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| Listen to those spring birds chirp! |
Karol Wojtyła was the pope reigning at the time of my conversion to the Faith, the pope who appointed terrifying bishops to major episcopal sees and encouraged all manner of liturgical horrors in his own presence. For everyone my age and younger, he was the only pope they had ever known, until his death in 2005. Utterly naïve about the state of the world, and gracious to everyone except those standing up for justice and truth, he entered the next life with the taste of the Koran on his lips.
Today is his feast, of sorts, on the Novus Ordo kalendar. Let me suggest celebrating it with a fast. At the very least, we ought to do some penance for the poor soul of Marco Gusmini.
A reading from the book of Redemptoris Missio:
If we look at today's world, we are struck by many negative factors that can lead to pessimism. But this feeling is unjustified: we have faith in God our Father and Lord, in his goodness and mercy. As the third millennium of the redemption draws near, God is preparing a great springtime for Christianity, and we can already see its first signs. In fact, both in the non-Christian world and in the traditionally Christian world, people are gradually drawing closer to gospel ideals and values, a development which the Church seeks to encourage. Today in fact there is a new consensus among peoples about these values: the rejection of violence and war; respect for the human person and for human rights; the desire for freedom, justice and brotherhood; the surmounting of different forms of racism and nationalism; the affirmation of the dignity and role of women.Responsorial Psalm:
If you disagree with The Infallible Saint Wojtyla and his ilk, why did you convert to the Roman Church?
ReplyDeleteWhat does a bad pontiff have to do with the rightness of the Church and the Faith? The one time he invoked his infallibility—to condemn the ordination of priestesses—he was fully in line with Catholic Tradition.
Delete"What does a bad pontiff have to do with the rightness of the Church and the Faith?"
DeleteA hell of a lot!
@Prior Martin
DeleteBad pontiffs existed from the beginning. That is fact. False excommunications are another fact of life. Possibly, even though I am less hostile to JP II than the trads and less positive than his cult, even false canonizations are another thing we have to deal with (and there are quite a few problematic ones in Chalcedonian Orthodoxy). Otherwise, those "forgotten" saints like Clement of Alexandria and Liberius leave some people in an awkward position if they insist on the absolute infallibility of canonizations.
Besides, this cult of JP II will last 30 years tops.
E. V.,
DeleteLife is much simpler once you realize Papal Infallibility is nothing more than the product of one man's limitless ego.
"Infallibility is nothing more than the product of one man's limitless ego"
DeleteSurely, Prior, you have never occupied the Apostolic See?
Not yet.
DeleteThis post would not go over well in "conservative" Catholic circles!!!
ReplyDeleteNor with many of my acquaintances. I have being watching a constant stream of sentimental gushing about "John Paul the Great" on Facebook all day. I never had an ounce of sentiment about him, just the required filial piety and the hope that his successors would be better at the job than he had proven himself to be.
Deleteand this exemplifies the problem:
Deletehttp://www.catholicgentleman.net/2014/10/20-images-prove-st-john-paul-ii-coolest-saint-ever/
So that's what's considered "cool"? :/
DeleteHow about Moses the Black layin' down some smack?!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fxeMgqHCkPk/U_9nmgcSMoI/AAAAAAAAAgQ/ZdVDloa89sI/s1600/IMG_1584.JPG
Have we really lost all sense of masculinity? Give me the Abyssinian robber turned nonviolent ascetic monk anyday!
Utterly naïve about the state of the world, and gracious to everyone except those standing up for justice and truth, he entered the next life with the taste of the Koran on his lips.
ReplyDeleteThe naivete charge is hard to refute, and Assisi should find no defenders today (but it does). I do think his stand against communism in Poland (and elsewhere) must gain him some partial credit, at least, on truth and justice - communism would probably have collapsed at some point in Eastern Europe, but not so quickly or peacefully as it did without those Nine Days in Poland in 1979.
But the important point today is that Wojtyla and the Wojtylians are now essential forces in the fight to sustain the Church's moral teaching (something JPII was generally steady on) against those who would deconstruct it - and yet so many Wojtylians have yet to realize that it's very difficult to sustain the moral teaching when you've surrendered so much of our worship and devotional tradition.
His stand against communism was surely his finest hour.
DeleteI confess it's become easier for me to admire over the past several months.
DeleteDear Athelstane. His "Theology of the Body" is a virus within the Body of Christ and ABS always thought it extremely weird for a Pope to go on and on publicly, in such detail, about that subject matter.
ReplyDeleteWe do have to accept his canonisation as it was promulgated with an infallible formula.
O, and his caving in on Altar Girls was classical operant conditioning that strengthened the resolve of other dissident/heretical sects within the Church - pertinacity in perversion will eventually be rewarded
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DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete1. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard that TotB will be the greatest legacy of JPII, ready to detonate like a time bomb sometime in the 21st century . . . well, I'd be commissioning my own Pugin recreation on my back forty.
DeleteI give him (some small) credit for attempting an imaginative response to reaffirm traditional Church teaching on sexuality in a world no longer able to comprehend thomistic language - without him and its proto-form, we would not have Humanae Vitae (a document inferior to Casti Connubii in almost every way, but which still barely came out correct, roughly, when it had every reason not to). But my growing sense is that it will, contra Weigel and company, fade into a forgotten footnote of history, in no small part because, like so many of his writings, it is not very comprehensible. And there are many, much worse viruses at work now.
Still, I'm glad the Wojtylians are busy fighting the good fight this month.
2. Altar girls: It *was* a remarkable cave-in, given that he had spent so long resisting it (even in the face of considerable disobedience). And whatever else they lack, progressives generally do not lack in pertinacity. Kasper certainly doesn't.
Getting rid of altar girls is going to be a project like the Battle of the Somme or, more likely, the Hundred Years War. Now that it's here, it has defenders, some of them self -proclaimed "conservatives," who are too often about conserving yesterday's innovations. Witness the wailing and gnashing of teeth that almost always ensues when some brave young pastor decides to phase them out. We had one in Northern Virginia that made the front page of the Washington Post a few years back, complete with fearful soccer moms walking parish parking lot picket lines. And I think we all know about poor Fr. Illo out in Frisco.