Reductionist lens? So essentially he is saying that Catholics who hold the traditional view of such things are myopic and narrow minded. Of course. It's funny how this topic is constantly morphed and twisted into everything except what it really is in the hope of manipulating people into seeing it as "holistic" and good. All the buzz words and gas lighting in the world by priests on sites such as "NewWays ministries" to ignore the "genital act" won't change the fact that it is an abomination of God's plan for humanity. Shaming Catholics into equating love, the kind of love where a person lays down their life for love of another with sexual gratification of any kind is disingenuous and it seems to me is in and of itself an iniquity.
What I find reductionist is the people that only see the world through "genital" lenses. It's crazy that we have become so myopic that every single discussion about the ABC club or homosexual persons turns into a discussion about sex. The society seems to want to ram the lifestyle down everyone's throats and won't be satisfied until the world is celebrating their "vision" of sexual union. I am a hater because I stick to the Bible and it's teachings. Indeed, many think the Bible is myopic and unloving. I have family members that can quote the Bible and say that Jesus was gay. They are delusional. But so many are delusional that walk the Earth now.
How horribly offensive to actually paraphrase Saint Teresa of Lisieux. To say that God is speaking to us through LGBTQ relationships is beyond sickening. God help this priest and those who choose to believe him.
What he said was horrible. But I would be much, much more concerned about who was actually saying it. He appears to be the spokesperson for the Bishops of France. The question being is he speaking for all the Bishops of France. ..and f he is not speaking for all the Bishops of France why is he being allowed to say such things?
Yes, Padraig this thought crossed my mind too. It is dreadful to think that they may all on the same page, but considering the state of things in France, I fear that this may be the case.
It's hard to believe; I do hope it is not true. France the Eldest Daughter of the Church! However Catholic Prophesy indicates a huge Chastisement for France at the Hands of Islam and Revolution. If this is true we can now see why.
“Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man…” (Romans 1: 21-23).
Former Pope Benedict blames church’s scandals partly on the ‘60s When Pope Benedict XVI resigned the papacy in 2013, he vowed to live the rest of his days in seclusion, to serve the Catholic Church “through a life dedicated to prayer.” But the church’s spiraling abuse crisis prompted him this week to return to the limelight. The retired pontiff has drafted a 6,000-word document in his native German and aims to publish it in a monthly periodical for clergy in his home region of Bavaria. Benedict says the document, an English translation of which I’ve reviewed, is meant to assist the Church in seeking “a new beginning” and making her “again truly credible as a light among peoples and as a force in service against the powers of destruction.” In the preface, he makes it clear that he is “no longer directly responsible” for the church and that he consulted Pope Francis before resolving to make the document public. Nevertheless, Benedict’s “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse” has the unmistakable ring of a papal document. You might even call it a post-retirement encyclical. It’s written with his signature precision and clarity of insight and offers a piercing account of the origins of the crisis and a vision of the way forward. The church’s still-radiating crisis, Benedict suggests, was a product of the moral laxity that swept the West, and not just the church, in the 1960s. The young rebels of 1968, Benedict writes, fought for “all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms.” Benedict adds: “Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of 1968 was that pedophilia was now also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate.” This might strike contemporary readers as puzzling. But those who lived through that wretched decade will remember that some of the leading ’68ers also advocated “anti-authoritarian education,” which involved some pretty unsavory interactions between adults and children. Hippie communes weren’t child-friendly places, either. “I have always wondered how young people in this situation could approach the priesthood and accept it, with all its ramifications,” Benedict writes. “The extensive collapse of the next generation of priests in those years and the very high number of laicizations were consequence of all these processes.” The church, in other words, was no more immune to the disorders of that decade and its aftermath than the rest of society. How come? Benedict blames clerics and theologians who, in the aftermath of Vatican II, abandoned natural law — the notion that morality is written into human nature itself and can therefore be grasped by human reason — in favor of a more “pragmatic” morality. Under the new dispensation, “there could no longer be anything that constituted an absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; there could only be relative moral judgments.” The real world result was that “in various seminaries, homosexual clubs were established, which more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in seminaries.” The new morality also encouraged a “critical or negative attitude toward hitherto existing tradition,” he writes, in favor of a “new, radically open relationship with the world.” For one bishop, the German pontiff says, that meant going so far as screening porn for seminarians. In many seminaries, meanwhile, students caught reading his own books, written while he was still a cardinal and known for their doctrinal rigor, would be “considered unsuitable for the priesthood.” The looseness of those years also affected how the church handled cases of abusive priests, who we now know targeted mostly boys and young men. In church proceedings, “the rights of the accused had to be guaranteed” above all else, “to an extent that factually excluded any conviction at all.” Such absolutism in defense of the accused was incorrectly seen as a “conciliar” requirement — anything less was a betrayal of Vatican II. Hence the cover-ups and shuffling around of abusive priests. It’s impossible to miss Benedict’s bitterness toward what he sees as distortions of Vatican II, a council he helped shape as a young theologian. So what is to be done now? Benedict recommends reforming church law, to give as much emphasis to protecting the faithful, not least the faith of ordinary Catholics, as to safeguarding the procedural rights of accused priests. But no amount of procedural reform, the pope notes, can substitute for the recovering Catholicism’s absolute moral standards. “Why did pedophilia reach such proportions?” he asks. “Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God.” Yet he ends on an optimistic note: “Yes, there is sin in the church and evil. But even today there is the holy church, which is indescribable.” Amen. https://nypost.com/2019/04/10/former-pope-benedict-blames-churchs-scandals-partly-on-the-60s/
Apr. 10, 2019 | http://www.ncregister.com/daily-new...ict-speaks-up-on-the-current-sex-abuse-crisis Benedict XVI Breaks His Silence on the Catholic Church’s Sex-Abuse Crisis In a German-language essay published Thursday, the pope emeritus provides a way forward. Edward Pentin VATICAN CITY — In his most significant pronouncement since he resigned the papacy in 2013, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has written a lengthy essay* on clerical sex abuse in which he explains what he sees as the roots of the crisis, the effects it has had on the priesthood, and how the Church should best respond. [emphasis added] Running at just over 6,000 words and to be published April 11 in Klerusblatt, a small-circulation Bavarian monthly, Benedict XVI places the blame mainly on the sexual revolution and a collapse of Catholic moral theology since the Second Vatican Council. This resulted, he argues, in a “breakdown” in the seminary formation that had preceded the Council. Benedict criticizes canon law for initially being insufficient in dealing with the scourge, explains the reforms he introduced to deal with abuse cases, and asserts that “only obedience and love for our Lord Jesus Christ” can lead the Church out of the crisis. The pope emeritus begins his essay, entitled “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse,” by noting that the “extent and gravity” of the abuse crisis has “deeply distressed” priests and laity and “driven more than a few to call into question the very faith of the Church.” Recalling the Vatican’s Feb. 21-24 summit on the protection of minors in the Church, he says it was “necessary” to send out a “strong message” and seek a “new beginning” so the Church could again become “truly credible.” Benedict writes that he compiled notes from the documents and reports from that meeting that culminated in this text, which he says he has shown to Pope Francis and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state. The essay is divided into three parts. The first is an examination of the “wider societal context” of the crisis, in which he says he tries to show that an “egregious event” occurred in the 1960s “on a scale unprecedented in history.” A second section deals with the effects of this on the “formation of priests and on the lives of priests.” And in a third part he develops “some perspectives for a proper response on the part of the Church.” ‘1968 Revolution’ To give an idea of the wider societal context, the Pope Emeritus recalls the “all-out sexual freedom” that followed the “1968 Revolution.” From 1960 to 1980, he says “standards regarding sexuality collapsed entirely,” resulting in a “normlessness” that, despite “laborious attempts,” has not been halted. Drawing primarily on examples from German-speaking Europe, he remembers state-sponsored graphic sex education, lascivious advertising and “sex and pornographic movies” that became a “common occurrence” after 1968. This, in turn, led to violence and aggression, he says, and pedophilia was “diagnosed as allowed and appropriate.” He wondered at the time how young people would approach the priesthood in this environment and says the collapse in vocations and “very high number of laicizations” were a “consequence of all these processes.” At the same time, Catholic moral theology also “suffered a collapse,” he says, rendering the Church “defenseless against these changes in society.” He explains that, until the Second Vatican Council, moral theology was largely founded on natural law, but in the “struggle for a new understanding of Revelation,” the “natural law was largely abandoned, and a moral theology based entirely on the Bible was demanded.” In consequence, Benedict says, no longer could anything be “constituted an absolute good,” but only the “relative” could be “better, contingent on the moment and on circumstances.” This relativistic perspective reached “dramatic proportions” in the late 1980s and 1990s, when documents emerged such as the 1989 “Cologne Declaration,” which dissented from Pope St. John Paul II’s teaching, prompting an “outcry against the Magisterium of the Church.” He recalls how John Paul II tried to stem the crisis in moral theology through his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor and creating the Catechism. But dissenting theologians started applying infallibility only to matters of faith and not to morals, even though, Benedict writes, the Church’s moral teaching is deeply linked to the faith. Those who deny this, he continues, force the Church to remain silent “precisely where the boundary between truth and lies is at stake.” continued... *reference: The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER Pope Emeritus Benedict | April 10, 2019 http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-church-and-the-scandal-of-sexual-abuse
continued from above... Formation Breakdown Turning to the second part of his essay, Benedict says this “long-prepared and ongoing process of dissolution of the Christian concept of morality” led to a “far-reaching breakdown” in priestly formation. He notes how “various seminary homosexual clubs” had a significant impact on seminaries, resulting, in the U.S. at least, in two apostolic visitations that bore little fruit. But he also underlines how changes to the appointment of bishops after Vatican II put an emphasis on “conciliarity,” leading to a “negative attitude” toward tradition — so much so that Benedict says even his own books were “hidden away, like bad literature, and only read under the desk.” Pedophilia did not become “acute” until the late 1980s, he says, but canon law at that time “did not seem sufficient” for dealing with the crime. Rome believed “temporary suspension” was sufficient to “bring about purification and clarification,” but this was not accepted by U.S. bishops dealing with the emerging American clergy abuse crisis, because the alleged abusers were still “directly associated” with their bishop. A “renewal and deepening” of the “deliberately loosely constructed criminal law” of the 1983 Code of Canon law then “slowly” began to take place. Benedict also pinpointed another canonical problem: the Church’s perception of criminal law which so fully guaranteed the accused’s rights that “any conviction” was “factually excluded” — something he describes as “guarantorism.” But Benedict argues that a “properly formed canon law” must contain a “double guarantee” — legal protections for both the accused and the “good at stake,” which he defines as protecting the deposit of faith. The faith “no longer appears” to be a good “requiring protection,” he says, adding it is an “alarming situation” that pastors must take “seriously.” To help overcome this “guarantorism,” Benedict decided with John Paul II to transfer abuse cases from the Congregation for Clergy to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) — a move, he says, that was crucially important to the Church, as such misconduct “ultimately damages the faith” and that enabled “the maximum penalty” to be imposed. But he adds that an aspect of guarantorism rightly remained in force, namely the need for “clear proof of the offense.” To ensure this, and that penalties were lawfully imposed, Benedict says the Holy See would take over investigation of cases if dioceses were “overwhelmed” by the need for a “genuine criminal process.” The possibility for appeal was also provided. But all of that was “beyond the capacities” of the CDF at the time, leading to delays. “Pope Francis has undertaken further reforms,” Benedict notes. What Must Be Done Turning to what needs to be done, Benedict argues that trying to “create another Church” has “already failed” and proceeds to give a catechesis on how the “power of evil arises from our refusal to love God.” He teaches that a world without God “can only be a world without meaning,” without standards of “good or evil,” where “power is the only principle” and “truth does not count.” A society without God “means the end of freedom,” he continues, and Western society is one where “God is absent” and has “nothing left to offer it.” “At individual points it becomes suddenly apparent that what is evil and destroys man has become a matter of course,” Benedict writes. “That is the case with pedophilia. It was theorized only a short time ago as quite legitimate, but it has spread further and further. And now we realize with shock that things are happening to our children and young people that threaten to destroy them. The fact that this could also spread in the Church and among priests ought to disturb us in particular.” Pedophilia reached such proportions, he says, because of the “absence of God,” and he notes how Christians and priests “prefer not to talk about God” and he has “become the private affair of a minority.” Therefore, the “paramount task” is to once again place God in the “center of our thoughts, words and actions,” he says, to be “renewed and mastered by the faith” rather than be “masters of faith.” He says the Second Vatican Council “rightly” focused on returning the real presence of Christ to the center of Christian life, but today a “rather different attitude is prevalent,” one that destroys the “greatness of the Mystery.” This has resulted in declining participation in Sunday Mass, the devaluation of the Eucharist to a “ceremonial gesture,” and the reception of Holy Communion simply as a “matter of course.” “What is required first and foremost is the renewal of the Faith in the Reality of Jesus Christ given to us in the Blessed Sacrament,” Benedict says. “In conversations with victims of pedophilia, I have been made acutely aware of this.” The Indestructible Holy Church He also observes that the Church today is “widely regarded as just some kind of political apparatus,” spoken of in “political categories” as something we must “now take into our own hands and redesign.” But a “self-made Church cannot constitute hope,” he says. Noting that the Church today is and always has been made up of wheat and weeds, of “evil fish” and “good fish,” he says that to proclaim both “is not a false form of apologetics, but a necessary service to the Truth.” But the devil is identified in the Book of Revelation as “the accuser who accuses our brothers before God day and night” because he “wants to prove there are no righteous people.” Today, the accusation against God is “above all about disparaging His Church as bad in its entirety and thus dissuading us from it,” he says. But he stresses that, also today, the Church is “not just made up of bad fish and weeds,” but continues to be the “very instrument” through which God saves us. “It is very important to oppose the lies and half-truths of the devil with the whole truth,” Benedict says. “Yes, there is sin in the Church and evil. But even today there is the Holy Church, which is indestructible.” And he recalls the “many people who humbly believe, suffer and love, in whom the real God, the loving God, shows Himself to us,” as well as “His witnesses (martyres) in the world.” “We just have to be vigilant to see and hear them,” he says, adding that an “inertia of the heart” leads us to “not wish to recognize them” — but recognizing them is essential to evangelization, he says. Benedict closes by thanking Pope Francis “for everything he does to show us, again and again, the light of God, which has not disappeared, even today. Thank you, Holy Father!”
Thank you Carol! This is Yuuuuge! Finally someone in authority, someone who would know, has said that a part of this problem is "homosexual clubs". The H word has been uttered and Pope Emeritus Benedict is not someone who can be disregarded as a crank or an extremist.
Its really such a huge attack on the current system. Pope Benedict promised not to intervene...but now he has entered the battle. He has stated what everyone already knows. And mentioning Satan is on the loose is very important. Interesting Time! Bro al
P., You're welcome! And I thank earthtoangels for posting the article about this which prompted me to look for more information about it. I quickly checked Edward Pentin's twitter page and he had just posted the article containing Pope Benedict's essay. I believe that this is "Yuuuuge!" too and I wonder if we could in fact be witnessing the fruition of Saint Don Bosco's "200 Day March Prophecy" since we did experience a month with two full moons last March, 2018. You might remember Father Richard Heilman writing about this multiple times. The prophecy actually speaks of a 400 day march and a rainbow of peace appearing before the second full moon appears in the month of flowers. This sign announces "Iniquity is at an end, sin shall cease" some time soon in the future, I suppose. Well, it just so happens that 400 days ago from today is the date of March 7, 2018 and the second full moon appeared on March 31, 2018. Could it be the time to sing the Te Deum? I hope so. In addition, part of the prophecy reads as follows: "The Pontiff accepted the banner gladly, but he became very distressed to see how few were his followers. "But the two angels went on: 'Go now, comfort your children. Write to your brothers scattered throughout the world that men must reform their lives." ref. http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/BOSCODRM.HTM This is part of Pope Benedict's essay: "God is regarded as the party concern of a small group and can no longer stand as the guiding principle for the community as a whole. This decision reflects the situation in the West, where God has become the private affair of a minority. A paramount task, which must result from the moral upheavals of our time, is that we ourselves once again begin to live by God and unto Him. Above all, we ourselves must learn again to recognize God as the foundation of our life instead of leaving Him aside as a somehow ineffective phrase." ref. http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-church-and-the-scandal-of-sexual-abuse Edited to add: This is just one of 9 tweets from Edward Pentin about Pope Benedict's essay, 7 tweets linking the essay itself and 2 tweets linking Pentin's article about it. https://twitter.com/EdwardPentin/status/1116117958772830208 It is also somewhat interesting that Pope Benedict chose April 11th to share this essay. April 11th is the feast day of Saint Stanislaus the Martyr, a Eucharistic Martyr from Poland. Imo, Pope Benedict has also restated the messages of Our Lady of Garabandal in his essay. For instance, one major example of "Less and less importance is being given to the Eucharist." is the following excerpt from Pope Benedict's essay: Let us consider this with regard to a central issue, the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Our handling of the Eucharist can only arouse concern. The Second Vatican Council was rightly focused on returning this sacrament of the Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, of the Presence of His Person, of His Passion, Death and Resurrection, to the center of Christian life and the very existence of the Church. In part, this really has come about, and we should be most grateful to the Lord for it. And yet a rather different attitude is prevalent. What predominates is not a new reverence for the presence of Christ’s death and resurrection, but a way of dealing with Him that destroys the greatness of the Mystery. The declining participation in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration shows how little we Christians of today still know about appreciating the greatness of the gift that consists in His Real Presence. Lastly, this the eve of the apparitions of Our Lady Of Revelation at Tre Fontane which first occurred on April 12th, 1947. Because of everything that is occurring right now, I am reminded of this today.
Some thoughts from yours truly: Sections from Benedict followed by brief responses in italics: Faith is a journey and a way of life. In the old Church, the catechumenate was created as a habitat against an increasingly demoralized culture, in which the distinctive and fresh aspects of the Christian way of life were practiced and at the same time protected from the common way of life. I think that even today something like catechumenal communities are necessary so that Christian life can assert itself in its own way. As opposed to Francis’ recent cosmopolitan approach to youth ministry. In the end, it was chiefly the hypothesis that morality was to be exclusively determined by the purposes of human action that prevailed. While the old phrase “the end justifies the means” was not confirmed in this crude form, its way of thinking had become definitive. Consequently, there could no longer be anything that constituted an absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; [there could be] only relative value judgments. There no longer was the [absolute] good, but only the relatively better, contingent on the moment and on circumstances. How about AL's ideals? Indeed, in many parts of the Church, conciliar attitudes were understood to mean having a critical or negative attitude towards the hitherto existing tradition, which was now to be replaced by a new, radically open relationship with the world. One bishop, who had previously been seminary rector, had arranged for the seminarians to be shown pornographic films, allegedly with the intention of thus making them resistant to behavior contrary to the faith. Oh, boy, open relationship with the world! Perhaps it is worth mentioning that in not a few seminaries, students caught reading my books were considered unsuitable for the priesthood. My books were hidden away, like bad literature, and only read under the desk. Surprise, surprise! A balanced canon law that corresponds to the whole of Jesus’ message must therefore not only provide a guarantee for the accused, the respect for whom is a legal good. It must also protect the Faith, which is also an important legal asset. A properly formed canon law must therefore contain a double guarantee — legal protection of the accused, legal protection of the good at stake. If today one puts forward this inherently clear conception, one generally falls on deaf ears when it comes to the question of the protection of the Faith as a legal good. In the general awareness of the law, the Faith no longer appears to have the rank of a good requiring protection. This is an alarming situation which must be considered and taken seriously by the pastors of the Church. Yes! Protection of the Deposit of Faith! Today’s Church is more than ever a “Church of the Martyrs” and thus a witness to the living God. If we look around and listen with an attentive heart, we can find witnesses everywhere today, especially among ordinary people, but also in the high ranks of the Church, who stand up for God with their life and suffering. It is an inertia of the heart that leads us to not wish to recognize them. One of the great and essential tasks of our evangelization is, as far as we can, to establish habitats of Faith and, above all, to find and recognize them. I am glad Benedict mentions this idea of habitats because in the just prior paragraphs he reminded us that the Church consists of wheat and weeds. How do we separate without damaging the wheat? Our little MOG might be one of those habitats. But we need to cultivate cenacles in our own locales, too! Safe in the Barque of Peter!
