Resources For Addressing The Papacy

The papacy has been getting a lot of attention lately, because of the Pope's death. Go here for a brief summary of some of the evidence against the papacy. The main section of the post is just two paragraphs long, summarizing some problems with Roman Catholic appeals to Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16 and several contexts in which there could have been evidence for an early papacy, but the office is absent or contradicted instead. And here's a collection of many of our posts on the papacy, including lengthier discussions of the issues summarized in the first post linked above.

So you don't need to confess to a priest after all!

https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/francis-chronicles/if-you-cant-go-confession-take-your-sorrow-directly-god-pope-says

Roman or Catholic?

An Unsettled Tension 
One of the roles of the pope has always been the maintenance of the balance between the Roman and the Catholic dimensions. Roman Catholicism is the ongoing tension between two fundamental aspects of the whole: the Roman side, with its emphasis on centralized authority, pyramidal structure, binding teaching and the rigidity of canon law; and the Catholic side, with its emphasis on the universal outlook, the absorption of ideas and cultures and the inclusive embrace of practices into the Catholic whole. The resulting system is Roman Catholicism, at the same time Roman and Catholic. The human genius of Roman Catholicism and one of the reasons for its survival across the centuries has been its ability to be both, though not without tensions and risks of disruption.

Popes embody the Roman Catholic synthesis by holding together the Roman apparatus and the Catholic vision. Of course, they each do it differently, especially after the Second Vatican Council. John Paul II, for example, was a very Roman pope but at the same time a very Catholic one. For example, he strongly defended traditional Roman Catholic teaching (e.g. by launching the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church), but was second to none in promoting the universality of this Church around the world (e.g. inter-religious dialogue, traveling globally). Unlike John Paul II, who was both Roman and Catholic, Benedict XVI made the pendulum swing over the Roman pole. With his staunch conservativism in areas such as liturgy, morality and the critical relationship with the secular world, Benedict appeared to be more Roman than Catholic. He seemed to be a rigid, centripetal, doctrinaire pope. A Roman pope. Many felt that his papacy, while strong in its Roman centredness and boundaries, was weak in its Catholic breadth and warmth.

This criticism helps explain why a pope like Francis was chosen to succeed him. With the election of Pope Francis, Rome seemed to be wanting the pendulum to move in the opposite direction in order to re-address the balance. Distancing himself from many Roman features of the office (e.g. his refusal of the pomp of the Vatican Curia, his blurred teaching that leans away from official teachings), Francis has embodied the role of a very Catholic pope. His stress on “Who are we to judge?”, universal brotherhood with Muslims and other religions,ecological concerns, etc. made his papacy significantly shaped by the Catholic elements. The open-endedness of his teaching, coupled with the ambiguity of his language, has created some interest in the secular West, which resonates with much of what he says on social issues. This is to say that he is a very Catholic pope. Perhaps too Catholic andtoo little Roman for a growing number of Roman Catholics!

http://vaticanfiles.org/en/2020/02/vf172/

Sin against ecology

There is no such thing as a "sin against ecology"

There are sins that have a particular impact on the ecology and environment

There are sinful ideas whose impact on the environment is better understood over time.

Nobody actually reads the modern catechism.

Wait and breathe

— Kevin Tierney (@CatholicSmark) November 16, 2019

True, there's no such thing as a sin against ecology. However, Rome has been inventing sins for centuries, so this is just the latest in a string of new, hitherto unsuspected sins. Rome first invents a nonexistent sin, then invents the nonexistent authority to absolve the nonexistent sin. The perfect racket. That's been a thriving business, so why stop now?

Even making allowance for hyperbole, surely the CCC is for many observance Catholics the go-to reference work on official Catholic teaching. 

RadTrads are the new cafeteria Catholics

Another alternative is a conservatism that simply resolves the apparent conflict between tradition and papal power in favor of the latter, submitting its private judgment to papal authority in 19th-century style — even if that submission requires accepting shifts on sex, marriage, celibacy and other issues that look awfully like the sort of liberal Protestantism that the 19th-century popes opposed. This would be a conservatism of structure more than doctrine, as suggested by the title of a website that champions its approach: “Where Peter Is.” But it would still need, for its long-term coherence, an account of how doctrine can and cannot change beyond just papal fiat. So it, too, awaits clarifications that this papacy has conspicuously not supplied.

The plain fact is, a pope like Francis was not supposed to happen. Everybody knows that there have been bad popes — most notoriously, the popes of the Renaissance, in particular Alexander VI Borgia — but it has also been the case that however personally corrupt they might have been, they did not change Catholic doctrine. No one argues seriously that Francis is personally corrupt, but there is certainly reason to believe that he is either changing doctrine, either de facto or indirectly, by virtue of changing the disciplines of the Church, and allowing disfavored doctrines to wither on the vine.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/what-about-the-protestant-catholics/

RadTrads following in the footsteps of the Protestant Reformers

https://mereorthodoxy.com/traditionalist-catholics-protestants/

Faithful Catholics waiting for the bus that never comes

Dutifully they go to the same bus stop everyday, but that route was discontinued:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/09/opinion/sunday/conservative-catholic.html

Coming home to Mother Church

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPgBS8ioM_Q

That moment when you realize, in midflight, that you boarded the wrong plane

For the first time since my conversion to the Catholic faith I don’t think if I was an Anglican now I would have bothered converting. Don’t get me wrong I’d never go back to Anglicanism.. but I don’t think that if I was an Anglican now I’d see the point of being a Catholic. 1/2

— Fr David Palmer (@FrDavidPalmer) October 26, 2019

The populist RadTrad insurgency

The Francis pontificate has reignited the RadTrad movement. This is primarily a grass-roots insurgency, with a few impotent, aging prelates on their side. It's made possible by the Internet. The RadTrad movement is a virtual church–or counter-church. The electronic alternative to official Catholicism. It's like the Essenes who broke off from the religious establishment in Jerusalem and formed alternate Jewish communities in the desert. A separatist movement. 

The RadTrad movement has been around, in fits and starts, since Vatican II. These divisions were already represented at Vatican II, in conference rooms as well as floor debates in St. Peter's Basilica. 

Ironically, most RadTrads were born after Vatican II. They're like the first-generation kids of Muslim immigrants who self-radicalize in the host country. 

But here's another thing: the rise of spokesmen like Taylor Marshall is also made possible by the silence of "respectable" conservatives like Bryan Cross. Called to Communion is the nexus of bliss (Trekkies take note) into which converts and apologists like him retreat. The nexus of bliss exists outside the space-time continuum of Catholicism on the ground. It's all about Catholic ideas. Catholicism on gilt-edge vellum. 

The problem is that when "respectable" conservatives like Cross sit out the debate, that creates an opening for spokesmen like Taylor. Francis has plunged his church into civil war. When apologists like Cross refuse to take sides or offer a mediating position, that leaves a vacuum which is filled by Taylor and his ilk. He is giving voice to the concerns of many of the faithful. 

Presumably, the reason Cross says nothing is that, like many converts and apologists, he doesn't know what to say. Surely he finds some of the developments under Francis alarming or dismaying, but he doesn't know for sure where that will end up. 

Many Catholic apologists initially defended Francis. They made excuses for him. But when the direction of his pontificate become unmistakably clear, they fell silent. By vacating the field, RadTrad warriors like Marshall moved in. 

It's hard for Catholic conservatives to criticize the likes of Marshall when they have no constructive alternative. Sure, they can attack his explanation, but that's not a substitute for having their own explanation. Although the nexus of bliss is a comfortable hideout, it fails to answer the pressing question of what it still means to be Catholic when the ground is shifting under their feet. 

Dying illusions

Taylor Marshall is a zealous convert to Catholicism. A founding member of Called to Communion. He's highly educated. And he's having a crisis of faith in Catholicism. The tensions between traditional Catholicism and the Francis pontificate have reached a breaking point. Watch 45-50 min:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI7KKPpI4G4

He's practically in tears. It's like the disillusionment of a devoted teenage son who worships the ground his father walks on until he covers that his dad has been cheating on mom for years. Consider some of the questions he directs at Francis: 

Do you believe every verse of the Bible as coming from the Holy Ghost? When the Bible recounts miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ, do you believe those are historical miracles? 

Problem is, when was the last pope who believed all that? I think you might have to go all the way back to Pius X. 

In another respect, Taylor is like parents who can't bring themselves to believe that their child is lying to them about a drug habit, despite unmistakable evidence. "No, not our child!"

Marshall has been in denial about Catholicism for years.  He closed his eyes to all the evidence that the Catholicism he fell in love with isn't the same Catholicism as post-Vatican II Catholicism. 

A classic example of wanting too much for something to be true. You keep making excuses until you finally get tired of making excuses. You were loyal to something or someone that didn't reciprocate your loyalty. 

He feels betrayed. I'm sorry, but if you've been a willful sucker, then you're not entitled to feel betrayed. I assume he used to be Anglo-Catholic, and it comes as no surprise when Anglo-Catholics convert to Roman Catholicism. Anglo-Catholics are like a shivering beggar peering through the window of the palace at the dinner hall, with the roaring fire and tables piled with food. 

I'd hasten to add that something like this can happen to anyone. It takes different forms. 

I've been publicly defending Christianity for 15 years. I've been defending inerrancy for 15 years. Someone might accuse me of trying too hard to make it work.

But there's a major difference. On the one hand, there's abundant evidence for Christianity–with nothing remotely comparable for Catholicism in particular. 

On the other hand, there is no feasible alternative to Christianity. Christianity is necessary to ground morality, modality, reason, and meaning. If you don't have that, you don't have anything. There's nothing to work with. 

At the moment Taylor seems to be on the brink of sedevacantism. But where does that road end? Consider the cautionary tale of Gerry Matatics. When was the last time he attended Mass? To have valid sacraments, you must have validly ordained priests, and once sedevacantism starts tugging at the loose strand of yarn, the whole fabric begins to unravel. 

As I've often said, you can't keep patching up a fatally flawed paradigm. You have to admit to yourself that it can't be fixed, and scrap it for a different paradigm. 

The authority conundrum

There are Catholics who love love love love ecclesiastical authority…until they find themselves on the wrong end of the authority whip they profess to love. They taunt evangelicals with formulaic questions like, "What's your authority for that interpretation? and "What's your authority for the canon?" (BTW, there's nothing wrong with asking how Protestants justify the canon or justify their theology, but casting the issue in terms of ecclesiastical authority begs the question.)

So long as ecclesiastical authority is on their side, they can never speak too highly of the pope's authority or "the Church's" authority. When, however, the ground shifts under their feet and they find themselves on the losing side of ecclesiastical authority, their love affair with papal authority or the Magisterium cools to temperatures approaching absolute zero. 

Watching RadTrads and avant-garde Catholics duke it out is kinda like watching the fight between fundamentalist Mormon polygamists and mainstream Mormons. Within the Mormon paradigm, both sides are right and both sides are wrong. Outside the Mormon paradigm, both sides are hopelessly wrong.

With pardonable hyperbole, we might say that for RadTrads, tradition ends with Pius X, but for avant-garde Catholics, tradition begins with Pius XII. RadTrads have the past while their adversaries have the future. But the team with a lock on the future is unbeatable. Living leaders have a decisive advantage over dead leaders. The living can overrule the dead while the dead are poorly positioned to overrule the living. 

It's especially ironic to see converts to Rome attempt to school cradle Catholics and even bishops, cardinals, and popes on true Catholicism. They're like slumlords who buy an apartment complex, then discover that they bought a dog. It's falling apart. The roof needs to be replaced. The plumbing needs to be replaced. The electrical wiring needs to be replaced. The complex is infested with rats and termites.

Playing church

Now, of the anti-Catholic Protestants blogs out there, they all seem to attack the Church from different angles.  Steve seems to like to constantly beat the drum of modernism in the church.  With Taylor Marshall’s book out(which I reviewed on my last post), he naturally used this as an opportunity to bring up the liberal and sodomite control of large portions of the Church.

But why do I stay when my church is full of liberal and sodomite clergy?  Let me use a Biblical analogy since you’re a believer in Sola Scriptura.  In the Old Testament, we read about the Kingdom of Israel in the time of Elijah.  We know that at one point there were only 7,000 of the Israelites who kept the faith.  

Can you imagine an Egyptian passing through the land and talking to one of these 7,000?  He would probably ask the Israelite why he continues to follow the religion of Moses since 99.9% of the nation didn’t believe in it anymore.  Well Steve, I should point out that the Israelite and I would have the same answer for why we stay in our respective faiths.  I’m sure that Israelite didn’t like the corruption and false teachings floating around his faith anymore than I do.  I think you’ve figured out the reason by now.

http://allanruhl.com/an-open-letter-to-steve-of-triablogue-why-i-stay-catholic/

Several issues:

i) Catholicism is a target-rich environment. There are so many defeaters for Catholicism. I myself critique the Catholic church from multiple angles. 

ii) To judge by his recommending reading list, as well as his glowing review of Taylor Marshall's Infiltrated, Ruhl is a RadTrad or sedevacantist:

http://allanruhl.com/recommended-reading/

Look at how retrograde his recommended books are. Nothing by modern popes, modern Catholic theologians or mainstream Catholic Bible scholars. One recent book by Pitre, which relies heavily on Protestant schlarship.  He's out of step with where his denomination is. He's clinging to a defunct version of Catholicism. 

iii) Before we get to his analogy, there are principles that are much more directly germane to evaluating his denomination than OT analogies. For instance, consider what the Pastoral Epistles have to say about the moral and theological qualifications for church office. By that standard, priests and prelates who fail to meet the moral and theological qualifications for church office are thereby disqualified. If so, where does that leave most of the contemporary priesthood and hierarchy?

iv) In Rev 2-4, Jesus threatens the remove the light, the Menorah, from churches that stray too far. If you study the descriptions of the threatened churches, they are certainly no worse that the contemporary Catholic church.

v) What about his OT analogy? If, on the one hand you have a denomination dominated by liberals and sodomites while, on the other hand, you have one or more denominations that don't suffer from that pernicious dominance, you'd naturally regard the 7,000 faithful as members of the denominations that don't suffer from that pernicious dominance rather than the denomination which does. So his comparison backfires. 

vi) In OT times, the Mosaic Covenant was the touchstone. And the Mosaic Covenant was unalterable. By contrast, Catholic dogma/doctrine and ethics don't exist in airtight containers hermeneutically sealed off from the theology and lifestyle of the hierarchy. To the contrary, the members of the magisterium are moral and doctrinal policymakers. If you have a denomination that's increasingly controlled by liberals and sodomites in key leadership positions, they will change church teaching to realign it with their theology and lifestyle. And that process has been going on for about 80 years in the Catholic church, beginning with the pontificate of Pius XII. 

What are the faithful supposed to be faithful to? In Catholicism, the magisterium is the final arbiter of moral and doctrinal fidelity. The laity can't routinely act in defiance of the pope and episcopate.  In Catholicism, the laity aren't supposed to be autonomous. The hierarchy occupies the driver's seat while the laity occupy the back seat. They go whoever they are driven. If they open the door and jump out because they disapprove of the direction the hierarchy is taking the church in, they've abandoned the institutional church. In Catholicism, you can't be independent of the institutional church and still be a good Catholic. The hierarchy is the ultimate interpreter of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. 

vii) Like many RadTrad or sedevacantists, he's smitten by the mystique of Catholicism rather than the reality–like neo-Confederates who pine for the Antebellum South. The cult of the "noble lost cause". The cult of Robert E. Lee. RadTrads are playacting in a period piece, like dressing up in Confederate uniforms and reciting hortations by Jefferson Davis. 

Abuse of papal altar boys

Goes from bad to worse:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-vigano-testimony-vatican-covered-up-allegations-of-sexual-abuse-of-popes-altar-boys

The Vedek conclave

Michael Voris

DS9 Tribune

Reporting from the Vedek conclave on Bajor. Until he withdrew his name from consideration, in a shocking last-minute move, it was a contest between Vedek Bareil and Vedek Winn to be the next kai. The Vedek conclave has been sharply divided. On the one hand the Sedekaist faction, led by Vedeks Taylor, Sungenis, and Matatics, regard former Kais Meressa and Opaka as anti-kais. And they view Vedek Bareil, Opaka's protégé, as another anti-kai in the making. Meressa, Opaka, and Bareil reflect the modernist wing of the Vedek order, viewing the Celestial temple as nothing but a glorified wormhole and the "Prophets" as extraterrestrials rather than gods. Vedek Bareil's candidacy was championed by Vedeks Martin and Barron.

By contrast, Vedek Winn is the RadTrad candidate. They revere the Celestial Temple as the One True Temple. They venerate the Prophets as deities who reveal their will through the mystical orb. They've championed Vedek Winn's candidacy. As Vedek Taylor explained to me in an exclusive interview, the Bajorian faith has been infiltrated by alien influences like the Cardassians and a human Emissary. But as an outspoken xenophobe, Vedek Winn is eager to purge the Vedek order of foreign contaminants. And now that she's running unopposed, they seem to have the upper hand.

For his part, Bajoran liaison Kira Douthat is conflicted, not feeling at home with either side. On the one hand he's not a Bajoran fundamentalist. On the other hand, he's sympathetic to the Sedekaist prognosis that the modernist wing of the Vedek order will steadily demythologize the Bajoran faith to the point where it's indistinguishable from Gene Roddenberry's secular humanism. But straddling fence is a pain in the crotch, so maintaining that posture becomes increasingly untenable.

Hans Küng triumphant

Taylor Marshall's new book (Infiltration) is a flash in the pan. However, it highlights the fact that the ongoing debate between the RadTrads and mainstream Catholics is insoluble because both sides are right and both sides are wrong. Both sides appeal to the same flawed template. Within that template, there's no solution.

On the one hand, mainstream Catholics are right that Vatican II is here to stay. More broadly, since Pius XII, there have been irreversible changes in the direction of Catholic theology. Mainstream Catholics are on the winning side. RadTrads are fighting a futile, rearguard action. The vision of Catholicism they wish to revive is defunct. 

On the other hand, the RadTrads are right in pointing out that post-Vatican II Catholicism is, in key respects, a different religion from Tridentine Catholicism or anti-modernist Catholicism. In addition, having a clergy increasingly dominated by sodomites, including sodomites at the helm of policymaking positions, will inevitably change the direction of their denomination. As it stands, the Catholic church is undergoing inexorable theological drift. 

Both sides cherry-pick what Catholic sources they privilege as authoritative. They pluck their sources from different cherry trees in the Catholic orchard. 

You can see the divisions in the diverse reaction of Catholic apologists and academics:

1. Some Catholic apologists and academics openly and defiantly excoriate Pope Francis and his entourage. 

2. Some Catholic apologists privately feel the same way, but have retreated into silence, holding their breath that a heavenly Hail Mary pass will reverse the situation. 

3. Some Catholic apologists have become doglike defenders of the Francis pontificate. They understand that they will put themselves out of business if they simultaneously champion Catholicism in theory while they tear it down in practice. But behind the scenes, they must also realize that they are gambling on the Catholic church not becoming a clone of the ECUSA. What if they lose the bet? Do they have an escape route if the process of liberalization continues apace?

4. Some Catholic academics are delighted with the direction of the Francis pontificate. They are unabashed modernists. They want the Catholic church to become a clone of the ECUSA. 

What we're seeing under the Francis pontificate is the belated triumph of Hans Küng. At one time he was on the losing side of the battle. Banished to Siberia. Now, however, the balance of power has shifted. He's been rehabilitated. His vision has been reinstated. He's having the last laugh. Although it hasn't gone as far as he'd like, it's tilting in his direction. He lost the sprint but he's winning the marathon. 

The astroturf is greener on the other side

While Marshall does not deny the promise of Christ to be with the Church, the alleged success of the endless conspiracies and infiltrations he recounts are sufficient to undermine any reasonable confidence in these promises, or at least to confuse inessentials with the essentials which are guaranteed—which amounts to the same thing. To his credit, at the end of the book, the author considers the various responses we might make to his extravagant claims, and he rightly concludes that any proposed solution which suggests that the Church does not remain intact, or that we no longer have a true pope or true cardinals and bishops, must be rejected in favor of simple resistance to the evils that now appear to dominate the Church. But he is unwilling to allow even those modern popes who have already been canonized to instruct him or his readers on what the key evils are. Instead, he must cling to his private judgment, his conspiracies and his plots to prove that everything he personally dislikes has arisen through a devious orchestrated manipulation by particular evil groups.

https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=773

That's an ironic and trenchant observation. But what Mirus fails to take into account is that this reflects the bitter disillusionment of a convert. For instance, it's surely not coincidental that Marshall used to be an Episcopal priest. Dismayed with his own denomination, he thought he was escaping that mess by switching sides. But he walks smack into the same mess ahead of him, in the road to Rome, that he thought he put behind him. During the puppy love stage of his conversion under Benedict XVI, he was blind to the same currents coursing through the church of Rome. But the Francis pontificate has exposed all that and accelerated the trends. Marshall meets it coming and going. An idealistic convert belatedly mugged by Catholic reality, once the puppy love stage wore off, and the sense of betrayal kicked in.

Salvaging Catholicism

1. Taylor Marshall's new book (Infiltration) shines a spotlight on the dilemma facing Catholic conservatives. Many Catholic conservatives view the moral and theological implosion of Catholicism under Pope Francis with alarm bordering on panic. But if you think the Catholic church is the indefectible Bride of Christ, then you can't say the source of the problem originates in Catholicism, since that would imply that Catholicism suffers from a design flaw. 

So one face-saving apologetic strategy is to say the source of the problem comes from outside forces, foreign to Catholicism. It's like the alien invasion trope in science fiction where extraterrestrials conquer the human race, not through a full-frontal assault, but by quietly replacing humans, especially in positions of leadership, with look-alike aliens. By the time humans catch on to the ruse, it's too late. The aliens outnumber them or control all the levers of power. 

However, the problem with that apologetic strategy is that if forces alien to Catholicism sneak into the organization and systematically supplant members of the hierarchy and priesthood, then Catholicism loses its original identity. It ceases to be the church founded by Jesus. This is especially destructive to an organization whose doctrinal vision is defined from the top down. 

2. Catholics like Taylor have a grand theory. I think many other Catholic conservatives are simply hoping against hope that the worst won't happen. Their response is to stay the course in the desperate conviction that God will divert the asteroid before a theological cataclysm. Or, to vary the metaphor, they won't push the button on the ejection seat until the last possible moment. If the Catholic church really is the undetectable Bride of Christ, then it's inconceivable that God will allow the asteroid to maintain a collision course right up to the point of impact.

However, a problems with that pragmatic policy is that it leaves them with no contingency plans if their faith in Catholicism is misplaced. If they preemptively discount the Protestant faith as a viable fallback option, what's left? Some will flee to Eastern orthodoxy, but that suffers from the grass is greener on the other side syndrome. Moreover, Catholic apologists present Catholicism in such totalistic terms that for some Catholicism, to falsify Catholicism falsifies Christianity. 

3. The crisis is generated by a changing church. When theology and Christian ethics undergo sea-change, that raises the question of what is true. If past teaching is false, why think new teaching is true? If past teaching is false, that means the source of teaching can't be trusted. Over the centuries, the Catholic church has been changed by the times and places in which it finds itself. 

The Protestant faith doesn't have the same problem. Unlike the Catholic church, the Bible doesn't change. What we've got is all we're gonna get. Protestants have their own intellectual challenges, although I don't think those are formidable, but Catholics face a different kind of challenge. They are using a mutable ruler. Yesterday's ruler is longer or shorter than tomorrow's ruler. The standards keep changing. So what's the standard to distinguish truth from falsehood? 

Out with the old and in with the new

https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2019/05/23/pope-francis-church-must-learn-abandon-old-traditions/

Francis is an anti-pope!

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/prominent-clergy-scholars-accuse-pope-francis-of-heresy-in-open-letter

If Pope Francis is a heretic, that means the "throne of Peter" is vacant. The One True Church® is rudderless. Adrift. The skipper is an anti-pope who's taken the barque of St. Peter off-course.

Now we just need to turn this into a movie about superheroes who parachute in to rescue the One True Church® before she heads over the waterfall. Nail-biting suspense.