First, a comment in repsonse to Ilibcc’s item below, the comments box doesn’t seem to be working that well at all:
Just lurve the medja on this. They don’t give a damn about the Church and as for Popes JohnPaul and Bendict XVI, well, downright nasty critters they are refusing marriage of homosexuals, women priests, stressing to Africans, in view of AIDS, exercise chastity and it is working rather well apparently. Benedict about to insist on Latin as the liturgical language of the Church, that the Church is not a function of dah commoonity and so on.They pay attention to, Ratzinger was in the past a `liberal’. No, he was a fine scholar and theologian,still is, rather a different thing altogether. This morning’s effort of dah medja, zeroing in on the Pope’s declaration of `dialogue’ with other denominations and other beliefs - understandable, considering for example the persecution of Christians by Muslims in various countries , it is not only muslims in Sudan massacring christians but, epriodically, those in Aceh of Indonesia also. Understandable, the Pope wishing to make inroads against Muslims. Now, if the Church would just roll over on such matters and a rather long list of other leftoid tissues, why, the Church would be dead tomorrow, and, yea,(if) it came to pass, leftoids would rejoice and clap their hands.
Since on the subject, something more:
Not this time, for Cardinal George Pell, the call to the seat of Peter, but he is young and who can tell,a maybe. To observe, however, there are some very fine apostolic bishops, some African. the Archbishop of Sudan is one of them, who, in the face of the Islamic persecution and mass murder of Christians, has had to act from faith alone and bear apostolic witness and conduct his responsibities accordingly. It was Cardinal Ratzinger who was approached, a fine scholar and theologian of the distinguished school of theology of The University of Tubingen until he was removed to the Vatican to work no less diligently under Pope John Paul II. His appointment as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was a good decision, beacause of his background as a theologian , as well as his transparent piety and devotion and yet, a robust, principalled and forthright gentleman. The duration of Wotjla’s appointment to the seat of Peter, ensured the time and conitunity needed to sort through what, in the 80’s seemded to be the nadir of the Church in the wake of Vatican II, and it presented Ratzinger with the time to gain the experience which has equipped him for his new appointment, and one had a view he would be elected Pope.As I watched some of the Black Mass, though they were read, with the Cardinal presiding, I became convinced we were watching the successor to Peter and a meritorious succession it is, a most worthy choice it is.
There is a similarity between Pope John Paul and Benedict the XVI, as Ratzinger’s choice name hints, their work as priests of the Church anchored in well founded devotion and contemplation. Pope John’s best tracts reflected that. Ratzinger differs in delivering a scholarly crispness to his words, as his sermon, not eulogy, during the mass for the late Pope demonstrated. I draw attention to, for example, his treatment of some pericopes from the Gospel of John,they are informed but not overlaid by his scholarship, and are meditative and contemplative.
Vatican II was the excuse, not the justification for the schisms and disturbances within the Church which have dominated ecclesiastical affairs for some decades now , it was a Pastoral Council. The aim was to draw out the ground of the Church, of the faith of each Christian, as production of the Holy Spirit, which is thus the sacred prinicipal of unity , and not an organistic notion of unity of man who may or may not be a Christian, that the liturgy of the Church is glorification , is praise of the Trinity, is an act of faith of the Christian in response to the Trinity and a communicatio with the Trinity, epitomised in the mass, the distinction and relation between clergy and laity, the chruch manifests the Trinity only by being transparent to the Trinity, and only in trasparency to the Trinity does the church fulfill its mission. Liturgy, epistemologically informs and guides the Christian as to the terms of faith. The Council was not about what schismatics asserted it to be, according to socialists a declaration of the authority of the `community’ over creed, liturgy, and other matters against apostolic authority, and a reversion to the otherwise nonsensical notion of the original authentic Chrch, which is an illustration of how many have been infected by Rousseau’s rubbish. According to the the Tridentine movement, of which Archbishop Lefevbre became a notorious leader with the denouement his direct challenge and threatened usurpation of Pope John Paul II, the Church stops with the Council of Trent and, Vatican II is a gross defection from the creed and tradition of the Church. Both sides were wrong, and stubborn and vile with it. In this respect, it was the left who wrough the most damage.
The tridentine movement, no matter that such formidable bishops as Lefevbre lead it, and to be sure, it attracted devout,earnest young men to seminaries , was not as broadly based as the left and, decisively, regular Metropolitan Diocesan Bishops. Liturgy was debased, no iffs nor butsd about it, reduced, from Cathedral to Parish Church, to a juvenile, vulgar act of self indulgence and adulation. Socialism, summed up in that stinking heap of rubbish, `pastoral care’ as a mandatory requirment of studies for clergy, a fusion of the rubbbish of siociology, pyschology pegged to that juvenile delinquent, Rousseau, was asserted as the content of the creed and the goal of faith, to which has been added the rubbish of environemental and the mystoguogy of those po potian commies the greens. Leftoids in the Church mounted a chalenge against apostolic authroity and the tradiotns of the Church, with fulsome support of rahter a large number of Bishops in the West, indeed, entering into the spirit of revolt rahter enthusiastically, and displauying their good marxist credentials in public for good measure.As for theological content and meditation, what theological content? The sermon was, for example, reduced from theological exposition to Dick and Dora mush resting on nothing much more than sentiments and feelings. The debasment of liturgy was linked to the downright bullshit of, `recovering the original authentic church’, which was, pervasive in leftoid dumbed down clerical training courses ostentatiously , euphemistically, tagged a degree. One upshot this was manifest in arhtiecture, for its sheer ugliness. While Bishops gutted fine cathedrals and parish churches, throwing onto rubbish dumps to exquisite vestments, art work, chalices, candleabrae and so on, they built new edifices which can be likened to, outdoor dunnies for the general public. A Melbourne firm of architects commented in a local rag, aesthetic merits and turning on the liturgical function of churches, was none existent. A senior partner added, clergy lost in woolly notions ordered them and paid up, they were cheap to build, that it sounds unpleasant but we did it because we made rather good profits out of them, the inference was unmistakeable, once in your life time fools knock on your door throwing away good money on rubbish. In short, the Chruch had been reduced to a swamp, a stinking heap of dung. Into that morass Pope John Paul II stepped in, and cleaning it up has been long, difficult, and unpleasant business and it is still not finished. Unpleasant, because Pope John being quitre apostolic was not immune to the effects of that descent, the strife, the unhappiness, the viciousness of the fighting, the lefotids record in the church is as rotten as it is in secular affairs, utterly ruinous. Not a few very apostolic priests were, effectively, booted out of parishes and dioceses, a fitting testmament to Bishops who, to be blunt, should never have been elevated. That, all that, is what the Pope and Ratzinger and other Cardinals have had to sort out, and still are sorting it out. That Benedict the XVI has made an approving mention of Vatican II but, as a pointed citation of the Council, that council certainly did not entertain what socialist clergy made of the decisions of that Council, and statements made by both Popes Leo and then Pius XII also make that rather plain.
Neither Popes nor Council entertained the demolition job on liturgy , creed and tradition ,diocesan clegy in Western countries so blythely set themsleves to accomplish. In the 80’s the Church was at its lowest ebb. With continuity secured by the election of Ratzinger, those unhappy times will in due time be no more than a footnote in ecclestical history books, the scholar will find it incomprehensible that supposedly apostolic clergy and supposedly christain men and women could be so callous, ugly, barbaric, savage. No wonder leftoids pretending to be christians are upset, their salad days are finished,over, past, history, dust and ashes, with another worthy successor to Peter picking up the yoke and steadfastly carrying it.