Thursday, April 14, 2016

"Post-Conciliar" Reformers

Attempting a human, top-down reform.

The Liturgical Reform and the ‘Political’ Message of Vatican II in the Age of a Privatized and Libertarian Culture by Massimo Faggioli

And then there's Anthony Ruff, OSB: Don’t Miss It: Faggioli on Liturgy Reform and the Rest of Vatican II
Perhaps this test case, which comes from me and not Faggioli, helps make the point: Should women be admitted into the sanctuary and be allowed to exercise liturgical ministry? There was a prohibition of this before Vatican II. But now women are acolytes, lectors, commentators, cantors, lay Eucharistic ministers, and so forth.

Let this change be emblematic of the many changed relationships brought about by the council. The move, broadly speaking, is from authoritarian subordination to (at least increased) collaboration and dialogue. The unreformed liturgical practice that overemphasizes clergy over laity, and lay men over lay women (only boys can be servers) made perfect sense in the larger context of authoritarian subordination in other aspects of the church’s life. The church then related to the modern world and secular states in a stance of privileged superiority (or sought to). Same with Catholic truth and other positions – error has no rights and religious liberty is rejected. Ecumenism? Heretics and schismatics are called back to the one true church, which already possesses within itself all the unity intended by the Lord Jesus. True equality between men and women, between husband and wife? No, not really.

So one version of liberalism over another... sounds familiar?

New Icon of Saints Mary of Egypt and Zosimas

Crisis: The Curate’s Egg: A Reflection on Amoris Laetitia by Fr. George W. Rutler

There was a Victorian member of the Royal Academy who boasted that his paintings were the best because they were the biggest. More perceptively, Cicero and Pascal and Madame Recamier and…

Eastern Christian Books: Conciliar Christology

Eastern Christian Books: Conciliar Christology


A question: Is Timothy Pawl an analytic philosopher?

The Papacy Attempting Too Much

Peters focuses on one school of weighing papal documents; he does not think (as I do) that the problem is with the practice of the bishop of Rome frequently promulgating his opinion (regardless of authoritative weight) apparently to the Church Universal. It's a feature of the modern papacy, not present in the first millenium.

The slow decline of the Ordinary Magisterium by Edward N. Peters
I think many in the Church have been slipping into associating the noun “Magisterium” with the adjective “infallible” and assuming that, if some papal/episcopal assertion is not “infallible” then it is not “magisterial”.