucharist, not because we are being mean about it, but because we really do believe that genuine apostolicity must be present for the sacrament of the Eucharist to be real. Many Protestants -- Methodists and Baptists, say -- believe that the Eucharist is merely a symbol. Others -- Lutherans, and some Anglicans -- say no, there is something mystical there, something like what the Catholics and the Orthodox mean by "real presence." I'm not completely sure how Orthodoxy would answer this (many Orthodox deny the validity of Catholic orders), but in "Dominus Jesus," BXVI explained what constitutes a "church". He was speaking in strictly theological terms, and tried to make it clear that he didn't intend disrespect to Protestant worshiping communities. It can't be done that what Catholics and Orthodox see as lacking in Protestant churches can be conjured by fiat, any more than the Protestant (and Orthodox) objections to the papacy can be wished away. We will just have to learn to live in peace despite our differences. We can do this! I think Orthodoxy is the most true expression of Christianity, but I'm not angry about it, and don't feel hard towards my Catholic, Protestant, and Near Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ.
I understand. But I've just come from a Catholic YouTube channel in which a commentator referred to non Catholic believers as "other 'christians'." This doesn't sit well, and I'm sure you understand that it couldn't.
For what it's worth, I think that there is a lot of filial regard, and a significant amount of love, between Christian laity of all communions.
Want to hear something funny? Did you read Eve yesterday morning on how she's staying a Catholic? I did. I've been taking instruction at the local Greek Orthodox church, but it's Christmas, you know? And then I read Eve and I thought, I can stick it out, I can stay and fight (whatever that means). And then Francis threw his hand grenade. I still don't know. All in four hours. What I do know is that I'm as mad as hell and getting madder and baby it's righteous wrath. For what it's worth.
I'm a famously bad Catholic, but I'm staying—not for this jackass pseudo-pope, but for my grandparents, and for the disposition of my own soul and my own sense of peace. I can't actually imagine the pastor at the church I (intermittently) attend blessing a same-sex couple. It's a small, family-oriented parish. There are new catechumens every year. A few women wear veils. If there's a future schism, this church will be on the right side of things.
I console myself with knowing that there have been countless other sinful, apostate popes: warmongers, political manipulators, shedders of blood.
I'm staying too. I can't imagine learning all new rituals and having to figure out a new belief system that wasn't rooted in Catholicism. And what would I give up in the bargain? Confession as sacrament, adoration of Mary, transubstantiation? Would I have to take scripture, other than the gospels, literally? Would I have to learn a new language as difficult as Greek? Should I really give these beliefs up because the Pope puts a welcome mat out to the gays? I know I'm in the minority here, but as a sinner who has received church blessings, I believe that the Catholic church's mission is universal. And blessings shouldn't be withheld due to sin. If we do that, who gets blessed? We can't turn our back on fellow humans -- no matter how depraved.
A general blessing to any given individual with any given sin would be just fine and would be a call toward repentance. But blessing two people who are linked by a sinful relationship is not a call toward repentance.
All the good things you mention rest on us knowing something about truth. How could the idea of sacrament, transubstantiation, or anything else Catholic be meaningful if it wasn't true? Letting go of truth is a road to nowhere. And if the truth about sin isn't true, why not just give in to every sin every time? We know that wouldn't work.
That said, plenty of people care about people hurting in various ways. I have people I am mourning their struggles and difficulties (transgenderism problems in friends and extended family.) By human hand it looks like there is no way out, given the rejection of reason in our culture. But God can do it. I have seen people change, but it is God stirring their hearts. I imagine chastity is the same way, impossible for some but with God.
Well, for the record, Orthodoxy has the real presence in the Eucharist (even Catholicism acknowledges that), we venerate Mary as much as Catholics do, and of course we have confession. Do as you will, but just be aware that Orthodoxy is not Protestantism. And most Orthodox churches in the US worship in English.
Ted, I hope you stay. I am counting on good people being there in the pews out there for solidarity. I'm staying at least until it goes over the line and/or the Church splits, after which point I would still stay but probably take a multi parish approach for educating the kids. As things stand now, if I could just teach them this is an Anti Pope in a way that would be clearer. But it's harder to explain that this Pope is ambiguous and mendacious, but carefully within the lines. Same as the "chair of Peter is empty" argument. It's all but to that point, but we aren't quite there.
I appreciate your insight that this is just politics, and that this comes right on the heels of press about the guilty rulings in the financial scandal.
You are old enough, smart enough, and have seen enough that middle aged and younger people could look up to you. Can you mentor anyone in your parish? You might be a mentor just by showing up and saying your prayers. People need good examples of everyday Christian life. If it's hopeless, can you parish shop so you can live your life in a good way in a parish that is alive? Don't discount the value to others of being old and wise in a world where too many are old and foolish.
This is overwhelming. My favorite Gospel verse is, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man". I can't even mentor myself. As far as a role model, "Don't be like Ted" is as far as I get. But it's much appreciated.
I think the fix was in somehow. Shortly after his election, I was talking with my extremely Catholic doctor ( 5 1/2 years of seminary ) about it. He got this smug look on his face.
"I knew it was going to be Bergoglio. I had a bet on him."
It starts with bingo, Theodore, and ends in the miry pit of degradation.
"Deserve's got nothing to do with it", as the man said. I absolutely do not mean or believe that "they got what they deserve", and I don't believe I "deserve" better.
As for the geopolitics... Very respectfully, there is a very simple explanation for a series of many significant macro events (some of them currently ongoing), and it is factually intertwined with church history...
My point is that we can't compartmentalize. You cannot be a comme-il-faut and respectable-looking Christian on one side, while continuing very bad, bloody things on the other side. God will not allow it, the rebuke to the outward clean chalice etc. And this doesn't apply only to catholics obviously, it applies to everyone.
For example, you spoke earlier about how bad it is that the Russian church sacralized war. I happen to agree with you on that. Were you appalled when no western church leader protested when Merkel and other western political leaders confessed publicly that the Minsk accords were meant to buy time to arm Ukraine? With love to my western Christian brethren, this polite "blessing of war by omission/non-interference to politics" is no better than the militaristic stance of the Russian church...
I don't think the two situations are really comparable. I don't expect Western church leaders (or Eastern ones!) to comment on every political or foreign policy move. It's just that Moscow has directly activated the Russian church to support its foreign policy, in ways that don't really happen in the West. I don't think that most Westerners, much less Western church leaders, even know what Merkel admitted. More's the pity! We have been lied to by our leaders, again. Still, I don't expect the leadership of Western churches to weigh in on that, any more than I would expect the Patriarch of Moscow to issue a formal statement every time the Kremlin does something abroad.
Anyway, of course all churches -- Catho, Prot, Ortho -- are caught up in the world, and thrive and/or suffer because of things that happen in the world. I think it has been a long decline for Catholicism in the West since the French Revolution. And for Western Protestantism since the 19th century. World War I was the mortal stroke for Christendom. Can Christianity survive without Christendom? We shall see.
Of course it can. It did before. Its survival is a supernatural thing. Christ's Church will serve its role in world affairs according to prophesy and things will take their course.
Perhaps one has a little green village like the Shire. Perhaps one has a great city like Minis Tirith. Perhaps the latter's king is expected, but while the great city awaits it guards the borders of the green village and other realms. Of course, in time this city has Denethor - apostate steward.
So perhaps one has a little congregation - Orthodoxy. And perhaps one has a great congregation - one that is true - Roman Catholicism. This one has guarded the West and, through this, the East. And now this one has an apostate steward - Francis.
This is not war. If you want war look to Ukraine or Gaza, That is war: death and destruction, the real deal. This is a kerfluffle with people hissing and spitting at each other. Words have meanings and all that.
Re: The Mesopotamian Ishtar, the beautiful goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex, was sometimes represented with a beard to emphasize her more bellicose side.
And Athena was shown in men's armor complete with helmet. In some myths (including in the Odyssey) she appears to people disguised as a man. Didn't make her the Greek trans goddess. For that matter the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, a real person not a myth, was said to have worn a false beard to emphasize her authority, the beard being a prop of pharaohs just like the crook and flail. But she wasn't the "trans pharaoh". We shouldn't read modern things into ancient cultures that are very alien to ours.
“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too […]”
Clear evidence Elizabeth I was a “two-spirit.”
That said—and I get your point—you’re taking the Ishtar thing out of context. There is the whole notion of transgressive acts as sacred rites. Were these acts a mere costume party, or more like New Year’s Eve at a San Francisco sex club?
The two sexes are not separate species. There's a huge amount of overlap, called "common humanity" All of us have a share in traits more associated with the other sex.
In a Babylonian context Ishtar's "sacred prostitution" was not transgressive: it was the norm for that time and place, rather like torture and slavery in eras past. In the larger sense that does not mean we should be down with such things today when we have good reason to be wiser, but we also shouldn't apply anachronistic moral standards to the past-- leave that to the Left fleeing to their fainting couches over Founding Fathers who owned slaves and the like.
Do you seriously mean to tell me that the Israelites and their God (our God) were not disgusted by the religious practices of other peoples of the region?
Well, I replied to this with a fairly long comment, which seems have ended up in the Land of Lost Things (while another comment below duplicated-- strange are the ways of the Internet). Basically just saying you can't object to the ridiculous anachronistic moral fainting spells on the Left while indulging in the same.
And for the record, of course I don't agree with temple prostitution!
I am Anglican in the ACNA. I did not go through the split but found my parish as a safe haven in hard times in my life. I did grow up Methodist but left before the split for Anglicanism. I feel sorry and sad for those Catholics put in this shape. I have heard stories and seen the hurt and loss from things like this.
I have also found a safe haven in the ACNA, coming from a Baptist, Methodist and Independent church background. We have moved a lot due to the military, hence the different denominations in different places. We just moved for retirement and began looking for a new church. It is remarkable that what we found in most churches in a rather conservative part of the country was either moralistic therapeutic deism or acceptance of sexual immorality, with no place for repentance and obedience to Biblical teaching. The liturgy and willingness of the breakaway Anglican communion to adhere to orthodox Christian belief has led many from varying denominational backgrounds, including Roman Catholicism, to our Anglican parish. We are grateful to God to have found this community of believers standing up for Truth.
We Anglican {ACNA} and have found a safe haven as well. Our former pastor, in a mainline denomination, started preaching Marxism the summer of Floyd. We have a daughter who is Catholic so we are praying she will be strong in her faith and not loose her way in this.
Oh how I wish we had the ACNA over here. I’ve ended up at an Irish Presbyterian church as I just don’t trust the CoE/CoI leadership to hold the course, but I do miss the liturgical worship.
For the last 50+ years, the would-be deconstructors of Catholicism have used dishonestly driven a wedge home by claiming they merely want to change the 'pastoral' approach to existing doctrine, not to change doctrine.
They really are like the man who, long-married to Ann, states that he will now henceforth live with Beth, but not seek a divorce. Technically, he is still married to Ann. Behold! - only his approach to how he lives his marriage has changed.
It's not just the wickedness and the phoniness, though it is wicked and phony. It doesn't make any sense, it's incoherent.
Say it again: for the past 50 years good religious people have been trying to square the circle with NFP and putting their marriages, their mental health, and in the case of the women, their physical health on the line. And along comes Bergoglio. Now, either he's saying, "Suckers, the joke's on you", or he doesn't care that yesterday MAKES NO EFFING SENSE, just like the rest of the Vatican II Church.
The Vatican Declaration will be seen historically as the point the schism began. In future, faithful Catholics will look on from the pews while Papally-anointed apostate-deities parade around the altar in theatric regalia in celebration of being blessed before those second-class Catholics in the pews. Over time faithful Catholics will retreat to practice the faith alone or in secret groups. What remains of the Church will be decaying churches, few followers populating mass and other parish related events - including Catholic schools. Francis declaration has now imploded Catholicism. Its just a matter of time before St Peters becomes a place serving only as an ornate backdrop to where DJs will be featured in European Electronic music festivals.
You are right. Novus Ordo Catholicism is moribund, and will follow mainline Protestantism to a place of complete irrelevance as people abandon it in droves.
When the older Catholics die off, I don't see many replacements in the pews. The Novus Ordo church will get into the real estate business and sell off properties so what's left of the clergy can live comfortably in their death throes.
What'd the stats on Latin Mass usage in the global South? That's the future of the Church, at least for the next few generations (post no bills on the more distant future). Catholicism will rise or fall on well it does in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia (e.g., the Philippines)
But this has to do with the definition of sin -- and in the case of human sexuality, it has to do with basic Christian anthropology. This is not a minor matter.
the Church is now effectively endorsing same sex unions. This implodes previous Catholic teaching on: premarital sex, masturbation, marriage, and celibacy. The Church now has no credibility on matters related to sexuality, has no authority to require confession of sexual sin, cannot credibly require unions be between men and women, and cannot teach sexual morality in Catholic schools. Catholic youth will be adrift in lack of clarity, Catholic elders will see their congregations riven by division over special blessings for new theology Catholics. Its a schism.
There have been serious dust-ups before over points of praxis. East and West once had a huge fracas over whether the Eucharistic bread should be leavened or unleavened.
See also 1 Kings 15:13 / 2 Chronicles 15:16 "Even Maacah, his mother, King Asa removed from being queen mother because she had made a detestable image for Asherah. Asa cut down her image, crushed it, and burned it at the brook Kidron."
There's a theory that this "detestable image" is something sexually obscene. Sounds like the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of a Pride Parade.
As painful as these challenging times are, I continually remind myself that I can't do anything about what's happening in Rome. There are still many good and faithful shepherds in the Church who can lead me to heaven but it's my own holiness that will open the gate. Father Zuhlsdorf urges us now more than ever to get our spiritual house in order.
Start making thorough and honest examinations of conscience.
Start making reparation for wrongs and sins.
Undertake sincerely to forgive those who have harmed you.
Do penances.
Seek to purify memories.
Perform corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Dedicate some time each day to prayer, especially the Rosary.
I don't think you can easily convince people who are of the "but nothing has changed in substance" view, no matter what you say, because it is precisely to that view that this strategy is directed. So it finds its mark in such people, almost perfectly, down to the last of them. In that sense, it is a truly elegant, intelligent strategy given the specific dynamics of how Catholicism works.
What it recognizes, as a strategy, is that doctrine is one thing and praxis/optics/"facts-on-the-ground" are another. The latter doesn't formally change the former, which is the key advantage, in strategic terms, of focusing the strategy on the latter ... it defuses criticism because the former remains untouched. And in the meantime facts on the ground, practices, optics become commonly and widely accepted over 5, 10, 20 years if need be. And it's at that point that the true robustness of the strategy reveals itself in its recognition of the fact that once you have won the facts-on-the-ground/praxis/optics arena and established that as virtually unchangeable in the eyes of the many, the doctrinal change that logically follows from it is no longer a difficult change to make, and is in fact rather easily done. Not without dissent, mind you ... there will always be dissent. But with a manageably low level of dissent at the time in the future when the doctrine is addressed, once the facts on the ground have laid the foundations for that to happen.
Again, an elegant, long-term strategy.
No strategy is without risk, of course. The risk here, as with any long-term strategy, is one of reversal. That is, a reversal of power at the center in Rome could result in this change in praxis being rolled back, at which point the strategy is at best suspended. And it's that risk that the opponents today are hanging their hat on -- namely that once the odious current Pope has departed this life, this proclamation will be sunsetted, and things will return to the status-quo-ante in terms of praxis. That, too, is a high-risk approach, but, alas, when one is without power it is likely the best one can do.
One should take care, I think, however, to discern carefully whether one is engaging in "hope" or merely "cope". They can look very similar, but they are not the same.
From my perspective, as someone who has not been Catholic since 2000 but who grew up in the Church and whose family is mostly still there (practicing or cultural), I think it's increasingly unimaginable how the "official" Catholic Church doesn't change its praxis on same sex couples during the coming decades, and that this is simply the first step in that process. I don't see any other outcome, long-term, that is likely.
So all of us reading your blog , Rod Dreher , should take a start ; pray for our church and PRAY for each other , pray to God for Salvation and Truth. Pray hard. Merry Christmas 🎄.
A very VERY minor point. Mottram is not exactly a nitwit. One of the things that saves Brideshead from its own false rhetoric is Waugh's care in showing both grace and goodness, as well as weakness and evil, in all the characters. Julia is careful to number the horrible Mrs. Muspratt, Bridey's fatuous fiancee, among those whose prayers may have saved her from setting up a rival good to God's (which is precisely what Francis is doing). Mottram says, among other things, that a man needs a religion, that he can't have two religions in one house, and that he never saw any good come of divorce. And he is a member of the Churchillian mafia. For what it's worth.
Heard something on NPR yesterday while driving. The host was utterly clueless about Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, while the guest did make a rather tortured distinction between blessing "the couple" and blessing "the (same-sex) union". The framing of the story, however, was that gay couples would continue to feel "unwelcome" in the Church until, well, you know what's next.
What infuriates me is the falseness. I know innumerable ex-Catholics who make it sound as if they would have stuck around if only they could have had gay marriage, female priests, and abortion. That church exists! It's the Episcopalians, and as we all know it's dying, but none of these ex-Catholics can bestir themselves on Sunday mornings to go there.
Hell, a couple months ago I attended a funeral at an LGBT-obsessed UCC church. Tranny flags, a gender-neutral rewrite of the Lord's Prayer, a lady minister who introduced herself by giving her pronouns, the whole shmeer...and almost nobody was there.
I'm really sick of these ex-Catholics who can't get over some long-dead nun who didn't affirm their feelings in math class back in 1979. They've won everything else, and it's petty triumphalism to try to claim it all.
I've had classmates from the 70's talk about how tough the nuns were.......ridiculous. In my case, WE abused THEM. Some of the lay teachers were the cruel psychos.
In their partial defense, there were some rough brothers and nuns well into the 1980s who were actually abusive, and not just in the "tough love" sense. I'm aware of one Catholic school where one of the Jesuit brothers got a sadistic pleasure in making kids do menial labor for extremely minor infractions, and he was later found to possess a huge cache of videos in which adult men abuse adolescent and teenage boys.
In the 1950s a nun once thrashed my mother so violently, apparently for nothing, that my grandmother, a gentle woman for whom the nuns were always right, physically confronted the nun and threatened to punch her into next week if she ever left my mom's fingers black and blue again. She has tolerated all of her other kids being disciplined, but this time it was way over the line, and she put my mom in public school instead.
I also know kids who were getting physically beaten by the brothers at a private Jesuit high school in the Philadelphia area as recently as the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In the 1980s, I knew a lovely young nun who left the convent and abjured her vows, becoming a lay Catholic again, because other, older, nasty, cruel nuns harassed her and made her life miserable simply because the students at their elementary school actually liked her.
I'm a cradle Catholic. I've seen terrible behavior by priests and nuns. I can totally understand why people would leave and even despise the church due to abuse during formative or vulnerable times in their lives.
That said, most of my Gen X cohort say they left the Catholic Church simply because it...wasn't liberal. But their subsequent actions, given a wealth of progressive church options out there, make clear that they just don't want to attend any church at all. Their true religion seems to be holding a grudge against their childhood Catholicism.
Most people leave the Catholic Church because they cannot submit to an authority higher than themselves. They may give all kinds of reasons as to why they left, but as Bishop Sheen would ask, "What is the real reason you left?"
I often wonder, just on a human level, do they really think they can replace the people who are currently coming to Mass with people who would come to Mass if only the teachings were different? I don't think there's any precedent in human history that would make one believe such a thing.
Look, every time someone in our family was wrong, my wife would say "this is embarrassing." I would reply "I'm not embarrassed." She would say "Why?" and I would answer "Because I didn't do it." Eventually she got the point.
I have several adjectives in mind over this incident, but 'embarrassed' is not one of them.
Here's the link to the Tyconius piece cited in this blog post, for quick reference. Folk seemed to like it yesterday:
https://www.marcotosatti.com/2022/09/08/ratzinger-tyconius-and-fatima-an-interpretive-key-for-the-end-times/
The thing that ALL Christians, not just Catholics, have to understand is that before Jesus returns, the world will endure a Great Apostasy. This is told to us by Scripture. Personally, I believe all this is a part of it. I could be wrong. The point, though, is that we must be prepared for everything to fall apart around us, in terms of the Church. We might not be the generation to which it happens, but that generation will one day be here.
Personally, I think that it is something that always has happened and is happening and will happen, insofar as time doesn't work the same way over there. It seems to me like part of the general tragedy of living at the nexus of the chronos and the kairos. But whatever challenges we happen to be given, we must meet them the best we can—just like every generation, from the first to the last.
I think that sometimes we think of vertical eternity as the horizontal "future" because eternity is literally incomprehensible: our minds aren't capable ot the concepts needed to grasp what that could mean. Talk of the "future" might be a sort of translation into terms we can understand, like a sphere trying to talk to a circle.
It is possible for both to be true. We are always in the great deception, but there will be the Great Deception in the future. Just like there is the end for each of us, and there will also the End.
Yes, but I find it fruitless to contemplate "the End"; and I also find that such thoughts typically bring out the most paranoiac tendencies among the worst of us. So, I think it's better to leave it alone. I'm an existential thinker, and I have no interest in purely speculative questions with no possible practical import. We do not know, and we cannot possibly know, and even if we did know, it would have no meaning. So leave it be.
I think that He's like a sphere talking to us circles: we don't really comprehend the dimensional parameters He has in mind. He walked through walls because our walls are like fog to Him; we don't even have a conceptualization for what we're dealing with, here.
Oh, it goes back farther than that. One bright spot (!) is the perspective this gives on the events of the past 250 years. Here is T.S. Eliot on Baudelaire:
"In… an age of bustle, programmes, platforms, scientific progress, humanitarianism and revolutions which improved nothing, Baudelaire perceived that what really matters is Sin and Redemption…and the possibility of damnation is so immense a relief in a world of electoral reform, plebiscites, sex reform and dress reform, that damnation itself is an immediate form of salvation — of salvation from the ennui of modern life, because it at last gives some significance to living."
How cranky and over the top that sounded when I first read it. And now?
I don't think it's ENTIRELY fruitless; I think it's important, because one of these days, there will be an End, and the churches of that day need to be prepared to read the signs of the times. That said, most speculation on The End is lurid and pointless.
My view is that if our own theosis isn't taking up enough of our attention, then we're probably not trying hard enough. And moreover, I believe that the best thing we could for anyone else is to become a saint: as some cool guy said, "Become a saint, and thousands around you will be saved." I think that if every man lives toward his own last day, then the actual Last Day will take care of itself. So, a lot of the speculations just seem like a lurid distraction from the actual existential responsibility that God has given each of us; and perhaps it is particularly tempting because fantasizing about the Last Day feels more epic than doing the laundry.
Opportunity cost: every moment we spend thinking about one thing is a moment not spent on a better thing.
Rod, we so agree on wise (and unwise) preparation for The End, it's scary.
I'm writing a book on the subject, but at the rate I'm writing, Jesus might come back first.
The falling apart of the Church is precipitated by the falling apart of society - same-sex marriage, transgenderism, all that used to be considered sinful now considered virtuous (and you WILL "celebrate" it if you want to keep your job), etc. So even as Christians struggle with the Church falling apart, many of us unchurched also perceive society to be falling apart and realize there are going to be consequences for it, that in fact those consequences are already manifesting themselves. They may perceive that the traditions being discarded were the threads holding civilization together. They see some members of that society saying the "answer" is to cut even more of those threads. But then they may see Christians pointing out that the reason for the great unraveling is that the threads were severed in the first place.
I suspect some/many will gravitate toward that port in the storm as the storm grows worse around us.
From The Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Church's ultimate trial
675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The Supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in the place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
676 The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism..
677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fuifilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.
Sethu, thanks.
I've begun reading it. It's amazing. BTW Tyconius was very influencial. He influenced Augustine of Hippo for one.
This was an excellent read! Thanks for sharing. This was the best pry for me. Well worth the cost of admission...
“For Tyconius, it is the new Israel who must depart on her new Exodus. The true Church herself will effect the great apostasy as a way of salvation[38] from her enemies. In a real sense, the true Church will force the apostasy into the light, for the body of the devil, present in the false brothers inhabiting the Church, is already, and always has been, apostate. That fact has merely been concealed.”
I believe the untruth of the extra special spiritual position and authority of the Bishop of Rome is a long ago lie planted in the church by the Father of Lies now ripening that will end in disaster for the Catholic Church for that non-negotiable lie is foundational to the Roman church. The pope who is supposedly the special unique vicar of Christ will become a false “angel of light” and perhaps already is.
"He who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves" (Luke 22:26). . . . So, that means he gets the extra-bedazzled tiara, right?
To read the first few pages of Karl Adam's Roots of the Reformation gives some perspective on just how low those entrusted with the papal office can sink and have sunk. From the full embrace of worldly power, to a complete lack of faith, to secret concubines, to pagan idols supplanting the holy elements in sacred spaces. By all accounts the Church in the West should never have survived quite so long as this, if abuse of truth was the indicator of impending collapse. Francis is careful not to undermine his credibility with official distortions of teaching, but still, we have endured stronger contradiction and scandal. I'm not justifying. It's bad. But I am going to wait and see. It could be the death throes of the specter of the Council that has robbed the Church of its intended Spirit these last fifty years.
So I think I heard Peter Kreeft talking about the popes with “suspect morality”, Borgia example I think. His comment, somewhat in defence of the papacy, “at least, thank God, they did not change teaching”. So now we have someone who has changed teaching. Worse?
I see the problem in the "pastoral" approach. He attempts to make as much concession as possible toward being "welcoming" that he allows for the appearance of changed teaching. He rejects being a sign of contradiction toward serious error and sin out of what seems to be a naive compassion but many people suspect is sinister. No official teaching has been changed and the document does address constant Catholic teaching about marriage, sex, etc.. It also shores up against a lot of possibilities for abuse for blessing saying it can't look like a ceremony or draw parallels to marriage etc. But the problem is it doesn't seem to give a satisfactory answer as to why it is bending over backwards to make sure that the possibility for this blessing exists. The answer is it is a response to what has already been happening in Germany with efforts to recognize gay unions within the Church. But approaching a refusal from this posture is confusing. Remember when Pope John Paul II publicly scolded the priest supporting a heretical presentation of liberation theology in South America? That looked like love to me. This looks like dereliction.
Honorius I and John XXII both changed teaching. John retracted on his deathbed and Honorius' change was rejected after his death (his 'change' may have actually have been in part a misunderstanding due to a translation issue and so was not well thought out).
This history demonstrates this is a rare situation which has been dealt with before.
Just an honest question: when they changed teaching, did it substantially affect practice?
No. Honorius' change toward monophysitism was eccentric and convinced no one. John XXII's change brought massive opposition, because it sabotaged the comfort of the intercession of saints, especially the prospect of becoming one upon death.
It was a different world than ours'. We know practice will be affected this time. Still, from a doctrinal view this is not new.
Thanks.
Hi Rod. Haven't read the whole post yet (I will, right after I write this), but I need to say something. You keep saying that "non catholic Christians cannot rejoice because the catholic church is the mother church of the west". Of course no sane Christian can rejoice in no way, shape or form. But. But the western church, for a thousand years, has been intertwined with a story of empire and persecution. The book "the formation of a persecuting society" by R I Moore is a great resource on the deeper layers this. His main point is that persecution, inquisition, crusades etc was much less a genuine religious phenomenon, and rather a continuation of the tribal politics and mores of western societies through their newly acquired institution, the catholic church. (BTW, everyone in the eastern Mediterranean, Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim, finds this painfully obvious.) As I assume you know, many major differences from the orthodox were introduced after the schism, as means of division and social engineering (eg the disastrous policy of celibate clergy to discontinue the lines of village priests etc). Don't get me wrong, I'm not just plainly hating on catholics. As orthodox we know many sincere catholic brothers and sisters who try their best to live out the faith. However, most of us don't see catholicism of 50 or 100 years ago simply a "sister church". What is happening now is just the logical conclusion of the catholic church becoming a major political institution in the west. We are sad, and it is a bad thing what happened - but this could be the way for (yet more) catholics to study more carefully their own traditions and exactly what they subscribe to.
Some people will take this as an excuse for "grave depravity", however it is hard to believe that this kind of people would practice chastity and repentance if it wasn't for this development... After all, if they take the position of the catholic church seriously, they should be still troubled.
PS: yes, it is an attempt to normalize homosexuality, but in case anyone hadn't noticed, it is hypernormalized all over the west already...
Take it down from the level of geopolitics, or even theological debate, and you will see fellow Christians who are suffering. That's what I care about. And I would add that even if an Orthodox Christian doesn't care about that, if he thinks that the Catholics are getting what they deserve for their errors, that Orthodox should STILL be alarmed and grieved over this, because if the Catholic Church falls, all of us Christians living in the West are going to be in much worse trouble. The situation would be similar if one were a Catholic or a Protestant living in Russia: you might be tempted to think that if the Russian Orthodox Church capitulated to the Sexual Revolution, it was the Church's fault for this or that -- but your own attempts to live faithfully in the face of this Revolution would be immensely worsened.
None of us live in a vacuum. What Francis is doing strengthens with Archbishop Elpidophoros seeks to do with the Greek church in America. Thank God we Orthodox don't have a pope, but still, the Elpidophorosites, and the Fordham Orthodox, will draw strength from Francis's move, and contend that we Orthodox must not fall behind the times.
Excuse the errors in that post, and excuse the clunky word "Elpidophorosites." Maybe we can call them "Phorries". ;)
Well, I'm sure we (orthodox) are also capable of some very silly things too. The name you name is a great example. No dispute there.
Ha! That's uncomfortably close to "furries".
I'm one of the house Protestants who was shaken but not surprised by what happened yesterday. We all knew it was coming.
We all know there needs to be an ecumenism of orthodoxy, as others have called it, but several things stand in the way as I see it: the Catholic refusal to acknowledge the primacy of Scripture over Magisterium, to grant that we Protestants have a valid Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and to acknowledge that our clergy are legitimate. How these are overcome, I can't imagine.
I confess I have had an inadequate understanding of the Catholic view of the Magisterium and of the Papacy, and when a decade ago, "Who Am I to Judge?" Bergoglio became Pope, I expected that if I lived to see what I have lived to see, the world's faithful Catholics would be shattered and that would be that. I'm delighted that it hasn't been so, that instead, the Pope's destructiveness seems to have thickened the grit of Catholics who love the Church and want to preserve it.
I'd be grateful if theologically educated, faithful Catholics would teach me about this. Sedevacantism. Fascinating, but how would it happen? What would the leadership of Benedict XVI.'s envisioned Marine - like Church be?
Well, neither the Catholic Church nor the Orthodox churches can give you want you want regarding primacy of Scripture, because we are not Protestant. We also can't give you what you want regarding the Eucharist, not because we are being mean about it, but because we really do believe that genuine apostolicity must be present for the sacrament of the Eucharist to be real. Many Protestants -- Methodists and Baptists, say -- believe that the Eucharist is merely a symbol. Others -- Lutherans, and some Anglicans -- say no, there is something mystical there, something like what the Catholics and the Orthodox mean by "real presence." I'm not completely sure how Orthodoxy would answer this (many Orthodox deny the validity of Catholic orders), but in "Dominus Jesus," BXVI explained what constitutes a "church". He was speaking in strictly theological terms, and tried to make it clear that he didn't intend disrespect to Protestant worshiping communities. It can't be done that what Catholics and Orthodox see as lacking in Protestant churches can be conjured by fiat, any more than the Protestant (and Orthodox) objections to the papacy can be wished away. We will just have to learn to live in peace despite our differences. We can do this! I think Orthodoxy is the most true expression of Christianity, but I'm not angry about it, and don't feel hard towards my Catholic, Protestant, and Near Eastern brothers and sisters in Christ.
I understand. But I've just come from a Catholic YouTube channel in which a commentator referred to non Catholic believers as "other 'christians'." This doesn't sit well, and I'm sure you understand that it couldn't.
For what it's worth, I think that there is a lot of filial regard, and a significant amount of love, between Christian laity of all communions.
Want to hear something funny? Did you read Eve yesterday morning on how she's staying a Catholic? I did. I've been taking instruction at the local Greek Orthodox church, but it's Christmas, you know? And then I read Eve and I thought, I can stick it out, I can stay and fight (whatever that means). And then Francis threw his hand grenade. I still don't know. All in four hours. What I do know is that I'm as mad as hell and getting madder and baby it's righteous wrath. For what it's worth.
I'm a famously bad Catholic, but I'm staying—not for this jackass pseudo-pope, but for my grandparents, and for the disposition of my own soul and my own sense of peace. I can't actually imagine the pastor at the church I (intermittently) attend blessing a same-sex couple. It's a small, family-oriented parish. There are new catechumens every year. A few women wear veils. If there's a future schism, this church will be on the right side of things.
I console myself with knowing that there have been countless other sinful, apostate popes: warmongers, political manipulators, shedders of blood.
I'm staying too. I can't imagine learning all new rituals and having to figure out a new belief system that wasn't rooted in Catholicism. And what would I give up in the bargain? Confession as sacrament, adoration of Mary, transubstantiation? Would I have to take scripture, other than the gospels, literally? Would I have to learn a new language as difficult as Greek? Should I really give these beliefs up because the Pope puts a welcome mat out to the gays? I know I'm in the minority here, but as a sinner who has received church blessings, I believe that the Catholic church's mission is universal. And blessings shouldn't be withheld due to sin. If we do that, who gets blessed? We can't turn our back on fellow humans -- no matter how depraved.
A general blessing to any given individual with any given sin would be just fine and would be a call toward repentance. But blessing two people who are linked by a sinful relationship is not a call toward repentance.
All the good things you mention rest on us knowing something about truth. How could the idea of sacrament, transubstantiation, or anything else Catholic be meaningful if it wasn't true? Letting go of truth is a road to nowhere. And if the truth about sin isn't true, why not just give in to every sin every time? We know that wouldn't work.
That said, plenty of people care about people hurting in various ways. I have people I am mourning their struggles and difficulties (transgenderism problems in friends and extended family.) By human hand it looks like there is no way out, given the rejection of reason in our culture. But God can do it. I have seen people change, but it is God stirring their hearts. I imagine chastity is the same way, impossible for some but with God.
Well, for the record, Orthodoxy has the real presence in the Eucharist (even Catholicism acknowledges that), we venerate Mary as much as Catholics do, and of course we have confession. Do as you will, but just be aware that Orthodoxy is not Protestantism. And most Orthodox churches in the US worship in English.
Ted, I hope you stay. I am counting on good people being there in the pews out there for solidarity. I'm staying at least until it goes over the line and/or the Church splits, after which point I would still stay but probably take a multi parish approach for educating the kids. As things stand now, if I could just teach them this is an Anti Pope in a way that would be clearer. But it's harder to explain that this Pope is ambiguous and mendacious, but carefully within the lines. Same as the "chair of Peter is empty" argument. It's all but to that point, but we aren't quite there.
I appreciate your insight that this is just politics, and that this comes right on the heels of press about the guilty rulings in the financial scandal.
You are old enough, smart enough, and have seen enough that middle aged and younger people could look up to you. Can you mentor anyone in your parish? You might be a mentor just by showing up and saying your prayers. People need good examples of everyday Christian life. If it's hopeless, can you parish shop so you can live your life in a good way in a parish that is alive? Don't discount the value to others of being old and wise in a world where too many are old and foolish.
This is overwhelming. My favorite Gospel verse is, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man". I can't even mentor myself. As far as a role model, "Don't be like Ted" is as far as I get. But it's much appreciated.
It may be shallow, but shallowness is one of my finest qualities: compare this Pope's countenance with those of JPII and BXVI.
Nasty little man.
I think the fix was in somehow. Shortly after his election, I was talking with my extremely Catholic doctor ( 5 1/2 years of seminary ) about it. He got this smug look on his face.
"I knew it was going to be Bergoglio. I had a bet on him."
It starts with bingo, Theodore, and ends in the miry pit of degradation.
"Deserve's got nothing to do with it", as the man said. I absolutely do not mean or believe that "they got what they deserve", and I don't believe I "deserve" better.
As for the geopolitics... Very respectfully, there is a very simple explanation for a series of many significant macro events (some of them currently ongoing), and it is factually intertwined with church history...
My point is that we can't compartmentalize. You cannot be a comme-il-faut and respectable-looking Christian on one side, while continuing very bad, bloody things on the other side. God will not allow it, the rebuke to the outward clean chalice etc. And this doesn't apply only to catholics obviously, it applies to everyone.
For example, you spoke earlier about how bad it is that the Russian church sacralized war. I happen to agree with you on that. Were you appalled when no western church leader protested when Merkel and other western political leaders confessed publicly that the Minsk accords were meant to buy time to arm Ukraine? With love to my western Christian brethren, this polite "blessing of war by omission/non-interference to politics" is no better than the militaristic stance of the Russian church...
I don't think the two situations are really comparable. I don't expect Western church leaders (or Eastern ones!) to comment on every political or foreign policy move. It's just that Moscow has directly activated the Russian church to support its foreign policy, in ways that don't really happen in the West. I don't think that most Westerners, much less Western church leaders, even know what Merkel admitted. More's the pity! We have been lied to by our leaders, again. Still, I don't expect the leadership of Western churches to weigh in on that, any more than I would expect the Patriarch of Moscow to issue a formal statement every time the Kremlin does something abroad.
Anyway, of course all churches -- Catho, Prot, Ortho -- are caught up in the world, and thrive and/or suffer because of things that happen in the world. I think it has been a long decline for Catholicism in the West since the French Revolution. And for Western Protestantism since the 19th century. World War I was the mortal stroke for Christendom. Can Christianity survive without Christendom? We shall see.
There's a big world outside the West, though
Of course it can. It did before. Its survival is a supernatural thing. Christ's Church will serve its role in world affairs according to prophesy and things will take their course.
Perhaps one has a little green village like the Shire. Perhaps one has a great city like Minis Tirith. Perhaps the latter's king is expected, but while the great city awaits it guards the borders of the green village and other realms. Of course, in time this city has Denethor - apostate steward.
So perhaps one has a little congregation - Orthodoxy. And perhaps one has a great congregation - one that is true - Roman Catholicism. This one has guarded the West and, through this, the East. And now this one has an apostate steward - Francis.
Maranatha!
Re: You must know that we are at war.
This is not war. If you want war look to Ukraine or Gaza, That is war: death and destruction, the real deal. This is a kerfluffle with people hissing and spitting at each other. Words have meanings and all that.
Re: The Mesopotamian Ishtar, the beautiful goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex, was sometimes represented with a beard to emphasize her more bellicose side.
And Athena was shown in men's armor complete with helmet. In some myths (including in the Odyssey) she appears to people disguised as a man. Didn't make her the Greek trans goddess. For that matter the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, a real person not a myth, was said to have worn a false beard to emphasize her authority, the beard being a prop of pharaohs just like the crook and flail. But she wasn't the "trans pharaoh". We shouldn't read modern things into ancient cultures that are very alien to ours.
“I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too […]”
Clear evidence Elizabeth I was a “two-spirit.”
That said—and I get your point—you’re taking the Ishtar thing out of context. There is the whole notion of transgressive acts as sacred rites. Were these acts a mere costume party, or more like New Year’s Eve at a San Francisco sex club?
The two sexes are not separate species. There's a huge amount of overlap, called "common humanity" All of us have a share in traits more associated with the other sex.
In a Babylonian context Ishtar's "sacred prostitution" was not transgressive: it was the norm for that time and place, rather like torture and slavery in eras past. In the larger sense that does not mean we should be down with such things today when we have good reason to be wiser, but we also shouldn't apply anachronistic moral standards to the past-- leave that to the Left fleeing to their fainting couches over Founding Fathers who owned slaves and the like.
Do you seriously mean to tell me that the Israelites and their God (our God) were not disgusted by the religious practices of other peoples of the region?
Well, I replied to this with a fairly long comment, which seems have ended up in the Land of Lost Things (while another comment below duplicated-- strange are the ways of the Internet). Basically just saying you can't object to the ridiculous anachronistic moral fainting spells on the Left while indulging in the same.
And for the record, of course I don't agree with temple prostitution!
I am Anglican in the ACNA. I did not go through the split but found my parish as a safe haven in hard times in my life. I did grow up Methodist but left before the split for Anglicanism. I feel sorry and sad for those Catholics put in this shape. I have heard stories and seen the hurt and loss from things like this.
I have also found a safe haven in the ACNA, coming from a Baptist, Methodist and Independent church background. We have moved a lot due to the military, hence the different denominations in different places. We just moved for retirement and began looking for a new church. It is remarkable that what we found in most churches in a rather conservative part of the country was either moralistic therapeutic deism or acceptance of sexual immorality, with no place for repentance and obedience to Biblical teaching. The liturgy and willingness of the breakaway Anglican communion to adhere to orthodox Christian belief has led many from varying denominational backgrounds, including Roman Catholicism, to our Anglican parish. We are grateful to God to have found this community of believers standing up for Truth.
Our Anglican parish has many Presbyterians.
Sadly I have seen MTD taking over in even many devout believers lives.
We Anglican {ACNA} and have found a safe haven as well. Our former pastor, in a mainline denomination, started preaching Marxism the summer of Floyd. We have a daughter who is Catholic so we are praying she will be strong in her faith and not loose her way in this.
Oh how I wish we had the ACNA over here. I’ve ended up at an Irish Presbyterian church as I just don’t trust the CoE/CoI leadership to hold the course, but I do miss the liturgical worship.
For the last 50+ years, the would-be deconstructors of Catholicism have used dishonestly driven a wedge home by claiming they merely want to change the 'pastoral' approach to existing doctrine, not to change doctrine.
They really are like the man who, long-married to Ann, states that he will now henceforth live with Beth, but not seek a divorce. Technically, he is still married to Ann. Behold! - only his approach to how he lives his marriage has changed.
It's not just the wickedness and the phoniness, though it is wicked and phony. It doesn't make any sense, it's incoherent.
Say it again: for the past 50 years good religious people have been trying to square the circle with NFP and putting their marriages, their mental health, and in the case of the women, their physical health on the line. And along comes Bergoglio. Now, either he's saying, "Suckers, the joke's on you", or he doesn't care that yesterday MAKES NO EFFING SENSE, just like the rest of the Vatican II Church.
The Vatican Declaration will be seen historically as the point the schism began. In future, faithful Catholics will look on from the pews while Papally-anointed apostate-deities parade around the altar in theatric regalia in celebration of being blessed before those second-class Catholics in the pews. Over time faithful Catholics will retreat to practice the faith alone or in secret groups. What remains of the Church will be decaying churches, few followers populating mass and other parish related events - including Catholic schools. Francis declaration has now imploded Catholicism. Its just a matter of time before St Peters becomes a place serving only as an ornate backdrop to where DJs will be featured in European Electronic music festivals.
You are right. Novus Ordo Catholicism is moribund, and will follow mainline Protestantism to a place of complete irrelevance as people abandon it in droves.
When the older Catholics die off, I don't see many replacements in the pews. The Novus Ordo church will get into the real estate business and sell off properties so what's left of the clergy can live comfortably in their death throes.
What'd the stats on Latin Mass usage in the global South? That's the future of the Church, at least for the next few generations (post no bills on the more distant future). Catholicism will rise or fall on well it does in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia (e.g., the Philippines)
Do you mean sort of like this? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w9B_9YeVhsw
I pray that you, like Rod, are blowing this out of proportion.
The church schisms over core beliefs: Was Jesus real? Was he the son of God? Did he die and resurrect? Was Mary his mother?
The definition of a blessing is note a core belief.
But this has to do with the definition of sin -- and in the case of human sexuality, it has to do with basic Christian anthropology. This is not a minor matter.
Correct. The Anglican schism was over the definition of marriage. So is this, broadly speaking.
the Church is now effectively endorsing same sex unions. This implodes previous Catholic teaching on: premarital sex, masturbation, marriage, and celibacy. The Church now has no credibility on matters related to sexuality, has no authority to require confession of sexual sin, cannot credibly require unions be between men and women, and cannot teach sexual morality in Catholic schools. Catholic youth will be adrift in lack of clarity, Catholic elders will see their congregations riven by division over special blessings for new theology Catholics. Its a schism.
There have been serious dust-ups before over points of praxis. East and West once had a huge fracas over whether the Eucharistic bread should be leavened or unleavened.
See also 1 Kings 15:13 / 2 Chronicles 15:16 "Even Maacah, his mother, King Asa removed from being queen mother because she had made a detestable image for Asherah. Asa cut down her image, crushed it, and burned it at the brook Kidron."
There's a theory that this "detestable image" is something sexually obscene. Sounds like the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of a Pride Parade.
I wonder if the apostate church is the Great Whore of Babylon as prophesied in Revelations 17?
As painful as these challenging times are, I continually remind myself that I can't do anything about what's happening in Rome. There are still many good and faithful shepherds in the Church who can lead me to heaven but it's my own holiness that will open the gate. Father Zuhlsdorf urges us now more than ever to get our spiritual house in order.
Start making thorough and honest examinations of conscience.
Start making reparation for wrongs and sins.
Undertake sincerely to forgive those who have harmed you.
Do penances.
Seek to purify memories.
Perform corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
Dedicate some time each day to prayer, especially the Rosary.
Attend to the duties of your state in life.
Read Scripture and review your catechism.
Pray for priests and bishops.
Go to confession regularly.
Receive Communion only in the state of grace.
Well said!
Excellent!
I don't think you can easily convince people who are of the "but nothing has changed in substance" view, no matter what you say, because it is precisely to that view that this strategy is directed. So it finds its mark in such people, almost perfectly, down to the last of them. In that sense, it is a truly elegant, intelligent strategy given the specific dynamics of how Catholicism works.
What it recognizes, as a strategy, is that doctrine is one thing and praxis/optics/"facts-on-the-ground" are another. The latter doesn't formally change the former, which is the key advantage, in strategic terms, of focusing the strategy on the latter ... it defuses criticism because the former remains untouched. And in the meantime facts on the ground, practices, optics become commonly and widely accepted over 5, 10, 20 years if need be. And it's at that point that the true robustness of the strategy reveals itself in its recognition of the fact that once you have won the facts-on-the-ground/praxis/optics arena and established that as virtually unchangeable in the eyes of the many, the doctrinal change that logically follows from it is no longer a difficult change to make, and is in fact rather easily done. Not without dissent, mind you ... there will always be dissent. But with a manageably low level of dissent at the time in the future when the doctrine is addressed, once the facts on the ground have laid the foundations for that to happen.
Again, an elegant, long-term strategy.
No strategy is without risk, of course. The risk here, as with any long-term strategy, is one of reversal. That is, a reversal of power at the center in Rome could result in this change in praxis being rolled back, at which point the strategy is at best suspended. And it's that risk that the opponents today are hanging their hat on -- namely that once the odious current Pope has departed this life, this proclamation will be sunsetted, and things will return to the status-quo-ante in terms of praxis. That, too, is a high-risk approach, but, alas, when one is without power it is likely the best one can do.
One should take care, I think, however, to discern carefully whether one is engaging in "hope" or merely "cope". They can look very similar, but they are not the same.
From my perspective, as someone who has not been Catholic since 2000 but who grew up in the Church and whose family is mostly still there (practicing or cultural), I think it's increasingly unimaginable how the "official" Catholic Church doesn't change its praxis on same sex couples during the coming decades, and that this is simply the first step in that process. I don't see any other outcome, long-term, that is likely.
So all of us reading your blog , Rod Dreher , should take a start ; pray for our church and PRAY for each other , pray to God for Salvation and Truth. Pray hard. Merry Christmas 🎄.
A very VERY minor point. Mottram is not exactly a nitwit. One of the things that saves Brideshead from its own false rhetoric is Waugh's care in showing both grace and goodness, as well as weakness and evil, in all the characters. Julia is careful to number the horrible Mrs. Muspratt, Bridey's fatuous fiancee, among those whose prayers may have saved her from setting up a rival good to God's (which is precisely what Francis is doing). Mottram says, among other things, that a man needs a religion, that he can't have two religions in one house, and that he never saw any good come of divorce. And he is a member of the Churchillian mafia. For what it's worth.
Mottram is often steered into sounding stupid by things Cordelia tells him. By the way, I believe Mottram was patterned after Lord Beaverbrook.
With Brendan Bracken sauce.
Did you listen to NPR this morning? Utterly appalling and completely predictable.
I'm taking a deep breath before going on X.
Heard something on NPR yesterday while driving. The host was utterly clueless about Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, while the guest did make a rather tortured distinction between blessing "the couple" and blessing "the (same-sex) union". The framing of the story, however, was that gay couples would continue to feel "unwelcome" in the Church until, well, you know what's next.
What infuriates me is the falseness. I know innumerable ex-Catholics who make it sound as if they would have stuck around if only they could have had gay marriage, female priests, and abortion. That church exists! It's the Episcopalians, and as we all know it's dying, but none of these ex-Catholics can bestir themselves on Sunday mornings to go there.
Hell, a couple months ago I attended a funeral at an LGBT-obsessed UCC church. Tranny flags, a gender-neutral rewrite of the Lord's Prayer, a lady minister who introduced herself by giving her pronouns, the whole shmeer...and almost nobody was there.
I'm really sick of these ex-Catholics who can't get over some long-dead nun who didn't affirm their feelings in math class back in 1979. They've won everything else, and it's petty triumphalism to try to claim it all.
I've had classmates from the 70's talk about how tough the nuns were.......ridiculous. In my case, WE abused THEM. Some of the lay teachers were the cruel psychos.
In their partial defense, there were some rough brothers and nuns well into the 1980s who were actually abusive, and not just in the "tough love" sense. I'm aware of one Catholic school where one of the Jesuit brothers got a sadistic pleasure in making kids do menial labor for extremely minor infractions, and he was later found to possess a huge cache of videos in which adult men abuse adolescent and teenage boys.
In the 1950s a nun once thrashed my mother so violently, apparently for nothing, that my grandmother, a gentle woman for whom the nuns were always right, physically confronted the nun and threatened to punch her into next week if she ever left my mom's fingers black and blue again. She has tolerated all of her other kids being disciplined, but this time it was way over the line, and she put my mom in public school instead.
I also know kids who were getting physically beaten by the brothers at a private Jesuit high school in the Philadelphia area as recently as the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In the 1980s, I knew a lovely young nun who left the convent and abjured her vows, becoming a lay Catholic again, because other, older, nasty, cruel nuns harassed her and made her life miserable simply because the students at their elementary school actually liked her.
I'm a cradle Catholic. I've seen terrible behavior by priests and nuns. I can totally understand why people would leave and even despise the church due to abuse during formative or vulnerable times in their lives.
That said, most of my Gen X cohort say they left the Catholic Church simply because it...wasn't liberal. But their subsequent actions, given a wealth of progressive church options out there, make clear that they just don't want to attend any church at all. Their true religion seems to be holding a grudge against their childhood Catholicism.
Most people leave the Catholic Church because they cannot submit to an authority higher than themselves. They may give all kinds of reasons as to why they left, but as Bishop Sheen would ask, "What is the real reason you left?"
Nicely said.
I often wonder, just on a human level, do they really think they can replace the people who are currently coming to Mass with people who would come to Mass if only the teachings were different? I don't think there's any precedent in human history that would make one believe such a thing.
One only has to look at what happened to the episcopal church; we are scheduled for demise in 20-30.