The Crescat
… What’s driving bloggers into silence?
The reign of Benedict produced a real flourish of ‘citizen journalists’, the net was alive with discussion on what the Pope was saying or doing and how it affected the life of our own local Church. Looking at some of my old posts they invariably began with quote or picture followed by a comment, Benedict stimulated thought, reflection and dialogue, an open and free intellectual environment. There was a solidity and certainty in Benedict’s teaching which made discussion possible and stimulated intellectual honesty, one knew where the Church and the Pope stood. Today we are in less certain times, the intellectual life of the Church is thwart with uncertainty.
Most Catholics but especially clergy want to be loyal to the Pope in order to maintain the unity of the Church, today that loyalty is perhaps best expressed through silence.
“… in order to maintain the unity of the Church, today that loyalty is perhaps best expressed through silence.”
Silence or risk getting called crazy.
From the Hermeneutic Of Continuity,
The wrath descending upon poor Fr Vicario did not end with a rebuke from his Ordinary. Cardinal Baldisseri, the Secretary General of the forthcoming Synod, said that the words of Fr Vicario were “crazy, a strictly personal opinion of a parish priest who does not represent anyone, not even himself.”
What was this crazy “personal opinion” that heaped so much scorn?
“For the Church, which acts in the name of the Son of God, marriage between the baptised is alone and always a sacrament. Civil marriage and cohabitation are not a sacrament. Therefore those who place themselves outside of the Sacrament by contracting civil marriage are living a continuing infidelity.
One is not treating of sin committed on one occasion (for example a murder), nor an infidelity through carelessness or habit, where conscience in any case calls us back to the duty of reforming ourselves by means of sincere repentance and a true and firm purpose of distancing ourselves from sin and from the occasions which lead to it.””
In other words, one is a permanent state (civil marriage or cohabitation) where the person does not intend to change their situation, the other (ex. murder) is a sin committed on a particular occasion where a properly formed conscience would call the person to repent and not commit the sin again.
But what am I saying. That’s just pazzo!
So to answer my own question, can we talk about the pope?
No. No, we flippin’ can not.
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