What is the solution?

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Rock_Happy

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We all are watching the Church flop in the scorching sun like a fish. How do can we reconcile this?
 
That is a great opening post, and so true. The Holy Father has made many statements about Christian life, the Church and the Liturgy. Other top Vatican officials have further clarified some issues that have been abused for decades by bishops and priests, such as the right, always, anywhere, anytime, to kneel in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

My idea I notice is not popular with my fellow parishioners. But I say fight back. When your priest changes the words of the Mass, politely point out to him you would prefer he follow the rubrics. Take Communion on the Tongue, this will transform, gradually, people to have more respect for the Eucharist. All the tools and authority that the Holy Father has given us by teh little changes he’s made, or the big ones like Summorum Pontificum, we should be embracing.

There’s lots more issues, but these have just come up in my church.
 
It seems to me that the historic challenge for the Church has been to reconcile its traditional teachings with current knowledge which comes from science, and so on. The record has been mixed. Sometimes the Church has been progressive and morally correct in the hindsight of historical perspective. Sometimes it has been dreadfully wrong and immoral. I don’t think I need to elaborate on this obvious points, but will if anyone is unaware of Church history.

The current trend in the Church is to resist progress. Historically, the Church has firmly and resolutely embraced moral relativism when it has been at its best, and rejected it when it has been practicing immorally. Yet, we have a pope who identifies moral relativism, the most positive force in Church evolution and progress, as being dangerous and a principal challenge to the integrity of the Church. This has some very serious implications if you consider the history of the Church and care about its vitality and survival. It appears that a single individual intends to abort the path that the Church has followed for many years for his own personal vanity and prejudice. I find this troubling.
 
Rock_Happy said:
We all are watching the Church flop in the scorching sun like a fish. How do can we reconcile this?
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First step: In crease our personal holiness through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Start knowing, loving, and serving God where He puts us.

Second step: pray for our own pastors, bishop, and the Pope.

And repeat, remembering that God can do so much more than we can.
 
Rock_Happy said:
It seems to me that the historic challenge for the Church has been to reconcile its traditional teachings with current knowledge which comes from science, and so on. The record has been mixed. Sometimes the Church has been progressive and morally correct in the hindsight of historical perspective. Sometimes it has been dreadfully wrong and immoral. I don’t think I need to elaborate on this obvious points, but will if anyone is unaware of Church history.

The current trend in the Church is to resist progress. Historically, the Church has firmly and resolutely embraced moral relativism when it has been at its best, and rejected it when it has been practicing immorally. Yet, we have a pope who identifies moral relativism, the most positive force in Church evolution and progress, as being dangerous and a principal challenge to the integrity of the Church. This has some very serious implications if you consider the history of the Church and care about its vitality and survival. It appears that a single individual intends to abort the path that the Church has followed for many years for his own personal vanity and prejudice. I find this troubling.
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Are you Catholic? Because your religion is listed as Christian, and, frankly, your post displays a rather remarkable ignorance of what the Catholic Church is all about.
 
Rock_Happy said:
IHistorically, the Church has firmly and resolutely embraced moral relativism when it has been at its best, and rejected it when it has been practicing immorally. Yet, we have a pope who identifies moral relativism, the most positive force in Church evolution and progress, as being dangerous and a principal challenge to the integrity of the Church.
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While I agree that Pope Benedict is a foe of moral relativism, I disagree that the Church has historically embraced such a philosophy. And I am honestly surprised to read that you consider moral relativism to be a positive force. Would you be willing to explain your viewpoint more fully?
 
Rock_Happy said:
It seems to me that the historic challenge for the Church has been to reconcile its traditional teachings with current knowledge which comes from science, and so on. The record has been mixed. Sometimes the Church has been progressive and morally correct in the hindsight of historical perspective. Sometimes it has been dreadfully wrong and immoral. I don’t think I need to elaborate on this obvious points, but will if anyone is unaware of Church history.

The current trend in the Church is to resist progress. Historically, the Church has firmly and resolutely embraced moral relativism when it has been at its best, and rejected it when it has been practicing immorally. Yet, we have a pope who identifies moral relativism, the most positive force in Church evolution and progress, as being dangerous and a principal challenge to the integrity of the Church. This has some very serious implications if you consider the history of the Church and care about its vitality and survival. It appears that a single individual intends to abort the path that the Church has followed for many years for his own personal vanity and prejudice. I find this troubling.
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As far as I can see, you’re setting up a false example of a contradiction for people to reconcile.

– Nicole
 
Rock_Happy said:
It seems to me that the historic challenge for the Church has been to reconcile its traditional teachings with current knowledge which comes from science, and so on. (Yes, we call it faith with reason.) The record has been mixed. (Do tell!) Sometimes the Church has been progressive and morally correct in the hindsight of historical perspective. Sometimes it has been dreadfully wrong and immoral. I don’t think I need to elaborate on this obvious points, but will if anyone is unaware of Church history. (Please do elaborate on your interpretation of Church history. Distinguish between the Church’s teaching & general response by the Church’s members. One prescribes the medicine, the other rarely takes the full prescription.)

The current trend in the Church is to resist progress. Only progress that uses immoral means or seeks an immoral end. Historically, the Church has firmly and resolutely embraced moral relativism when it has been at its best, and rejected it when it has been practicing immorally. The Church has never embraced moral relativism. Yet, we have a pope who identifies moral relativism, the most positive force in Church evolution and progress, as being dangerous and a principal challenge to the integrity of the Church. The pope’s a dope (i.e., fallible person) without the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit maintaining the principles & integrity of the Church. The mileage varies from pope to pope in application of those principles. This has some very serious implications if you consider the history of the Church and care about its vitality and survival. Survival is assured per scripture, but vitality at times wax & wanes just as in the OT. It appears that a single individual intends to abort the path that the Church has followed for many years for his own personal vanity and prejudice. Not you? Not me? I’m looking around to route the bum out. I find this troubling. Amen.
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Hello Rock Happy,

You wrote:
Historically, the Church has firmly and resolutely embraced moral relativism when it has been at its best, and rejected it when it has been practicing immorally.
<<

So you believe the Church’s rejection of moral relativism is immoral?

Bill G
 
billg3436 said:
Hello Rock Happy,

You wrote:
I think your premise is flawed. The Church has boldly embraced moral relativism for 2,000 years. John Paul II started to change that policy. Benedict XVI has decided to be a radical and oppose Church tradition in this respect.

If you doubt me consider the following:

The Church no longer burns heretics.

The Church no longer admonishes rulers to put Jews in ghettos, restrict their income and wear badges, as it did for more than 700 years.

The Church no longer condemns usury. In fact it is a lender and owns a bank

The Church no longer endorses slavery. Indeed one of the Gregory’s owned a slave.

The Church has radically changed its doctrine on the annulment of marriage.

These are just a few examples of moral relativism over time as has been practiced by the Church. The Church would not exist today if it still advocated the same moral code which it did in 1,200 AD. That is a fact.
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Rock_Happy said:
I think your premise is flawed. The Church has boldly embraced moral relativism for 2,000 years. John Paul II started to change that policy. Benedict XVI has decided to be a radical and oppose Church tradition in this respect.

If you doubt me consider the following:
  1. The Church no longer burns heretics.
  2. The Church no longer admonishes rulers to put Jews in ghettos, restrict their income and wear badges, as it did for more than 700 years.
  3. The Church no longer condemns usury. In fact it is a lender and owns a bank
  4. The Church no longer endorses slavery. Indeed one of the Gregory’s owned a slave.
  5. The Church has radically changed its doctrine on the annulment of marriage.
These are just a few examples of moral relativism over time as has been practiced by the Church. The Church would not exist today if it still advocated the same moral code which it did in 1,200 AD. That is a fact.
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You don’t appear to know what moral relativism IS. Your examples prove the exact opposite of what you seem to think they do. Moral relativism is the idea that there are no intrinsic rights and wrongs. Instead, right and wrong are decided by the ethics developed by society based on what works and appears to support a sustainable civilization.

What you further seem to misunderstand is the difference between infallibly defined moral teachings and the personal example set by churchmen in the past. To your examples:
  1. Look all you want. You’ll never find an authoritative church document that discusses the principle of burning heretics and how it is compatible with the idea of human diginity being a gift of God via our being created in His image and likeness. Burning heretics at the stake was a practice born of the culture of the day (which executed people for all sorts of things) and that churchmen failed to recognize the immorality of. Instead, they succumbed to the temptations of moral relativism and simply did what the culture around them did to troublemakers: execute. It was the recognition that execution for theological offenses was incompatible with moral absolute teachings of the church that lead to it being ended. The exact opposite of your contention.
  2. Again, look all you want. You will not find an authoritative teaching that Jews are, by nature, lesser human beings than everybody else. Again, it was FAILURE to apply the absolute moral teachings of the Church to their logical conclusions that enabled this behavior (which was perfectly acceptable in the secular culture of the day. Relativists would have seen no problem with it).
  3. The Church hasn’t changed its teachings on usury, but the economic systems of the world have changed to the point to make many earlier teachings of the church difficult to understand today since the invention of modern inflation and arbitrary monetary basis (paper money of no intrinsic value). There’s no doubt in my mind that an awful lot of credit card companies are sinful usurers. But it’s a lot harder to draw the line than it used to be. The church is quiet on the matter because the principles are all already out there. Application of them (i.e. drawing and exact interest rate at which fair compensation for loss of value and opportunity cost are offset) is not in her charism. That belongs to the laity. Contrary to uninformed opinions the Church does not claim to be all seeing and all knowing on all subjects.
  4. Look all you want. You will find churchmen who owned slaves, you may even find opinions and guidance the duties of slave owners. You won’t find any authoritative teaching that argues that slave ownership is acceptable and morally compatible with the dignity of a human being made in the image and likeness of God. Be careful not to mistake indentured servitude for chattle slavery when reading. The word slave is sometimes used for indentured servants. Again, it was when churchmen STOPPED behaving based on cultural norms (moral relativism) and started challenging those norms with reasoning from basic principles that progress happened. Not the other way around, as you contend.
  5. You lack the facts here. The church has always made the distinction between sacramental marriage and two people who dressed up and said “I do.” Examination and the potential for a decree of nullity are truly ancient. What is different today is the number of people with the time and resources to conduct such an investigation. It’s tough to prove your case when there are fields to till, weeds to pull, sheep to tend and brigands to fight… The principles haven’t changed a bit, there are just more people with the resources to fund an objective look at what their putative marriage really was in today’s world than there were in the past. There are also arguably a lot more people in today’s totally secular culture getting married in a church for the nice photo-op instead of because they truly understand and want the sacrament. No wonder those folks wind up divorced in droves.
In short, you need a dictionary. The Church hasn’t flourished for embracing moral relativism. She’s flourished when she has identified and rooted it OUT. That’s the problem with a church full of flawed humans - we bring our baggage in with us and it takes time to unpack it all. LOTS of time.

You seem to be laboring under the idea that anything but a totally static interpretation of moral teaching is moral relativism. Not so. Catholicism has always embraced the idea of doctrinal development in which one can draw true conclusions from true revelation and add to our understanding of what God has revealed to us. These aren’t reversals, they are true growth and fulfillment of what came earlier.
 
The above post recognizes the issue, though I don’t think the link is clear. The problem is that there is often a disconnect between dogma and action. Those supporting the faith will claim that the Church doesn’t err on dogma, and the Church is careful in that regard…hence the reason you won’t find dogma requiring you to own slaves or put Jews in the ghetto.

The problems are all blamed on man’s imperfection. That said, the Church does a great disservice when they say one thing and do another, whether it is handing over people during the Inquisition to secular authorities to their certain death, or brushing aside pedophile priests. Wisdom is proved by actions, not the words written in dogma.
 
Warrior1979 said:
Wisdom is proved by actions, not the words written in dogma.
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Extremely true in cases where men claim to have discerned the wisdom in question via their own maturity and insight. In the case of revelation, one should rationally expect the revelation to exceed the maturity and behavior of the ones it is given to. And so it is…
 
Don’t worry, the Church will have to change teachings that are contradicted by reason or science.

And anyway, it’s not like Benedict is going to live forever - we might get a progressive Pope next time.
 
razredge said:
Don’t worry, the Church will have to change teachings that are contradicted by reason or science.

And anyway, it’s not like Benedict is going to live forever - we might get a progressive Pope next time.
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  1. Except there aren’t any. 😉
  2. I don’t suggest holding your breath!
 
Rock_Happy said:
We all are watching the Church flop in the scorching sun like a fish. How do can we reconcile this?
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“…and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it”.

I don’t worry about it because Jesus will make sure His Chruch will not be flopping in the scorching sun like a fish. He said so.
 
manualman said:
  1. Except there aren’t any. 😉
  2. I don’t suggest holding your breath!
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  1. Yes there are, for eg. polygenism
  2. You’re probably right, but we can hope - I actually don’t want a progressive pope, i’m generally fine with the Church’s moral teaching but i’d want a pope who isn’t antagonistic to science and reason.
 
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