Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Weigel's Narrative
First Things: The Ideological Hijacking of Pope St. John XXIII by George Weigel
The Patriarchate of Rome (not the "Church") has its structural issues which have come to light with the sex abuse scandal -- clericalism is still alive and bishops are unable to deal with the challenges confronting the "institutional Church." No council or synod will be able to fix this, as it requires leadership but also collaboration with the laity, and very few Latin bishops have what is required for either. John XXIII, nor have his successors, did not realize that the Church lost to the modern nation-state, and attempts at greater centralization and the fake alternative of fake "synodality" (which is still attempting a top-down solution) will fail. There can be no sustained and effective effort at evangelization until the local Church is revitalized, and this includes a reform of liturgical praxis. No matter how many times Mr. Weigel attempts to turn this failure into a triumphalistic narrative he cannot tell us our "lying eyes" are wrong.
And as those excerpts from Gaudet Mater Ecclesia in the Divine Office make clear, John XXIII knew that that evangelical mission would only meet the needs of the day if it were anchored in the ancient, abiding truths bequeathed to the Church by divine revelation: truths manifested in the life and teaching of the Lord Jesus himself, and developed through the Church’s doctrinal reflection as guided by the Holy Spirit.
To be sure, John XXIII understood that evangelization was not an exercise in logic-chopping; most modern men and women were unlikely to be converted by the proclamation of syllogistic proofs. So the Church needed a contemporary way of expressing ancient truths. But as Pope John insisted in Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, those truths must be expressed “with the same meaning and the same judgment” (in some translations, “with the same meaning and import”). That was a direct quote from St. Vincent of Lerins, a 5th-century monk who wrote an important treatise on what we know as the “development of doctrine.” And it stands in sharp contrast to, and critique of, the bogus image of John XXIII as a pope unconcerned with doctrinal solidity and continuity.
The Patriarchate of Rome (not the "Church") has its structural issues which have come to light with the sex abuse scandal -- clericalism is still alive and bishops are unable to deal with the challenges confronting the "institutional Church." No council or synod will be able to fix this, as it requires leadership but also collaboration with the laity, and very few Latin bishops have what is required for either. John XXIII, nor have his successors, did not realize that the Church lost to the modern nation-state, and attempts at greater centralization and the fake alternative of fake "synodality" (which is still attempting a top-down solution) will fail. There can be no sustained and effective effort at evangelization until the local Church is revitalized, and this includes a reform of liturgical praxis. No matter how many times Mr. Weigel attempts to turn this failure into a triumphalistic narrative he cannot tell us our "lying eyes" are wrong.
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