News Item: : Listening: But to Whom?
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Tuesday 21 October 2014 - 23:49:32

Cardinal Walter Kasper suggested to Vatican Radio that Pope Francis wanted the Synod to be an instance of 'the listening Magisterium'. But to whom would they be listening? We now know only too well that, for Kasper at least, it would not be the participants from Africa! 

The chief claim to be a 'listening Church' derives largely from the questionnaire which was sent out to every diocese in the world within months of Cardinal Bergoglio becoming Pope. The questionnaire merely demonstrated the fact that, in the decadent West, few Catholics today adhere to the moral teachings of the Church. This is hardly news to the orthodox Catholics who have struggled to hand on the full content of the Faith, whilst being consistently undermined by liberal bishops, priests and laity for years. The modernizers hope to use the negative findings of the questionnaire to gain a relaxation of the Church teaching - or at least the 'pastoral practice' - in order to 'move with the times' and 'show mercy'. In reality, this attempt merely serves as proof of the spectacular long-term failure of bishops and priests to provide orthodox teaching and pastoral support in the area of sexual morality. Commentators have rightly pointed out that the use of the questionnaire as a battering-ram against the moral teachings of the Church is akin to an inept teacher using the the failure rate of his own students to argue for a watering-down of the curriculum.

It all calls to mind a young liberal Catholic I encountered soon after my conversion. He took it upon himself to go around local bars and pubs asking drinkers for their opinions on Catholic sexual ethics; he hoped to use their hostile - and surely somewhat inebriated - responses as evidence to argue for a change in the Church's moral teachings! 

It is worth subjecting Cardinal Kasper's African misadventure to closer scrutiny, because such cultural arrogance reveals something deeper. We intend to do this in our next article. For now, we can acknowledge that, without intending to do so, Kasper expressed the real crux of the battle which unfolded at the Synod. And, although Cardinal Nichols has attempted to tranquilize public opinion by claiming that there was no real division at the Synod, a searing battle there truly was.

We speak of the contest between those receptive to God, revelation, nature, other persons and cultures on the one hand, and those who seek to construct and impose meaning on the other. It is the struggle between the Catholic mind and that of the post-modern; the confrontation between those receptive to the Deposit of Faith and those seeking to impose novelty upon it. Allow us to speak more plainly still: This battle was only a stage in the more dramatic and larger war between those hoping to remain wedded to Jesus Christ and the Truth He reveals and those working to divorce the Church from Him in order to perform an arranged marriage with a new secularized world order. Ultimately this is a battle which transcends the physical realm, but it does not exclude it. Whether we like it or not, you, me - and everyone else living today - are caught up in this titanic struggle. 

The gravity of this struggle is underscored by the failure of Pope Francis to defend and articulate the true teachings of the Catholic Faith at a time in history when there was already a grave urgency for this to be done. This has consistently been the case with Pope Francis. It was the case when Kasper first presented his 'thesis'. It was the case when the Diocese of Rome issued a press release announcing that 20 couples, including those already living together, would be married just prior to the Synod; thus spreading serious scandal by not explaining whether these couples had been instructed in chastity, repentance and the need to marry in the state of grace. It was the case when it became clear that the Synod was being manipulated. It was the case when the despicable Relatio was released and when the machinations behind its formation became clearer. And it remains the case with Pope Francis' concluding address and the Synod's Final Report; neither of which resolve the confusion and distortion surrounding the Synod. The whole saga gives the impression of something unwholesome and stage-managed. 

We'll need to reflect more on these things in future articles. In the meantime, readers may like to reflect on the fact that the Synod, ostensibly called to deal with marriage, family and evangelization could so dramatically fail to square up to the sophisticated threats posed by various governments, IPPF, and elements within the UN; who between them are working to secure the global dominance of - what St. John Paul II called - the Culture of Death. Spooky too, that the problematic lines in the mid-term Relatio would have begun to align the Church towards the ideologies of those powerful groups. Perhaps the Synod should have listened less to the elderly dissenters who lead spiritually moribund local churches in Northern Europe and more to vibrant Africans who tackle these issues every day, whilst co-operating with the Holy Spirit to grow the Church exponentially in their dioceses.

Ah well, there is an old African proverb which states: Much silence makes a powerful noise.         

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This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.763 )