By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
If you’re scratching your head about what’s been going on in the Church these days, you’re not alone. And there’s physical evidence to prove it.
As you may know by now a Filial Correction, a document initially signed by about 60 Catholics, including Bishop Fellay, has been made public. It was first presented to Pope Francis a month previously. In it the signers make clear their concerns on behalf of confused Catholics following from the publication of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The signers use quotes from the document and examples of the Pope’s words, actions, and omissions to support their charge that the Pope is responsible for the propagation of error.
They list the seven errors which they say he has spread as a result of action or inaction on his part. Yes, the holy man chosen by the Holy Spirit to act as God’s instrument for our salvation. This is a truly a shocking development which will be dismissed outright by many who choose to put their heads in the sand. There will always be many who choose comfort over every other consideration.
You can read the document at correctiofilialis.org and also see that signatories are steadily rising. An initiative to let lay Catholics to show their support for the Correction numbered 8,000 individuals as of the time of the writing of this column.
What is the ordinary Catholic to think and to do in these extraordinary times? We must continue to pray and to practice our faith of course. We must continue to pray for the Holy Father. Must we also avoid taking sides? If we support the Correction, are we part of the solution or part of the problem? These are legitimate questions to ask.
I personally never thought I would see this day arrive in the life of the Church. My experience always taught me I could trust and follow the Popes as sure sources of unity for knowledge of the faith in times of uncertainty. Now, some are claiming that we have a Pope we cannot trust, and one who is unfaithful to his task of confirming all of us in the teaching of Christ.
The faith forces us to take sides when there is a dispute about it. Our faith is a matter of truth which cuts like a sword, leaving everything concerned either on side or the other of the divide created by its application.
The signatories of the Correction make the case that settled matters of faith and morals are contradicted by the text of Amoris Laetitia. They also cite examples of words and actions of the Holy Father that have resulted in the propagation of error. These serious matters do not leave us the option of ignoring them.
Robert Royal has offered a helpful critique on The Catholic Thing blog which does not spare the Pope or his supporters. In “Pope Francis, Father Martin, and Faith Without Reason,” Royal makes the case that the Pope and his party know the outcomes they want and are determined to twist doctrine and anything else necessary to get them.
Royal summarizes the charges against Pope Francis:
“The correctors complain that the Pope has taught or failed to condemn propositions such as that God’s grace is insufficient to produce proper behavior in some circumstances; that the divorced/remarried who fully understand their actions may not be in a state of mortal sin; that, on the contrary, following the moral law in certain circumstances may itself be a sin (e.g., leaving a second marriage); that there are no absolute prohibitions in divine or natural law; that Jesus wants us to abandon the old moral disciplines with regard to the Eucharist. And so on.”
Royal takes us to the root of these and other disagreements in the Church:
“And there’s an even deeper problem, of which the seven false teachings are examples, that’s beginning to characterize wide swaths of the Church.
“We’re witnessing a period in which the Church is trying to have Faith without the full benefits of Reason. This is odd, in a way, because it’s usually thought that the only Christians who forsake reason are impossible-to-reason-with fundamentalists. In the current moment, we have a progressive group in Rome and beyond that seems to think that Reason in any strong sense distorts or even blocks Faith.
“They know the outcomes they want and aren’t about to let the logical contradictions theologians, philosophers, or ordinary believers notice, stop them.”
He makes a very cutting comment in connection with this abandonment of reason in pursuit of faith. He says that neither Pope Francis nor one of his most well-known apologists in the U.S., Fr. James Martin, SJ, “is a serious theologian nor even a serious thinker.” When anyone familiar with the magisterial teaching handed down questions them about their inconsistencies they react with counter accusations of rigidity, homophobia, or other modern “sins.”
Yes, it has become clear that the desired outcomes are the only points of clarity for those causing confusion in the Church today. Any roadblocks in the way of their plans must simply be explained away or ignored.
We know now there are some who are excluded from the Pope’s call for dialogue, making necessary the release of the Filial Correction to the public in September so that truth can have a deserved airing. This is the same refusal to dialogue we witnessed in reaction to the dubia submitted by four cardinals, two of whom died without the courtesy of a response.
This issue will not go away. No amount of silence on the part of those who currently occupy the pilot house of the barque of Peter can simply make it disappear. Two thousand years of faith and morals received by billions of faithful Catholics in the Church militant, suffering, and triumphant cannot be reconciled with capricious and unreasonable contradictions, even in a document signed by the current occupant of the chair of Peter.
Every human person has been gifted by God with an intellect and a will, to know and to love the truth. The faith finally is not true because Peter and his Successors say so but because it finds resonance in the hearts of each one of us both created by God in His image and likeness and blessed to receive His self-Revelation in Christ. Pope Francis and his fellow change agents are for that reason accountable to every soul if they have indeed attempted to alter the Deposit of Faith by which we must be saved.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. @MCITLFrAphorism
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