RENEWAL of CATHOLIC ORTHODOXY
quotes from:
Cardinal Biffi (article by D. O'Grady)
and
Cardinal Ratzinger (per R. Moynihan)
excerpts from
The Guardian by Desmond O'Grady
Accused of being a "hardliner" - "anti-women", "anti-press" and "anti-Left"- CardinalGiacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, is arguably the most prominent "traditionalist" (at least on moral issues) among Italian cardinals.
It is not surprising that Cardinal Giacomo Biffi's pungent comments arouse controversy. The press recently jumped on these quite typical "Biffian" observations on a certain type of contemporary (read ("radically liberated") woman: "A squalid creature, even if refined, who believes in the attraction of evil, who seems to despise equally virginity and maternity".
However, Biffi was not attacking or casting a slur on all modern women and attempts to enhance the position of women in society, as some Italian papers said, but rather criticizing a model proposed by an unrestrained consumer society. He is sometimes accused of being "anti-woman", but the head of his archdiocesan press office is a woman, Sister Miriam Castelli.
Biffi complains that his comments are often taken out of context. And he has, in typical no-hold-barred fashion, warned journalists: "What the press writes about the Church is useless and spiritually fruitless. The nature of your work is no help for your salvation."
Biffi is the most incisive of Italian cardinals. He has the reputation as a hardliner, but says that the Gospels themselves are hard: ""I've got the bad habit of calling things by their names - the names the Gospels give them. If this is provocative, it's the Gospels' fault. If the people of Bologna don't want to heed the Gospel, that's one thing. But they want to disobey God's law with my approval. The only commandment they recognize is 'it's forbidden to forbid.'"
Is there a new Gospel containing such a commandment? It's a question Biffi seems to have asked himself back in 1968 when he was a parish priest in Milan, and some Catholics, caught up in the general desire for revolutionary changes, were proposing ideas which struck him as mighty strange. He decided to write Il Quinto Vangelo (The Fifth Gospel) to ridicule the new "truths" they were proposing to substitute for the real Gospels.
The Fifth Gospel corrects Jesus' "If the world hates you, remember that it hated Me before you" with: "If they hate you it's a sign that you have not understood them; therefore conform to the world and the world will save you."
Another Fifth Gospel rewriting is: "Preach to all the nations the free discussion of ideas and in this way the truth will emerge." Biffi comments: "The mission we have received is not to dialogue, to discuss, to take opinion polls. It's a mission to teach. Not our thoughts, not fascinating truths discovered by men, not the myths of our time, but the eternal revelation of God."
The modern, anti-Christian radicalism is supported by the political Left, which, Biffi contends, would have once condemned it as middle-class decadence. "Once Communism opposed divorce and abortion because they shared a healthy working-class morality. Now they have become 'trendy'. But legalization of abortion has meant an unprecedented violence to consciences and a break in our people's traditions. It's not a question of faith but of reason. The opposite of faith is incredulity, not reason. Legalization of abortion and gay marriage are against reason."
If it is objected that there were abortions even before the legislation permitted them, Biffi has an answer: "the fact that there was a mafia even before there was anti-mafia legislation is not an argument for introducing pro-mafia legislation."
The crucial problem, claims Biffi, is that the pro-abortion legislation confounds the true and the false. It's like the witches in Macbeth, he says, who claim the ugly is beautiful. The Church's task, adds Biffi, is first of all to state what is right and what is wrong according to Scripture and, secondly, to preach pardon for those who make mistakes.
...Catholics [and all Christians - DAG] must make their values present in public. "Catholics", says Biffi, "cannot simply dissolve in society like a cube of sugar in coffee."
excerpts from
Restore the Sacred! by Robert Moynihan
The Second Vatican Council can be seen as the Church's great effort to respond to the challenges and opportunities of modernity, and the post-conciliar liturgical reform as the problematic attempt to "root" that reform in the life of the Church.
The world has evolved with tremendous rapidity in the four centuries between Trent (1545-1562) and the convocation of Vatican II (1962), and with even greater rapidity in the 90 years between Vatican I (1870) and Vatican II (1962-'65). Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, Nazism and other "isms" had arisen in a world transformed by scientific break-throughs and technological advances. Democracy had begun to spread worldwide; the British Empire has disintegrated; the formerly colonized nations of Africa and Asia had begun to achieve independence.
Amid these dizzying changes, the Church decided to "democratize", "horizontalize", "demythologize", "historicize", diminish the distinction between priest and people, eliminate potential barriers to ecumenism, expel any shadows of "superstition". As a central part of this process, she decided to reform what was perhaps her greatest glory: the Latin liturgy. The renewed liturgy would help the Church confront and engage modernity. But the result was not what anyone anticipated.
Father Michael Napier, a British Oratorian, expressed the feelings of many Catholics when he asked some years ago: "What has gone wrong in the Church's public worship, that instead of being a source of joy and constant renewal it has become for many only bitterness and wormwood, so that their spiritual lives have been crippled, and many alienated from the Church?"
The American Professor James Hitchcock of St. Louis, in his book The Recovery of the Sacred(1974), saw the liturgical changes as an important cause of an overall breakdown in Catholic identity.
"The fragmentation and manipulation of sacred symbolism," Hitchcock wrote, "conveyed in the most dramatic and effective way possible that the community of the church was also fragmented, probably beyond repair... The casual discarding of the traditional symbols, often with the implication that there was something ridiculous or unsavory about them, symbolized effectively a church dying piece by piece."
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [chief doctrinal officer in the Roman Catholic Church] remains hopeful. "I am still certain that the Lord prevails and that the Church survives, not only survives but lives with strength through all of these crises", Ratzinger said. "I am optimistic, because I am one who has the hope of the faith. But whether in a part of the world - for example, in Europe - these crises can still grow more severe, I do not know."
Ratzinger's position is not at all that the Second Vatican Council was a mistake or itself the cause of subsequent liturgical abuses and scandals, but that the Second Vatican Council has been, in substantial ways, betrayed. Ratzinger argues that many key aims of the Council have never been met, despite three decades of a "reform" process intended to make those aims a reality.
"The Popes and the Council Fathers looked forward to a new Catholic unity and instead ran into a type of dissent that - to use the words of Paul VI - seemed to pass from self-criticism to self-destruction," Ratzinger said more than a decade ago. But this self-destruction was not the fault of the Council, according to Ratzinger.
"In its official statements, in its authentic documents, Vatican II cannot be held responsible for this evolution which, on the contrary, radically contradicts both the letter and the spirit of the Council Fathers", Ratzinger [said] in 1984. For Ratzinger then, there is no question of rejecting Vatican II.
Rather, there is a need to return to the authentic teaching of Vatican II, and to conform modern aspects of Church life to that authentic teaching, not to alleged "developments" of that teaching in the years since. And this is precisely what Ratzinger would like to do. Especially with regard to the liturgy. Inside the Vatican can now reveal that Ratzinger is preparing a theological treatise on the Church's liturgy to express these ideas in a systematic way.
R. Moynihan's interview excerpts, quoting Cardinal Ratzinger, July 4/'95
Return to the Essential
"We must now return to the central reality. All these ecclesiological struggles, struggles that are ongoing and obscure the face of the Church - celibacy, election of bishops, participation of the laity in all decisions - all these power struggles make me think of the discussions among the apostles about who would be the first among them. Let us now hear the response of the Lord who says to us, 'What are you doing? It does not matter who is the first, who is second, who is last. What matters is God.' Therefore, it seems to me that the centrality of God must be clearly affirmed. We must speak of essential things: Who is God? What does God do? Is He present in the world? Who is Christ? What is eternal life?
"The problems of Christianity today are found not only in the Catholic Church, but even more acutely in the Protestant Churches as well. Therefore, the true crisis cannot stem from celibacy or something similar, it must stem from something else. It is precisely this: the crisis is a crisis of the sense of God. In my presentation of the Catechism [Dec.'92] I said the true problem of the empty churches - of the emptied churches - is the deism of Christians, the view that 'Maybe there is a Supreme Being, but that has nothing to do with our daily lives.'
"If people believe this, the Church dies, and all that she does with her. And so, it seems to me, this centrality of God brings us back to the great proclamation of Christ, to the two concepts: 'Repent' and 'the Kingdom of God'. Conversion, and God."
Cardinal Biffi (article by D. O'Grady)
and
Cardinal Ratzinger (per R. Moynihan)
excerpts from
The Guardian by Desmond O'Grady
Accused of being a "hardliner" - "anti-women", "anti-press" and "anti-Left"- CardinalGiacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, is arguably the most prominent "traditionalist" (at least on moral issues) among Italian cardinals.
It is not surprising that Cardinal Giacomo Biffi's pungent comments arouse controversy. The press recently jumped on these quite typical "Biffian" observations on a certain type of contemporary (read ("radically liberated") woman: "A squalid creature, even if refined, who believes in the attraction of evil, who seems to despise equally virginity and maternity".
However, Biffi was not attacking or casting a slur on all modern women and attempts to enhance the position of women in society, as some Italian papers said, but rather criticizing a model proposed by an unrestrained consumer society. He is sometimes accused of being "anti-woman", but the head of his archdiocesan press office is a woman, Sister Miriam Castelli.
Biffi complains that his comments are often taken out of context. And he has, in typical no-hold-barred fashion, warned journalists: "What the press writes about the Church is useless and spiritually fruitless. The nature of your work is no help for your salvation."
Biffi is the most incisive of Italian cardinals. He has the reputation as a hardliner, but says that the Gospels themselves are hard: ""I've got the bad habit of calling things by their names - the names the Gospels give them. If this is provocative, it's the Gospels' fault. If the people of Bologna don't want to heed the Gospel, that's one thing. But they want to disobey God's law with my approval. The only commandment they recognize is 'it's forbidden to forbid.'"
Is there a new Gospel containing such a commandment? It's a question Biffi seems to have asked himself back in 1968 when he was a parish priest in Milan, and some Catholics, caught up in the general desire for revolutionary changes, were proposing ideas which struck him as mighty strange. He decided to write Il Quinto Vangelo (The Fifth Gospel) to ridicule the new "truths" they were proposing to substitute for the real Gospels.
The Fifth Gospel corrects Jesus' "If the world hates you, remember that it hated Me before you" with: "If they hate you it's a sign that you have not understood them; therefore conform to the world and the world will save you."
Another Fifth Gospel rewriting is: "Preach to all the nations the free discussion of ideas and in this way the truth will emerge." Biffi comments: "The mission we have received is not to dialogue, to discuss, to take opinion polls. It's a mission to teach. Not our thoughts, not fascinating truths discovered by men, not the myths of our time, but the eternal revelation of God."
The modern, anti-Christian radicalism is supported by the political Left, which, Biffi contends, would have once condemned it as middle-class decadence. "Once Communism opposed divorce and abortion because they shared a healthy working-class morality. Now they have become 'trendy'. But legalization of abortion has meant an unprecedented violence to consciences and a break in our people's traditions. It's not a question of faith but of reason. The opposite of faith is incredulity, not reason. Legalization of abortion and gay marriage are against reason."
If it is objected that there were abortions even before the legislation permitted them, Biffi has an answer: "the fact that there was a mafia even before there was anti-mafia legislation is not an argument for introducing pro-mafia legislation."
The crucial problem, claims Biffi, is that the pro-abortion legislation confounds the true and the false. It's like the witches in Macbeth, he says, who claim the ugly is beautiful. The Church's task, adds Biffi, is first of all to state what is right and what is wrong according to Scripture and, secondly, to preach pardon for those who make mistakes.
...Catholics [and all Christians - DAG] must make their values present in public. "Catholics", says Biffi, "cannot simply dissolve in society like a cube of sugar in coffee."
excerpts from
Restore the Sacred! by Robert Moynihan
The Second Vatican Council can be seen as the Church's great effort to respond to the challenges and opportunities of modernity, and the post-conciliar liturgical reform as the problematic attempt to "root" that reform in the life of the Church.
The world has evolved with tremendous rapidity in the four centuries between Trent (1545-1562) and the convocation of Vatican II (1962), and with even greater rapidity in the 90 years between Vatican I (1870) and Vatican II (1962-'65). Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, Nazism and other "isms" had arisen in a world transformed by scientific break-throughs and technological advances. Democracy had begun to spread worldwide; the British Empire has disintegrated; the formerly colonized nations of Africa and Asia had begun to achieve independence.
Amid these dizzying changes, the Church decided to "democratize", "horizontalize", "demythologize", "historicize", diminish the distinction between priest and people, eliminate potential barriers to ecumenism, expel any shadows of "superstition". As a central part of this process, she decided to reform what was perhaps her greatest glory: the Latin liturgy. The renewed liturgy would help the Church confront and engage modernity. But the result was not what anyone anticipated.
Father Michael Napier, a British Oratorian, expressed the feelings of many Catholics when he asked some years ago: "What has gone wrong in the Church's public worship, that instead of being a source of joy and constant renewal it has become for many only bitterness and wormwood, so that their spiritual lives have been crippled, and many alienated from the Church?"
The American Professor James Hitchcock of St. Louis, in his book The Recovery of the Sacred(1974), saw the liturgical changes as an important cause of an overall breakdown in Catholic identity.
"The fragmentation and manipulation of sacred symbolism," Hitchcock wrote, "conveyed in the most dramatic and effective way possible that the community of the church was also fragmented, probably beyond repair... The casual discarding of the traditional symbols, often with the implication that there was something ridiculous or unsavory about them, symbolized effectively a church dying piece by piece."
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [chief doctrinal officer in the Roman Catholic Church] remains hopeful. "I am still certain that the Lord prevails and that the Church survives, not only survives but lives with strength through all of these crises", Ratzinger said. "I am optimistic, because I am one who has the hope of the faith. But whether in a part of the world - for example, in Europe - these crises can still grow more severe, I do not know."
Ratzinger's position is not at all that the Second Vatican Council was a mistake or itself the cause of subsequent liturgical abuses and scandals, but that the Second Vatican Council has been, in substantial ways, betrayed. Ratzinger argues that many key aims of the Council have never been met, despite three decades of a "reform" process intended to make those aims a reality.
"The Popes and the Council Fathers looked forward to a new Catholic unity and instead ran into a type of dissent that - to use the words of Paul VI - seemed to pass from self-criticism to self-destruction," Ratzinger said more than a decade ago. But this self-destruction was not the fault of the Council, according to Ratzinger.
"In its official statements, in its authentic documents, Vatican II cannot be held responsible for this evolution which, on the contrary, radically contradicts both the letter and the spirit of the Council Fathers", Ratzinger [said] in 1984. For Ratzinger then, there is no question of rejecting Vatican II.
Rather, there is a need to return to the authentic teaching of Vatican II, and to conform modern aspects of Church life to that authentic teaching, not to alleged "developments" of that teaching in the years since. And this is precisely what Ratzinger would like to do. Especially with regard to the liturgy. Inside the Vatican can now reveal that Ratzinger is preparing a theological treatise on the Church's liturgy to express these ideas in a systematic way.
R. Moynihan's interview excerpts, quoting Cardinal Ratzinger, July 4/'95
Return to the Essential
"We must now return to the central reality. All these ecclesiological struggles, struggles that are ongoing and obscure the face of the Church - celibacy, election of bishops, participation of the laity in all decisions - all these power struggles make me think of the discussions among the apostles about who would be the first among them. Let us now hear the response of the Lord who says to us, 'What are you doing? It does not matter who is the first, who is second, who is last. What matters is God.' Therefore, it seems to me that the centrality of God must be clearly affirmed. We must speak of essential things: Who is God? What does God do? Is He present in the world? Who is Christ? What is eternal life?
"The problems of Christianity today are found not only in the Catholic Church, but even more acutely in the Protestant Churches as well. Therefore, the true crisis cannot stem from celibacy or something similar, it must stem from something else. It is precisely this: the crisis is a crisis of the sense of God. In my presentation of the Catechism [Dec.'92] I said the true problem of the empty churches - of the emptied churches - is the deism of Christians, the view that 'Maybe there is a Supreme Being, but that has nothing to do with our daily lives.'
"If people believe this, the Church dies, and all that she does with her. And so, it seems to me, this centrality of God brings us back to the great proclamation of Christ, to the two concepts: 'Repent' and 'the Kingdom of God'. Conversion, and God."