Saturday, October 20, 2018

Museum piece Catholicism



Limbo is nearly defunct. The official softening up exercise is well under way.

After Vatican II there are basically three factions: liberals, RadTrad/sedevacantists, and "respectable" mainstream conservatives (e.g. Robert George, Ryan Anderson, George Weigel). The Francis pontificate has a clarifying effect by forcing mainstream conservatives to either join the winning side or begin adopting the harmonistic strategies of the RadTrads.

The RadTrads are half-right. But it's a dilemma. RadTrads wax nostalgic for museum piece Catholicism. They cling wistfully to a version of Catholicism representing Pius IX, St. Alphonsus Liguori, the Rosary, the Roman Catechism, Fatima, and Eucharistic adoration. (An oversimplification, but you get the point.)

It is, however, arbitrary to make older magisterial pronouncements as the yardstick to measure newer magisterial pronouncements. Ad hoc to make older magisterial pronouncements more authoritative than newer magisterial pronouncements. The logical response is to conclude that the underlying paradigm is fatally flawed. The ideal of a divine teaching office is a romantic fiction, falsified by history. 

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