Fr. Z: a slap in the face?

[MagdalenaRita]

I know Jesus didn’t mean that only those who He told us were hypocritical can be known and thereafter never known by anyone again.

I completely agree.

We’ve had many homilies over the years about the sin of the Pharisees and what it means.

Yes that is true.

It’s quite clear that some people feel entitled to call out particular sins of others over and over but reject that others can call out their sins. That is the definition of hypocrisy

Yes, I understand this does happen and I agree it is wrong to look at others sins and not your own.

In all charity, as I said, we can not read another person’s heart, so it is also wrong for us to say who is a hypocrite or not. Jesus was able to do that because he could read the hearts of each Pharisee. We can not. It is our place to do our best to follow the teachings of the Church and to encourage everyone to do that also.

We also should be able to say what is a sin and what is not a sin. Such as, we can say stealing is a sin but we can not say why each individual person stole but hopefully we grow enough in our faith that we are able to encourage others in the faith and away from things that put their souls in danger.

 

[Motherwit]

In all charity, as I said, we can not read another person’s heart, so it is also wrong for us to say who is a hypocrite or not. Jesus was able to do that because he could read the hearts of each Pharisee. We can not. It is our place to do our best to follow the teachings of the Church and to encourage everyone to do that also.

Hypocrisy is objectively sinful. A person may not realize they are being a hypocrite but it’s still a damaging sin. For example, to teach people that Pope Francis’ encyclicals have little authority or magisterial weight but that previous encyclicals must be accepted as binding, is hypocrisy. It gives licence to new and young people to pick and choose what they follow of the Church teaching. It needs to be labelled for what it is.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

Hypocrisy is objectively sinful. A person may not realize they are being a hypocrite but it’s still a damaging sin

I completely agree that hypocrisy is a sin and it is damaging.

God bless

 

[MarysLurker]

CNA/EWTN already told us who they were. Following the money is a reliable method of proving who is responsible for what. If you don’t believe me, try telling Revenue/IRS/HMRC that their investigative practices are “intellectually lazy” next time they audit you.

It is a fact that secular globalist billionaires such as Soros paid for massive disinformation campaigns in Ireland and elsewhere, and a lot of what you are saying about the Irish Church is right out of their playbook. Don’t buy it.

 

[MarysLurker]

Already did that a few posts ago. #63 to be exact.

That is exactly my point. Soros spent money to get the Eighth Amendment tossed. We know that from the fact of the expenditures. This fact exists independent of ideological arguments.

 

[pnewton]

Wait, but now you are avoiding the fact that he’s saying things against the true teaching of the church.

That only begs the question. That is why it is avoided. He said in the same interview that he is not saying homosexual acts are okay, quite the opposite. That is why the movie misrepresents him. I darn sure would not attack the pope on anything I saw in a movie when he has clearly upheld church teaching on the subject in an encyclical. He also reiterated this same teaching on marriage and the sin of homosexuality in the interview he gave, but the director of the movie cut it.

 

[ColoradoCatholic]

So then what was he saying about homosexual unions?

Still confusing and highly questionable. Because even if it was a non-religious union, that’s still encouraging the behavior. Its still extremely confusing is the point and the Pope is suppose to be the source of truth, the guy who stops confusion etc.

 

[pnewton]

I do not know for sure, but the Church clearly teaches that when we do not know, we must give the most favorable interpretation. In this case, since he was bishop of Buenos Aires during when they made gay marriage equivalent to any other marriage, and how this is happening, that there needs to be a way to protect the rights of people in a pluralistic society, and still protect the meaning of marriage. I think he was thinking more of protecting marriage at the time.

In any case, he may have known what he said was unclear. This part of the interview did end up on the cutting room floor. It was never aired. Doesn’t that at least raise questions about trusting a movie that would use this. The director even makes it look like he is having the Pope is interview for the movie. So, the Holy Father should always receive the benefit of the doubt.

 

[OraLabora]

The situation in Quebec circa mid 20th century, and historically, is very similar to what Hispanic Catholics experienced in the American Southwest. That’s what I am, so I can speak to it.

I think it Québec was a very different situation. First of all you need to remember the the Québec Church was borderline heretic. She can’t escape her culpability simply on that basis.

The situation between Anglo employers and the Church could be considered a “folie à deux”. Both parties were complicit and cooperative in the sense that the Church met her objectives (large families to boost the population), and a pool of cheap labour for corporations. In addition, the government of Maurice Duplessis was also highly corrupt and also complicit with the Church and Anglo corporations. A cheap uneducated pool of labourers served everyone’s purpose, even the Church’s. It all sort of started to come apart during large strikes and riots in the asbestos industry (Québec was the no. 1 producer in the world) in the 1940s.

Unlike Hispanics in the US, spread over a fairly wide geographic area, Québec had its own province with defined borders, its own legal system, and its own state religion. Moreover Francophones made up a majority of the population.

They rebelled against all forces that were complicit in keeping them poor and uneducated: the Church, the government, and the corporations. It made the '60s very interesting times indeed. Both the Government and the Church were tossed overboard with the election of Jean Lesage’s Liberals in the early 60s. The Parti Québecois in the late 70s really pushed the emancipation (and separatism, which they failed to achieve). Now Francophones here are largely in control of industry, they’re highly educated, and very much caught up with Western progress and no longer living in the times of Champlain. And there are no longer anomalies like all instruction manuals, safety signs and equipment control labeling unilingually in English in a paper mill that had 80% Francophone employees.

It’s a very complex set of circumstances. I lived through these “interesting times” and saw the army in the streets and Hueys flying at low-level over downtown Montreal well armed. My school year in the late sixties and early 70s was highly disrupted by strikes, bomb threats and all manner of nonsense. During the winter of 1970, I was getting on average only 1 to 2 days of class a week, during my first year of high school.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

… the movie misrepresents him. I darn sure would not attack the pope on anything I saw in a movie when he has clearly upheld church teaching on the subject in an encyclical.

I agree with this part. Pope Francis has held up Church teaching on marriage in the past, so I have been leaning to this being a misinterpretation or a misquote but still damaging.

My question is do you have a link to this information about the movie and also this information…

This part of the interview did end up on the cutting room floor. It was never aired.

---

I do not know for sure, but the Church clearly teaches that when we do not know, we must give the most favorable interpretation.

I was taught when something said is unclear, go back to the last thing the Church has taught on a matter and stick with that until clarity is made on what you have recently heard.

This movie, edited and correct or not, will do a lot of damage and cause a lot of uphill climbing for Catholics.

 

[Motherwit]

I was taught when something said is unclear, go back to the last thing the Church has taught on a matter and stick with that until clarity is made on what you have recently heard.

That is exactly how Sola Scriptura was born.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

That is exactly how Sola Scriptura was born

What? No. In all charity, that comment gets used here at CAF frequently, so I understand what you are saying but…

To clarify, I did not say I would interpret anything on my own. No solas at all, ever
but that I would stick with what I understand that the Church has always taught until I understand what has been said recently.

That way I am not critiquing on my own what any Church official has said or what they mean.

God bless

 

[Motherwit]

Motherwit:

That is exactly how Sola Scriptura was born

What? No. In all charity, that comment gets used here at CAF frequently, so I understand what you are saying but…

To clarify, I did not say I would interpret anything on my own. No solas at all, ever
but that I would stick with what I understand that the Church has always taught until I understand what has been said recently.

That way I am not critiquing on my own what any Church official has said or what they mean.

God bless

A certain Priest who would not except the reform of ‘no salvation outside the Church’ thought he was falling back on Church teaching of the past but was in fact flying solo by rejecting the divine teaching authority of the Apostolic Church. I’ve never heard that advice from the Magisterial Church. Only from individuals who have a beef with the current Magisterium.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

A certain Priest who would not except the reform of ‘no salvation outside the Church’ thought he was falling back on Church teaching of the past but was in fact flying solo by rejecting the divine teaching authority of the Apostolic Church.

In all charity, no salvation outside the Catholic church was not a reform but has always been taught since Christ. The Catholic church is the visible Church He gave us to lead us to salvation. There is no salvation anywhere else.

I’ve never heard that advice from the Magisterial Church. Only from individuals who have a beef with the current Magisterium.

I believe you are trying to read more into my comment than what is there.

There is a lot to Church teaching. I do not know all of it but I am learning.
So to clarify more, If I hear something I do not understand from a pope or a priest or a bishop, I stay in the Church, I follow the Church, I do not critique the person themself but wait until I understand or they clarify. If there is no clarification and I yet do not understand, I continue to stay in the Church and wait. If there is clarification and it is only an opinion I am allowed to agree or disagree. If it is declared infallible and I must obey or believe, then I obey.

Only from individuals who have a beef with the current Magisterium.

Again in all charity, I think you are reading more into my comment than what is there and I have clarified enough, least ways, hopefully so that way you can see I am not a protestant but I am a Catholic and follow the Magisterium which guards, protects and interprets Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition

God bless
Pray the rosary.

 

[Motherwit]

To be clear, I wasn’t intending my comments as an attack on yourself. I’m naturally a big picture thinker and was recognizing a ‘culture’ present in the Church today, of protest and how damaging that is to the faith.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

To be clear, I wasn’t intending my comments as an attack on yourself. I’m naturally a big picture thinker and was recognizing a ‘culture’ present in the Church today, of protest and how damaging that is to the faith.

Thank you, though there wasn’t anything of protest in my comment but rather one of obeying and having faith in the Holy Spirit leading Christ’s Church.

Sometimes what one sees as a culture of protest in the Church is rather one of obedience to Holy Mother Church and saying no to or protesting the worlds attack on her.

 

[Motherwit]

There is definitely a culture of protest and that was addressed by then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1990.

33. Dissent has different aspects. In its most radical form, it aims at changing the Church following a model of protest which takes its inspiration from political society. More frequently, it is asserted that the theologian is not bound to adhere to any Magisterial teaching unless it is infallible. Thus a Kind of theological positivism is adopted, according to which, doctrines proposed without exercise of the charism of infallibility are said to have no obligatory character about them, leaving the individual completely at liberty to adhere to them or not. The theologian would accordingly be totally free to raise doubts or reject the non-infallible teaching of the Magisterium particularly in the case of specific moral norms. With such critical opposition, he would even be making a contribution to the development of doctrine.

DONUM VERITATIS

 

[MagdalenaRita]

There is definitely a culture of protest and that was addressed by then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1990.

Yes, I understand that, though again, reading that into my original comment was reading something that wasn’t there and additionally, I am not a theologian, which is whom the Cardinal is addressing in that document.

God bless

 

[MarysLurker]

I think it Québec was a very different situation. First of all you need to remember the the Québec Church was borderline heretic. She can’t escape her culpability simply on that basis.

Well, one person’s Jansenism is another person’s mere traditionalism. What happened to you with the withheld absolution was abusive, for sure, but as others have noted, one bad parish does not a pattern make.

I just feel skeptical towards the idea that Québec was uniquely and specially Jansenist. French Catholicism has produced a large number of highly influential saints, and one of them–Therese of Liseux–was the living antidote to the Jansenist heresy.. Jansenism taught that absolute perfection was necessary to salvation; Therese instead taught us the Little Way of trust in God and the power of humility. Therese was canonized just 40 years before the Quiet Revolution, and her Way was taken up by the Popes. The effect of the Little Way was so profound that Therese is now a Doctor of the Church. Jansenism was thus not a thing by the 1960s.

Therese was well known in Québec in the 1960s. I remember visiting her side chapel at Notre-Dame de Montréal when we went to Québec for our honeymoon. It was bone chilling to see all those numbered pews. The basilica used to be so full that searing was assigned by family. Now the Sunday Mass is attended by maybe 30 people, mostly elderly. I made sure to leave an offering with St. Joan of Arc’s statue for la Survivance… the survival of French Catholic culture.

We also went to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. That was not the first time that I had been to that basilica. That would have been 2014, when the new Holy Door had just been installed… and was open. And there was a confirmation class there at Mass with us. Afterwards one of the teenaged girls spoke to us about what had happened to Québec since the 1960s. Neither she nor I were there, but her grandparents were. And what she told me was what she learned from them: a lament for how a beautiful Catholic culture had been destroyed not by Jansenism, but by plain old liberalism. She literally begged me to raise our children to be faithful to the Church.

 

[MarysLurker]

Continued from here
It is true that the Quiet Revolution was the result of many factors, but formal Jansenism was not one of them. Liberalism, however, was. It was the same liberal spirit that swept the world at that time–the Sexual Revolution. It is true that some churchmen overreacted and that this made the problem worse. But the Liberal Party victory in 1960 was the starting point of the revolution, and the defeat of the conservative Union Nationale was due mainly to factors having nothing to do with religion, such as machine politics and foreign investment. But the Liberals made it about religion so that they could ride the spirit of the times. They took over the education system from the Church, pulling a Henry VIII. As we discussed before, there was a great illusion that the state schools were magical gateways to opportunity that was really a reward for ditching Catholicism.

This thread is due to lock tomorrow so you can have the last word if you wish.