H/T Rorate Caeli for image inspiration
I don't consider Cardinal Burke susceptible to worldly ambitions in Rome. Wherever he has been, in whatever role he has had, promotion, demotion, he has always, from what I can tell of him, done his best for the Lord and for His Church. I am certain he will continue to do so.
I am sure I am not alone in thinking His Holiness is perhaps being somewhat shrewd in bringing Cardinal Burke back into the fold at this particular moment in time. The appointment gives him renewed respectability - even Burke's enemies may now think twice about dissing him, stand up Cardinal Maradiaga.
This move may place Cardinal Burke in a more sensitive position regarding any forthcoming correction he wished to make of His Holiness but I do believe that the Cardinal will continue to do what he feels is necessary for the good of the Church and souls. Nearly five years of character assasination, manipulation of truth and bizarre man-management practises have made me rather suspcious of Pope Francis. Is there a strategy at work or has His Holiness learnt that including voices who offer the timeless teaching of Christ is actually healthy for the Church and for his own governance?
Let us not place all our trust in princes, but let us nonetheless storm Heaven for Cardinal Burke and for the Pope, for the Church and for the preservation and proclamation of true doctrine for the Salvation of souls, so that judgements will be just once again. We are Catholics. We must always live in hope. Hope in the Lord.
ReplyDeleteAmen.
This piece is a slovenly, insinuating disgrace, preferring as it does (from blind prejudice) a low and conspiratorial explanation for a mutual act of humble acceptance. This is the besetting sin of ironclad Traddies, of course: the toxic lack of grace and the lack of permission of it to others.
ReplyDeleteYou are addicted to your discontent.
1. I don't trust Pope Francis anymore. I can honestly tell you that.
ReplyDelete2. Because I don't trust him anymore, I do not believe any longer the transparency of things he does.
3. I trust Cardinal Burke a great deal.
4. I place all my trust in Christ our Lord.
I'm a realist. I've been following the machinations going on in Rome for over four years. The Pope is a political operator, that has become clear for all to see.
Sorry if you are offended!
I am not offended, Mr Bones, and I am grateful as always that you print disobliging posts like mine.
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't think I think Cardinal Burke should not have accepted this advisory role, or something. No, I don't think that, he is absolutely right to do so. Do I have concerns over the Pope's motives? Yes, I do. Five years of this pontificate have shown him to be a political strategist, but I believe God will bring good out of the depths from which we cry to Him. Let us pray for them both!
ReplyDeleteParrhesia!
Of this we can be sure—this is appointment is for more than one reason.
ReplyDeletePax.
Some lines are just funny and they ring the bells for me.
ReplyDelete'I need someone to help me make it Thomist,' is funny.
Accusing this blog of 'blind prejudice' misses the point.
The purpose of satirical polemic is to hit the target.
The purpose of Christian satirical polemic is to make us cringe at the sight of ourselves.
Evelyn Waugh was the master.
Waugh made us see how absurd we are in the light of eternity.
Malcolm Muggeridge told Chief Gnome at Private Eye, 'Be more cruel.'
Mr Bones may be cruel, but it is the kingdom of this world that he attacks so ferociously.
Attacking the world, the flesh and the devil is not a feature of 21st Century Christianity.
We Christians just want to be loved.
We want to be 'harmless' - 'harmless' is how Richard Dawkins described the C of E.
The God-fearer Tim Keller (preaching on Matthew 11:20-30) said to his church, 'Pray I have enough sense of God's LOVE to preach God's WRATH.' (See Tim Keller, Why Life Doesn't Make Sense, YouTube.)
Are we telling the world to flee from the wrath to come?
Now, what was Pope Francis up to when he made his much-quoted remark, 'Who am I to judge?'
The chattering classes were ecstatic.
The New Yorker put him on their cover.
As the Supreme Pontiff he should be speaking up for Christ's church. It is the Pope's duty to provide the faithful with clear moral teaching.
Instead we got moral drift.
How I wish there was a blog like this that targeted liberal Protestantism.
Remember the Christian baker in Northern Ireland who was prosecuted because he refused to bake a cake for two homosexuals who were getting 'married'?
Only Catholics and Ulster Presbyterians spoke up for the baker.
What would Francis have said about the baker's civil liberties?
As for 'ironclad traddies', who do you have in mind, Anthony?
Pope Leo XIII?
Leo had a vision that Satan would destroy the church in 75 years.
The Jesuit General no more believes in Satan than the editor of the Guardian or the Director General of the BBC.
Is this the same church I was baptised into 66 years ago?
Or has it morphed into something else?
Jesus said, 'Men will hate you for my sake.'
Unless the world starts to hate us a bit more, we are just playing the world's game.
J Haggerty
J Haggerty
In fairness to Anthony, the original post was a little harder but I changed it and softened it a little, taking on board his criticism, so what you see here is not the original.
ReplyDeleteWe seem here to have a situation where the sheep no longer trust the shepherds. But when there are shepherds who, it seems, can be trusted, what are the sheep to do? Should they seek out the good shepherds, or endlessly criticise the shepherds they no longer trust? What good does the latter course of action do for the situation, or for the souls of the critics?
ReplyDeleteIt might help to ask how this situation has arisen, for it may have its origins long before 1960.
Agreed with Physiocratic, the situation had its origin very very long time ago, and I mean centuries before the Vat II, that's was the end of the program, now the sheep, very little indeed, is without shepherds, for me personally, Francis is not my pope and I don't like him, full stop, I respect the man, don't recognize him like the Vicar of Christ and successor of Peter, to me he's a CEO like many others and the church a quango, nothing more nothing less, 30 talents have been payed,and Jesus betrayed once again. I am with Mr. Bones, he's not addicted, but realist and honest.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Physiocrat.
ReplyDeleteThe podcasts Defeat Modernism, YouTube, have many things to say about Vatican II.
So has Bones.
Then there are the blogs by other anti-modernist Catholics.
Defenders of Vatican II cite John Henry Newman, but so do critics of Vatican II.
The thing to do is to go back to Newman's books, and to see what he has to say about the danger of 'liberalism' in Christian thought.
Pope Benedict referred to 'a congeries of errors' in Vatican II, disagreeing with Hans Kung.
Protestantism too has its problems with modernism.
Iain H Murray has a tract, 'The Unresolved Controversy - Unity with Non Evangelicals' (Banner of Truth 2001).
'Liberalism entered our pulpits, and it came in the name of Christ,' Mr Murray writes.
'It used traditional Christian language.
'Christ, it said, is to be experienced, admired and followed ...
'Liberalism taught that faith comes from our own human intuition; all that is needed is a well-disposed heart.'
This explains the drift away from doctrine, and it was the reason that Charles Spurgeon broke with the Baptist Union in the 19th Century.
A member of the 'management team' of a liberal Baptist church told me he would accept same-sex weddings, 'if it is the democratic will of other church members'.
He did not think to go to the Scriptures on the issue.
He did not say whether or not he prayed about the issue.
He did not ask, 'What is the mind of Christ?'
How could I worship in this man's church?
Liberal Christianity is a different religion as Gresham Machen said.
Liberalism has swept through the Church of Scotland.
The young minister in the kirk near my house has left the Church of Scotland in much sadness.
A Sunday school teacher I know told me the Church of Scotland no longer asks people if they are saved.
Iain Murray reminds us that John Wesley and George Whitfield were prepared to stand alone in their commitment to doctrine.
In the 20th Century Arthur W Pink, Alan Stibbs and Martyn Lloyd-Jones also stood alone.
Pink said, 'We feel it keenly, and God means us to feel the awful character of the times in which we are living, when the departure from the true faith is almost universal.'
'In the last days they will not endure sound doctrine.'
J Haggerty