Excerpts from the post-synodal exhortation “Amoris Lætitia”. “Roman Catholics may agree to disagree … not that there’s anything wrong with that!”

Quoting from the document itself:

3. Since “time is greater than space”, I would make it clear that not all discussions of doctrinal, moral or pastoral issues need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium. Unity of teaching and practice is certainly necessary in the Church, but this does not preclude various ways of interpreting some aspects of that teaching or drawing certain consequences from it. […] Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs.

So, Kasper gets his way. The German bishops will be able to “seek solutions better suited to their culture” without having to consult the Magisterium. Strikingly, “Pope Francis” finds an ally in Aquinas:

Catholic Left, Catholic Right Unite in One Voice: “Only We Have the Correct ‘Interpretation’ of Papal Teaching”

George Weigel, in “First Things”:

Things That Can’t Change

The pope cannot, in other words, change the deposit of faith, of which he is the custodian, not the master. The pope can’t decide that the Church can do without bishops, or that there really are eleven sacraments, or that Arius had it right in denying the divinity of Christ. As for those “other obligations too numerous to mention,” they include the pope’s accountability to the ways things are, which is another boundary to papal authority.

Michael Sean Winters at “National Catholic Reporter”:

At First Things, George Weigel makes the case that the pope really can’t do very much, an argument he never really made when his hero John Paul II was sitting on the papal throne. His key argument is contained here:

This Week in the News: all “Pope Francis”, all the time

And George “I Had Dinner With The Pope” Weigel is going to be on-point for the news coverage. Anyone who thinks I have a one-track mind in “bashing” the papacy ought to consider this kind of news coverage that a pope generates on a regular basis:

Note to National Review: The Real Lesson of “Vatican Diplomacy”

“Pope John Paul the Great” presided over the largest institutionalized cover-up of a sex-abuse scandal in history; this is an unspoken fact that has consequences.

If National Review wants to show that it is presenting some kind of “conservative moral message”, it shoots itself in the foot by continuing to publish George Weigel as if he were some sort of a moral authority.

George “I-had-dinner-with-the-pope” Weigel, writing in National Review, compares the foreign policy initiatives of Karol Wojtyla, “Pope John Paul the Great”, with those of “Pope Francis”.

But it is the public stench of the rot at the heart of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice – supported and enhanced by both of these popes – that is the real message of morality that comes through to the broader world.

Weigel is of the opinion that the current Vatican diplomats might want to study “the failure of the Casaroli Project”, with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli being “the Kissinger of the Vatican” from the mid 1960’s to 1978, who “believed that the Cold War division of Europe were a permanent fixture of world politics at the time. The Vatican’s diplomatic policy at the time was to take an accommodating approach to the Soviet bloc, rather than take a more confrontational stance. In doing so, Weigel suggests that Casaroli thought that the Soviet bloc would lead to “a slowly liberalizing East and an increasingly social-democrat West” that would lead to a type of global convergence.

Weigel describes how Wojtyla, himself from Poland, chose rather to stare down (in a non-confrontational way) the leadership of Poland in the early 1980’s, and he believes this sort of play-acting had something to do with the fact that the Soviet Union fell. My sense of that time period was that perhaps Wojtyla’s personality helped to unify the Polish people so that there was no vacuum after the fall, but that it did not actually precipitate the fall of the communist governments.

Indeed, it is one thing to make a population feel good about itself, but it was the forceful political moves made by Ronald Reagan (increasing defense spending, proposing the “Star Wars” weapons systems), which ultimately forced the Soviet Union out of business.

Weigel also suggests that Wojtyla’s willingness to confront some of the tin-pot dictators of South America that somehow led to an increase of “economic freedom” in Latin America.

John Paul II knew that corruption was one of the primary reasons that Latin America was failing to fulfill its enormous potential. He also knew that the kind of systemic, culturally reinforced corruption that had turned Argentina from one of the world’s wealthiest countries into a bankrupt basket case reflected an enormous failure on the part of the Catholic Church, which had had 500 years to help build something better, something nobler, something more empowering — something more resonant with human dignity.

Weigel goes on to say that “The people in charge of Vatican diplomacy today seem to have missed all this or forgotten all this”.

Today, however, the Vatican’s institutional memory seems to retain little from either the teaching or the accomplishment of John Paul II. And that ill serves Pope Francis, whose public persona and popularity, like John Paul’s, create openings for real change to happen: change that leads to the empowerment and inclusion of the poor and marginalized. Such change seems unlikely, however, in circumstances in which Evo Morales thinks he can offer the first Latin American pope the dumbed-down, faux-Communist equivalent of Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ — and get away with it.

But what is really forgotten, what Weigel fails to understand, is that “the pope’s diplomats” today represent an institution that is vastly diminished in many ways. “Pope John Paul the Great” may have made Poles feel good about themselves, but he also presided (wittingly or unwittingly) over the greatest institutional cover-up of an organized homosexual sex abuse effort that history has ever seen.

The constant failure to make this admission shows Weigel, and National Review, as being supremely hypocritical in the face of a watching world.

We are also seeing a broader world that refuses to be held captive to a philosophical agenda in which “individual [sexual] autonomy” is the chief good, and that “Pope ‘who-am-I-to-judge’ Francis” has already paid a form of lip-service to it.

So “the Vatican diplomatic corps” (including “the pope’s diplomats”) is really something of a global laughingstock. Weigel’s suggestion that they would be taken more seriously if they were to spend the summer “studying the teaching of John Paul II on the free and virtuous society of the 21st century”, misses the boat entirely.

Weigel writes about “the Bishop of Rome as the Catholic Church’s leading public witness”. It is Roman Catholic “teaching” that seeks to separate “teaching” from practice. However, Jesus, Paul, and in fact the entire New Testament witness strongly emphasized the need for “practice” to comport with teaching.

There is a simple word for what “Roman Diplomacy” represents to the world: it is pure and simple hypocrisy.

National Review’s reliance on Weigel and Roman “teaching”, while failing to acknowledge its practice, harms its own ability to carry any kind of moral message in a world that badly needs one.

Roman Catholic Shell Game: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Leonardo De Chirico has posted an article at Reformation21 that is (finally!) uncharacteristically blunt and honest in its portrayal of the dangers of Roman Catholicism, illustrating one not-so-subtle practice that Roman Catholicism is guilty of: re-defining a word (or concept) when no one is seemingly looking.

Francis Turretin long ago commented on this characteristic of Rome’s attempting to re-define words (or concepts in its own favor. Turretin said that his opponents would not actually discuss facts, but “to this day … (although they are anything but the true church of Christ, they) still boast of their having alone the name of the church and do not blush to display the standard of that which they dispose. In this manner, hiding themselves under the specious title of the antiquity and infallibility of the Catholic church, they think they can, as with one blow, beat down and settle the controversy waged against them concerning the various and most destructive errors [which they] introduced into the heavenly doctrine” (Vol 3, pg 2).

Now De Chirco says that Rome is doing that very same thing with their “New Evangelization” – a phrase coined by John Paul II, among other places, in the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineute, in an effort to its latest effort to try to expand the boundaries of the Roman church. The way that JPII put it, he “insist[s] that we must rekindle in ourselves the impetus of the beginnings and allow ourselves to be filled with the ardour of the apostolic preaching which followed Pentecost. We must revive in ourselves the burning conviction of Paul, who cried out: ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel’ (1 Cor 9:16)”.

It seems fairly certain to me that this effort will fail, given that Rome does not actually “preach the Gospel”. What it preaches is itself and its sacraments, which are not “the Gospel”.

However, Roman Catholic writer George “I-had-dinner-with-the-pope” Weigel is attempting to take that one step further with what De Chirico blatantly calls an attempt at a re-definition of “Evangelical” in his work “Evangelical Catholicism”.

As I mentioned above, De Chirico is uncharacteristically bold in his description of this attempt of Weigel’s:

The recent book by George Weigel, Evangelical Catholicism (New York: Basic Books, 2013) is a clever attempt to re-engineer the word by overlooking its Biblical focus, by severing its historical roots and replacing them with other roots, by changing its doctrinal outlook, by staffing its experiential ethos differently, and by renegotiating its religious use. In other words, this is a genetic modification of a word.

The basic thesis of the book is that Evangelical Catholicism (EC) is a qualifier of present-day Roman Catholicism as it stemmed from the magisterium of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), was expounded by Vatican II (1962-1965), found its champion in John Paul II (1978-2005), and was again reinforced by Benedict XVI (2005-2013). It is a new account of the word Evangelical. Whereas previous scholarship referred to this time in Catholic history as marked by "ressourcement" (i.e. re-appropriation of sources: Scripture and Tradition) and "aggiornamento" (i.e. update of approach, not of doctrine), Weigel calls it "Evangelical" Catholicism.

According to Weigel, Evangelical is a qualifying adjective, not a noun. The noun which carries "thick" meaning is Catholicism. Curiously, what used to be termed as "Roman Catholicism" is now shortened to "Catholicism" alone. All the Roman elements of Roman Catholicism are nonetheless part of EC: sacraments, Mariology, hierarchy, traditions, papacy, devotions, etc. To this "Catholicism" Weigel adds the adjective "Evangelical," which basically refers to the depth of convictions and the passion to make them known. EC is a full orbed Roman Catholicism practiced with strong impetus and missionary zeal. Catholicism is the doctrinal and institutional hardware, while "Evangelical" is the sociological and psychological software. While doctrine deeply remains Roman Catholic, the spiritual mood is called Evangelical.

As I said, whereas there may be some bold Roman Catholics (like the CTC gang) who are “evangelical” (“qualifying adjective”) in their efforts, most Roman Catholics just won’t “get it”. Rome simply doesn’t preach “the Gospel”, it preaches “sacraments, Mariology, hierarchy, traditions, papacy, devotions”.

Weigel, as well, seems to be out of touch with the things Pope Bergoglio is saying and doing, actually seeking to “re-define” “Church” in a way that’s more Eastern Orthodox than Roman Catholic.

On the other hand, confessional Protestants are fond of criticizing modern Evangelicals. They had better be careful of assisting Rome in its efforts to re-define the word.

Weigle Room at Christianity Today

In a web-only interview with George Weigel, the not-quite-converted Chris Castaldo gives Weigel lots of wiggle-room to evangelize Evangelicals with his Roman Catholic message, but fails to alert people of the Borg-like nature of interaction with Rome. From the intro, “Chris Castaldo, director of the Ministry for Gospel Renewal at Wheaton College's Billy Graham Center, spoke with Weigel about obstacles facing Evangelical Catholicism, from secular hostility to challenges inside the church.”

In the process, the assumption that Castaldo allows to run free is that “Evangelical Catholicism” somehow holds “evangelical doctrines” – which it does not – in favor of the notion that it is “being evangelical” in its spread of Roman Catholicism.

Not only is that fact completely unspoken in this interview, but Castaldo permits Weigel to engage in the fiction that Roman Catholicism somehow encompasses and promotes some “biblical realism” [to use Weigel’s phrase] rather than simply “Roman Catholicism”.

* * *

Castaldo also leaves without comment the impact of the fact that there are “Catholic clergy and laity who are in a ‘diminished state’ of communion with the Church”. We’re not talking about “separated brethren” here. What we are talking about is the fact that “doctrinally wayward priests” actually represent “an abrogation of responsibility by pastors, be they priests or bishops.”

The fact that bishops (and there are many of them) may be not only “morally” but “doctrinally wayward” betrays the confusion that exists within “the Magisterium” itself.

Finally, Castaldo himself amplifies Weigel’s fiction that “Bishop of Rome is, above all, the Church's first witness—the witness whose own witness strengthens the witness of all the brethren”.

At a minimum, Castaldo and the editors of Christianity Today ought to be castigated for this in polite company, for exhibiting their ignorance of the non-Christianity of Rome when they allow this tripe to be published under their banner.

The hope is that calling this sort of thing to their attention will give them some opportunity to think through what they are doing.