Boinkie's Blog

Lots of the stuff I read about the US elites ridiculing ordinary folks backfired and the result was not that they gave in (as they did again and again in the past) but that they elected Trump.

But the bigger question is will the Christian churches be persuaded by their enemies to become PC.
Ross Douthart's article is chilling.

First, Ivereigh’s insistence on the total clarity of “Amoris” and the Holy Spirit-driven theological consensus it allegedly reflects seems to be shared by relatively few ecclesiastics – which is why the overwhelming episcopal response to the cardinals’ questions, their dubia, has been a circumspect silence rather than a rush to rally ‘round the pope. It may be that “Amoris” means exactly what Ivereigh says it means – a “yes” to communion for the remarried confined to extremely rare circumstances, basically, if I’m reading his interpretation right.

But the text (very obviously and deliberately) doesn’t just come out and say that, and, pace Ivereigh and many others in the papal inner circle, the two synods decidedly did not either.

Which is why we can have equally-reasonable-seeming interpretations of the document that vary by geography and ideology, ranging from the more-liberal-than-Walter Kasper approach in San Diego to the conservative (“dissenting”?) approaches in Poland and Phoenix and Portland and Philadelphia, with more cautiously liberal approaches, à la the pope’s own Argentina, most likely in many places in between.

Now perhaps some sort of organic bottom-up process will eventually sort all these disagreements out; perhaps every bishop who takes the conservative line will pass away and be replaced by a moderate or liberal, and in fifty years perfect consensus will prevail through a purely biological solution.

But more likely Rome will at some point be required to rule more clearly on precisely the issue that Ivereigh asserts is settled, finished, closed, and in need of no further commentary – because until Rome rules, not only surly, noisy lay Catholic scribblers in rich countries (as he, a lay Catholic scribbler from a rich country, describes the pope’s critics) but actual bishops of the church will probably continue treating the questions raised by the dubia as open and debatable, and the answers suggested by the two synods and the papal exhortation as ambiguous in the extreme....

 it is so very obvious that the underlying moral-theological issues in “Amoris Laetitia” are relevant to a host of other controversies, which means that to declare this debate “settled” is to ignore all the other ways it promises to unsettle Catholic discipline and doctrine for many years to come.

Writers like Ivereigh who argue for a basic continuity between (their interpretation of) “Amoris” and the prior papal magisterium tend to be  loath to engage on this point, but the evidence is right in front of us – and not just on sexual ethics, where same-sex couples, polygamists and unmarried straight couples can all reasonably claim that the most liberal interpretation of “Amoris” applies to their situations as well.

There are also implications for Catholic-Protestant intercommunion, where Walter Kasper is busy arguing that Lutherans should be able to receive the Eucharist and where the pope’s own hints suggest agreement.

And there are implications – which I had confess I hadn’t fully contemplated – for how and whether the church opposes the advance of euthanasia, now taking hold in North America and spreading well beyond the terminally ill in parts of once-Catholic Europe.

yes the bishops of eastern Canada will let you receive the last sacraments before you kill yourself and then bury you afterward, out of "compassion".

In other words, thanks in part to the pope and to “Amoris,” we now have two different implicit teachings from two different groups of Catholic bishops on a literal matter of life and death. 

Hmm... the up to date Detroit bishops in Michigan did this when Kavorkian was killing folks, so why not?

They were also the ones behind the dissadent catholic conferences too, come to think of it.

Church vs anti Church?

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Virtue on line has an essay about the latest UK elite ploy to push the anti church agenda: appoint a black Nigerian bishop so he can tell the African bishops to bugger off. (my words, not his).

 He accused his fellow Africans of being the "cause of disagreement even hatred" between fellow Anglicans and conceded that there was no hope or possibility of agreement on human sexuality. On the second point he is dead right; on the first point he is dead wrong. This is not about hatred. Never has been, never will be. It's about Idouw-Fearon's desire that God would approve of anal sex. But you cannot reverse the law of non-contradiction. Either God approves of anal sex or He does not, and please don't wrap this up in the sanctimonious language of 'life-long committed, same-sex' blah blah blah. That's a mythically small group of men and women.

He went on to say that the hatred came from the Southern hemisphere; in particular the former Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen and his leadership role in GAFCON, with Fearon admitting that he and Jensen were once good friends, and when asked about what he thought about GAFCON, opined that it was "not a movement of the Holy Spirit because it is divisive." Really. I personally know Archbishop Jensen and have interviewed him and to say this is absolute nonsense. He is a man of God with few parallels. If the friendship has gone south Idouw-Fearon has no one to blame but himself. This is a movement of the Holy Spirit...

, in one fell swoop he repudiates the Jerusalem Declaration, (not to mention the Windsor Report), he repudiates all those African, Asian and Latin archbishops who signed on to GAFCON and he has the audacity to say that they have nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. Think about that. Here are a group of men and women who are upholding the faith 'once for all delivered' against its western cultured despisers, are being persecuted and killed for their faith by radical Islamists who mock them for going along with Western homosexual attitudes and they watch as their daughters are captured and sold off to Muslim madmen for their pleasure. The $1.2 million dollars the ACO receives from TEC is enough to throw away the faith on sexuality apparently! Thirty pieces of silver looks tiny by comparison.
Fearon said that not all African Christians were against same-sex. "We need to hear from those who subscribe to same-sex and those who don't. Not everybody is against same-sex." Really! Who, Ah yes, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, a province that was bought, paid for and sustained by TEC lo these many years. This is the only African province that has publicly said it would look at same-sex marriage.

there are lots of prophecies, by both Catholic and Protestants,

David Wilkerson forsaw a Catholic schism and that the liberal bishops in the US and Europe will join with protestants and other liberals in these areas to make a NWO church.

Catholic visionaries see a similar break, with the faithul bishops fighting reforming bishops, from Akita to Catherine Emmerich to Leo XIII to Catherine Doherty to Father Gobbi.

the comfort I hold onto is that the Catholic visionaries see that this will be healed by a grass roots cohort, led by those who love Mary (sort of a variation of the times when the Polish, the Filipinos, the Portuguese and even the Brazilian catholics demonstrated to stop tyrannical governments by praying the rosary en  mass).

One reason all of this did not happen in the 1990's, when the plan was for JP2 to resign or die and be replaced by Cardinal Martini who could reform the church, was that JP2 didn't die, and refused to resign.

Then Benedict got in and we had a couple years respite.

But the forces were still there and pressured him to resign.
one wonders if his reputation in the future will resemble that of Pope Celeste, who is a saint according to the church but in hell according to Dante (for shirking his duties when he was overwhelmed by the corrupt opposition).

At this point, I am channeling Malachi Martin, a saintly albeit unstable bipolar and slightly paranoid dissadent well know to those of us who listen to late night conspiracy programs on the radio.

On the other hand, the books Eclipse of the Sun and Father Elijah forsee a similar crisis in faith.

if you haven't read them, you can buy them at Ignatius press, or download them illegally from TPB...

(Yes, I did this so I can have my Text to voice read them on my laptop, but I should say I actually bought them in hardcover and brought most of them here to the Philippines.)

on the other hand, those of us who remain faithful will say our rosaries and hope.

and as long as we keep the faith alive, it will resurrect, for the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Oh yes: Archeology tells me the "gates" of the city were where the courts were, so this means the court system/ governments who do Hell's business will not prevail against the church.

Of course, an alternative scenerio is that the grass roots will arise and the next leader will be another JP2 or Benedict... the problem is getting rid of those in the middle management who have hijacked the church.

That will be hard, but given Brexit and Trump, maybe that will happen.

Or maybe a million Catholics saying the rosary at the  next conclave at Vatican square might pressure the bishops to remember some people think the Pope should be catholic.

There is a minor kerfuffle (including on Drudge but also elsewhere) that the Pope compared "fake news" reports to a fetish of eating excrement.

The kerfuffle is actually an example of what he is talking about, but also an example of the Pope's problem with language in his "off the cuff remarks".

I believe the word he wanted to use was Corprolalia, 

Coprolalia is the medical term used to describe one of the most puzzling and socially stigmatizing symptoms of Tourette Syndrome—the involuntary outburst of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks.

Like the "Who am I to judge" remark, which was not about not judging homosexual acts but about judging a penitent priest who was now trying to live according to God's rule, it will make headlines by those willing to distort the remark and twist it to their own end, instead of putting it in context so that the subject rather than the remark can be discussed: In this case, the negative spin and poor reporting, in the Who am I to judge, the subject if all sin can be repented and forgiven by Christ.

Another smaller kerfuffle is that the guidelines from the Vatican will continue to bar gays living the homosexual lifestyle or supporting the homosexual lifestyle from the seminary.

This was released shortly after another report advised seminaries to weed out those who were "rigid". This could mean what it says: psychological rigidity. But in recent post Vatican II years, it often was the excuse used to throw out the pious who actually prayed and believed, especially in seminaries where a gay subculture was not rooted out.

There has been a major press whiteout about reporting what actually goes on in the homosexual lifestyle, or about the problem of same sex attraction in places of close contact such as seminaries, schools and the military. A person who "approves" of these activities will not make a good priest, any more than a priest who winks at adultary or winks at drug/alcohol abuse, or wife beating, or taking brribes and kickbacks, or abortion.

There is a difference between caring for the sinner, and winking at the sin and being a co-enabler of it.

We docs have to walk this line all the time: I would be wrong not to judge cigarette smoking, or promiscuity, or drug use as wrong. That doesn't mean I don't treat the patient, and then advise him or her how to straighten out their bad health habits.

A gay man in the ministry can become a very holy priest, but given recent history, the church is right to be cautious again.