Just in case Fr. Blake does not choose to publish my comment, I'll put it up here.
(What is it with these nervous nellie British bloggers and their comment moderation? Sheesh, if someone is rude to you in the commbox, just kick him out! Comment moderation is like driving with the hand brake on.)
Fr. Blake wrote,
The Ordinary Form, which most of the Church will use this Good Friday, says nothing of conversion or of encounter with Christ, it expresses the new teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Old Covenants of the the Old Testament have not be replaced by the New and Everlasting Covenant of Christ but they are still in force. It strikes me that up until the Council exactly the opposite was universal teaching of the Church.
He calls the Bugnini intercessions part of the "slow organic development" of the liturgy. But I believe this is untrue. I believe that it is part of the rather rapid capitulation of the Church to the world's demand that we abandon the Faith, in favour of making friends with the world. It is certainly clear that Benedict has not done this because of any real theological growth in understanding, but under political pressure. I had thought better of him, but there it is.
Fr. Blake goes on to say, rather vaguely, I thought,
which expresses more accurately the Church's current teaching? Is it the one I will use this Good Friday or the new one in the Extraordinary Form?
It might well be that we just have live with ambiguity for a few years but the different expressions of theology highlight a significant problem.
Yeah, I'd say that a contradiction and denial of a tenet of the Faith by an ecumenical council is "a significant problem" all right.
Every year, the Good Friday intercessions, or I should say, lack of intercessions, particularly over the idea of conversion of Jews, pagans, heretics and the fallen away, are the thing the Church does that brings me closest to believing the sedevacantists are right.
That you have confirmed (again) that the Church after the Council teaches something opposed to what it did before the Council, just brings it all rushing back. The Church cannot promulgate error. Two opposed ideas cannot both be true. If the Church taught before the Council that the Old Covenant has been replaced with the New and now teaches the opposite, then we have quite a little problem, don't we?
Going with the principle of non-contradiction, there are only a few logical possibilities open to us.
1 - what was taught before the Council was wrong. this would mean that the Church, in this most fundamental area of the Faith, was wrong for 1965 years. That our Faith is, as Paul said, futile.
2 - what was taught before the Council was right and the documents of V-II have negated and denied it. This leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that V-II was wrong and that everything that has been changed to conform to it has been a deviation from the truth.
Neither of these is very nice, but I know which I think more likely.
Big lies require a lot of maintenance. I have observed in political systems that when a group or country bases its political work on a Big Lie (legal abortion, for example) the longer the lie is maintained, the greater a percentage of your resources must be diverted to maintaining it, you start, in the case of abortion, with the judiciary, then Parliament, then you co-opt the medical establishment, then the media, then education.
The same has happened in the Church. We have had the Big Vatican II, Novus Ordo lie for 40 years. In that time, nearly every aspect of Catholic life has been re-ordered to support it, liturgy, charitable works, catechesis, education, religious life, Catholic involvement in the public square. All these Catholic institutions, the very heart of Catholic life, have been dedicated to the two-fold lie that the Church does not teach what she teaches, and that the calamity that has arisen in the wake of the first lie has not actually happened. (I don't know which part of John Paul II's pontificate irritated me the most, but the constant chirpily cheerful denial that anything serious was going wrong, is a contender.)
I have long believed that Catholicism and Novus Ordoism or Vaticantooism, are different and opposed religious beliefs.
And the Good Friday intercessions have gone a long way to bolstering that belief.
I have managed thus far to withstand the tension it creates, but I have also just moved out of my Oratorian comfort zone to live in the vast and poisonous wasteland that is British Catholicism. Not sure how well it is going to hold up now.
6 comments:
You forget to mention a third possibility, that the contradiction is only apparent and not real.
First of all, don't think for a second that I favour the NO prayer for the Jews, BUT
In as much as the church has always taught that elements of truth (but not salvation) exist outside the Church (recently, for example, I was reading a speech of St Basil the Great (in Greek) to some nephews where he advised them to read the pagan authors and glean the good that is found in them, like bees who go from flower to flower, taking only what is good and necessary for making their honey)
in asking that the Jews "first to hear the word of God" (which is a fact) may "grow in love of his name
" (nothing wrong with that) and "in faithfulness to his covenant"--ok here is the problem.
It either means that the Old Covenant has not been superceded (which would be heresy) or that whatever truth is present in what they believe, through docility and humility, may bring them to the fulness of the truth.
It has to mean the second, even if the people who wrote prayer really meant the first.
As to why I am a bit peeved with the Holy Father, it is not because he changed the prayer, but that he didn't impose the 'new one' on the whole church, especially the Novus Ordo. I am happy with the change because it will allow some people at an undisclosed location to celebrate the authentic Holy Week liturgy that doesn't include the many Buggerini permutations in the 1962 which already prefigure the NO.
There are quite a few more available, in fact.
But blog entries ought to be short.
(in Greek)
stop bragging.
I hadn't realised you were this Hilary, with the excellent blog.
I have com.mod. stop a whole list of things, mostly far right racism and extreme Islamism both of which I have had in the past, as well as bits of pornography, but certainly not to stop anyone who wants to makimg a strong point.
Modcom might be a bit nervy British and nelliefied but there are times I don't get to the pc for hours.
well, your system is better than Fr. Tim's who seems to do it himself, but only when he gets the time. The only thing I object to is that it makes it very difficult to have the sort of interesting back and forth that makes blogs fun.
Of course, this might be the very resason he does it. Not everyone relishes a bit of verbal fisticuffs before tea time.
Hi Hilary
I'm sorry but Fr Blake is simply wrong about some alleged "new teaching" on the Old Covenant.
If he can cite an actual text from Vatican II to support his statement, I'd really like to see it. If he can, I'll accept his highly unlikely assertion. Otherwise, I'll assume this is yet another case of Vatican II "hand-waving".
Julian
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