Speculation About the New Head of the CDW

New leadership team at Congregation for Divine Worship shares Pope’s determination to press ahead with post-conciliar liturgical reforms and possibly restrict the Extraordinary Form of the Mass https://t.co/obPeOYhCuW @NCRegister

— Edward Pentin (@EdwardPentin) May 28, 2021

A Dominican Would Say This

The Jesuits were wrong on the Chinese Rites controversy, as the Holy See properly held when first examining the issue. https://t.co/LIkMLOtYlV

— Fr. Pius Pietrzyk OP (@PiusOP) May 28, 2021

China is Assyrian territory, and the Assyrians did attempt inculturation.

An Investigation Is Necessary

Pope Francis orders apostolic visitation of embattled archdiocese https://t.co/ICrVaWbm3C via @cnalive

— Edward Pentin (@EdwardPentin) May 28, 2021

Deo Gratias

“I know many priests who credit Father Romanus with introducing them to the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans) or otherwise inspiring, encouraging, and nourishing their vocations as priests.”
https://t.co/LBNCwC0Tg6

— Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP (@FrAquinasOP) May 28, 2021

The "Italian" Synodal Path

VATICAN— Italian Cardinal goes on record to discuss focus points of Italian synodality, contrasting that of Germany.https://t.co/rf5xXoXFeB

— Bree A Dail (@breeadail) May 28, 2021

Latin Progs Continue to Spin Cardinal Ladaria's Letter

Note that @NCRonline and Winters continue to misrepresent Cardinal Ladaria's letter. Nowhere does he say, "slow down". Rather he outlines the path forward -- precisely the path that @ArchbishopGomez and the @USCCB have already laid out. https://t.co/TxHDgS0K1s

— Fr. Pius Pietrzyk OP (@PiusOP) May 28, 2021

Another misunderstanding of the Ladaria letter is to misread his calls for unity. Collegial unity is not simply the bishops agreeing with each other. It is the Bishops being in unity with the Truth, as made known in Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterial teaching. https://t.co/9ilkmWoJGE

— Fr. Pius Pietrzyk OP (@PiusOP) May 28, 2021

More on Poland

This is what I had in mind when I added a cautionary note for this post. Rod Dreher:

I mentioned to my companions last night that the late Father Wlodzimierz Zatorski, a highly esteemed Benedictine (who died last year of Covid), had affirmed to me that the young Catholics telling me that Poland could become Ireland in a decade, regarding Catholic collapse, were on to something. I had asked the Benedictine, while visiting famed Tyniec Abbey, what the main problem is. He said, “the vainglory of the bishops.”

I asked the Pole last night to explain what the late priest-monk meant. The Pole, who is in his twenties, told me that among his circle of friends here in Warsaw, he is the only one who still goes to mass. Two years ago when I first met this man, that was not the case. He went on to explain that many Poles are deeply offended by how openly political many of the clergy are, especially the bishops. He said the exposure of sexual abuse scandals in the clergy devastated many people. The harshness of the bishops’ language against gays and lesbians has put a lot of people off, even as stories about priests and bishops having secret gay lives have come to light. Too many bishops and priests, he said, rest on pious cliches and sentimental appeals to the legacy of Pope St. John Paul II, instead of bringing the Gospel to deal meaningfully with the problems and challenges of contemporary life. Overall, my Polish interlocutor said that the country’s Catholics have come to see that there is a large gap between what the Church claims to be, and what its clergy is — and that outrages people. The fact, he went on, that many in the Polish clergy, especially bishops, are so caught up in clericalism, only makes it harder for the bishops and clergy to grasp their role, and to repent.

Eastern Christian Book: Stupid Ideas about Married Clergy Part MMCCXVII

Eastern Christian Book: Stupid Ideas about Married Clergy Part MMCCXVII

It is the shortest essay in my new book, Married Priests in the Catholic Church, "Reflections on Two Vocations in Two Lungs of the One Church," but David Meinzen's essay is one of the most singular and important ever written on this topic, for he demolishes the idea that a married priest, to avoid being "divided," must always put the parish first. Meinzen shows--drawing on his long experience as son of a married Lutheran pastor (Missouri Synod), and then a married Orthodox, and finally and currently a married Eastern Catholic priest--that any man in holy orders who neglects his family to serve his parish is unworthy of both vocations, and does damage to the one he is serving precisely insofar as he is neglecting the other. Put differently, to neglect his family is to serve the broader church badly for there is no real division between the domestic and wider Church: they are all the one body of Christ, and following impeccable Pauline logic, when one part of the body suffers, every part and everybody suffers. The logic Meinzen uses is very similar to what I used more recently in talking about the Christian case for self-care. 

Meinzen goes beyond this to make a positive case: a strong clerical family by that very fact builds up the entire body of Christ, making it stronger as well. In other words, a man living up to his sacramental vocation to marriage, and working to strengthen and protect that marriage and family, is going to be in a stronger position to work to strengthen and protect his equally sacramental vocation to priesthood. Any idea of competition between the two is the grossest of theological mistakes which must be abandoned.

This is the order of charity; now some Latin apologists may still argue the duty to a parishioner who is not a family member is still greater than the duty to one's family. They may even used the flaw analogy of a priest being married to the Church (in a literal sense).