Posted on 05/19/2004 7:01:30 PM PDT by Land of the Irish
Orthodox bishops did join the pope and Catholic bishops in consecrating Russia.
In fact, I've provided sources for Kasper's heresy over and over in the past year. Brian Harrison refuted Kasper some time ago which I've posted. Try doing a google search yourself--you seem very adept at long citations. When I find the time I will do so myself--again.
The idea that this is an orthodox pope is ridiculous. Only someone who adamantly refuses to face reality would argue such a point. JPII, in fact, goes out of his way to break ranks with past pontiffs and not only shows little sympathy for Sacred Tradition, but actively authorizes opposition towards it.
When was the last time Aztecs danced at a papal Mass? What other pope has poured out libations to the Great Thumb or prayed with Jewish rabbis a Jewish prayer for a Messiah in a Jewish synagogue? They were not praying for the coming of Jesus, believe me.
Can't see anything good coming of this. Breaks my heart. Such a disregard for the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Pray the Rosary!
I don't know about the denial of the Resurrection claim, but for someone put in charge of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue for the Church, Kasper has a strange philosophy on ecumenism:
But Protestants on the one hand, and Catholics and Orthodox together with Anglicans on the other hand, differ on the question of whether such episcope must be carried out by an episcopos who stands in historic apostolic succession. ... How can we overcome this problem? As I see the problem and its possible solution, it is not a question of apostolic succession in the sense of an historical chain of laying on of hands running back through the centuries to one of the apostles; this would be a very mechanical and individualistic vision, which by the way historically could hardly be proved and ascertained. The Catholic view is different from such an individualistic and mechanical approach. Its starting point is the collegium of the apostles as a whole; together they received the promise that Jesus Christ will be with them till the end of the world (Matt 28, 20). So after the death of the historical apostles they had to co–opt others who took over some of their apostolic functions. In this sense the whole of the episcopate stands in succession to the whole of the collegium of the apostles.and interreligious dialogue:To stand in the apostolic succession is not a matter of an individual historical chain but of collegial membership in a collegium, which as a whole goes back to the apostles by sharing the same apostolic faith and the same apostolic mission. The laying on of hands is under this aspect a sign of co-optation in a collegium.
This has far reaching consequences for the acknowledgement of the validity of the episcopal ordination of an other Church. Such acknowledgement is not a question of an uninterrupted chain but of the uninterrupted sharing of faith and mission, and as such is a question of communion in the same faith and in the same mission.
It is beyond the scope of our present context to discuss what this means for a re–evaluation of Apostolicae curae (1896) of Pope Leo XIII, who declared Anglican orders null and void, a decision which still stands between our Churches. Without doubt this decision, as Cardinal Willebrands had already affirmed, must be understood in our new ecumenical context in which our communion in faith and mission has considerably grown. A final solution can only be found in the larger context of full communion in faith, sacramental life and shared apostolic mission.
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/archive_db.cgi/tablet-00742
"Today, we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of a return, by which the others would 'be converted' and return to being 'catholics.' This was expressly abandoned by Vatican II."evidenced on more than one occassion:
"The old concept of the ecumenism of return has today been replaced by that of a common journey which directs Christians toward the goal of ecclesial communion understood as unity in reconciled diversity."
Here is Brian Harrison in an article entitled "Fr. Eamonn Bredin and the Resurrection" which appeared in Living Tradition, September 1988. Bredin based his argument against the historicity of the Resurrection and Gospel miracles in general on the thinking of Walter Kasper. Kasper publicly expressed these views in his tome Jesus the Christ which appeared ten years earlier in 1977.
These heretical views have never been publicly renounced by Kasper, yet he has been elevated since to the cardinalate by the Pope--though he still believes the Resurrection never happened and the Gospel miracles are merely poetic accounts.
Harrison does quote JPII on the validity of the Gospels as true history--yet the implication remains that the Pope believes Kasper's radical and heretical views are no big deal. Otherwise why would he have made him a prince of the Church? What is going on here? As usual, the Pope doesn't explain his strange behavior--heterodox actions which belie his orthodox words.
_______________________________________________________
Our author goes on to quote with approval Walter Kasper, who maintains that although Mark's tomb story is older and less "legendary" than the others, "It is clear that in its present form at any rate, it is in no way a historical account." If Mark's account, and therefore the more "legendary" ones as well, are "in no way" historical, that means they are substantially non-historical. Fr. Kasper's reasons for saying this appear ostensibly to be largely literary ones. As quoted by Fr. Bredin, he says that in Mark's empty tomb narrative,
"We are faced not with historical details but with stylistic devices intended to attract the attention and raise excitement in the minds of those listening. Everything is clearly constructed to lead very skilfully to the climax of the angel's words: 'He is risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him' (16:6)."
For the substantial non-historicity of the "tomb stories," then, we have been offered only two pieces of "evidence," namely, the (supposed) incompatibility of the details in the respective Gospel accounts, and the alleged literary skill of Mark in presenting his account. But this is completely unconvincing. If several witnesses write an account of some dramatic event - say, a fire in a large building - some years after it took place, we will almost certainly find some discrepancies of detail - differences, for instance, as to what time it broke out, how long it took to be extinguished, how many people were seen to jump from its windows, and so on. But what serious historian would take this as evidence that the reports were "in no way historical," and that perhaps the fire never took place at all?
Likewise, the argument from literary style proves nothing at all. Even if Mark had written his account even more "skilfully" - in the form of exquisite poetic verses, let us say - that would not be an argument against its historicity. Gerard Manley Hopkins, for example, wrote a very moving poem, "The Wreck of the 'Deutschland,'" after reading in a newspaper an eyewitness account of this real-life shipwreck. He kept to the essential facts, even while expressing them in a creative and imaginative way. Any critic who argued from the mere fact of the poetic literary form adopted by Hopkins to the non-historicity of what he describes would of course be deceiving himself. Moreover, one suspects that in the case of Kasper's argument from the absence of conventional historical form to non-historical content in the Gospel "tomb stories" there is an additional fallacy - that of begging the question. What evidence does Fr. Kasper offer for his claim that the form of these stories is not in fact that of conventional historical writing or fact-reporting, but rather, that of "a narrative intended as the basis for a cultic ceremony"? One would want to ask Fr. Kasper, "Supposing the women did in fact go to the tomb on the first day of the week, find it empty, and meet an angel who told them that Christ had risen from the dead; how in that case would a normal first-century historical form of reporting these extraordinary events differ significantly from the form which we in fact find in Mark's canonical account?" One suspects that no convincing answer at all would be forthcoming; certainly, Fr. Kasper himself offers none. This in turn strongly reinforces one's suspicion that Kasper's appeal to style and form is only a smokescreen: he seems to have judged the form of these stories to be non-historical simply because of their content; that is, because of what they say rather than how they say it. Thus, Fr. Kasper feels entitled to call Mark's mention of the angel a "stylistic device," not because of the way the evangelist talks about the angel, but simply because he talks about it at all. Angels as such are to be understood as a "stylistic device."
In short, we are told that the content is not historical because the form is not historical (which in itself would be a non-sequitur), only to find out that the reason for judging the form to be in fact non-historical is its (self-evidently) non-historical content - angels appearing and bodies being raised to life.
The exegetical arguments offered here for "non-historicity" are in themselves so transparently flimsy, as we have seen, that we doubt they could convince men as intelligent as Kasper and Bredin unless bolstered up by some powerful "hidden persuader," such as a philosophical world view which excludes direct or miraculous actions of God in the physical order as outside the realm of the possible or credible. But, as Pope John Paul II affirmed in a recent catechetical address, such a world view "clashes with the most elementary philosophical and theological idea of God." Disbelief in miracles (in the true and proper sense of sense-perceptible events which cannot be explained by secondary, natural causes) is thus radically incompatible with Christian faith. Yet this indeed seems to be very close to the world view of Fr. Kasper as recently, at least, as the mid-seventies. He then wrote of the theological "task of coming to terms with the modern understanding of reality as represented primarily by the natural sciences" (as if there were only one such "modern understanding"). Kasper continues:
"The premiss of the scientific approach is a wholly law-bound determination of all events. ... In scientific theory there is no room for a miracle in the sense of an event with no physical cause and therefore no definable origin."
That Fr. Kasper is confusing this particular philosophical position with real science - in the sense of certain and true knowledge which "modern" man just has to accept - becomes clear a little further on, when he tells us that any "miraculous" event
"always comes about through the action of created secondary causes. A divine intervention in the sense of a directly visible action of God is theological nonsense."
On the contrary: it is precisely this opinion of Fr. Kasper - which amongst other things would presumably rule out such "directly visible actions of God" as the raising of a dead body and a virginal conception - that seems like theological (and philosophical) nonsense. Why should the One who created the material universe from nothing find it impossible or unseemly to work further marvels?
That is one ugly church. It looks like an AC grate.
In the meantime, there was the nomination of new cardinals in February of 2001. You may recall there were two waves of nominations with a week’s hiatus in between. We had a visit in between from Cardinal Castrillón during that week. I heard from another cardinal that when Cardinal Ratzinger heard that Kasper was about to be nominated he went to see the Pope and said to him, "Kasper is a heretic!" Castrillón explained to me how the Vatican was obliged to give a cardinal to Germany. The nominations were made during the big fight in Germany over Church-assisted abortion. "If we hadn’t named a German cardinal," he said, "Germany would have quit the Church. So, we thought it better to have a bad guy in the Vatican whom we would be able to control rather than to have somebody far away in Germany who was out of control." This was a thinly veiled reference to Karl Lehman, who, by the way, was nominated a cardinal four days later. That is two wolves whom Cardinal Ratzinger calls "heretic." A few weeks later, a bishop told us the story of his dining with the Pope. The Pope said at that time, "I have received so many critics of the nomination of these German cardinals, and I don’t know why!" This is not hearsay. The Pope doesn’t know why?! (Bishop Fellay, Talk March 5 2002)
36. It was reported at the time of the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops that Fr. Kasper, who was appointed theological secretary of the Synod, had changed some of his opinions in a more traditional direction in recent years. ("Fr Eamonn Bredin and the Resurrection", Living Tradition #88)
In the early Church wooden altars were necessary because the Church was underground, dirt poor, and oppressed. Once Christianity became legal the wealthier faithful began to give God His due respect and reverence, and began to build magnificent marble, high altars. This is TRADITION, a term that defines that which has consistently occurred over the long haul of history.
The altar table I refer to here looks like a picnic table. No "traditional" bishop would marvel at this thing and compliment on it's "beauty", or the rest of the revamped Church which looks like a barn. I looked at Revelation 9:11 and it has nothing to do with an altar table. Anyway, traditional Catholicism properly refers to this Scriptural book as the Apocalypse. 'Revelation' is a Protestant term that was absorbed by the 'modernized' version of the Catholic Church.
Tell me, if you can, why was Kasper even appointed theological secretary of an important Theological Synod of Bishops in the first place? One would think other bishops who professed Catholicism would have shunned him for his views. Even if he had recanted--the fact that he once professed such opinions should have been shocking to other Catholic theologians. That it was not says much about the state of the Catholic hierarchy and "Catholic" theology today.
So tell me, how is it, that a man like Kasper ever became a bishop in the first place, openly professing such heretical views--let alone eventually becoming a cardinal? Surely it wasn't because he demonstrated some extraordinary sanctity of some kind. Nor could it have been his scholarly credentials--given the radical nature of the opinions he expressed in decades of publications. Why promote such a man--unless it be precisely because he represents the thinking of a major segment of the hierarchy today which openly opposes Sacred Tradition and the deposit of faith?
As it is, he is on record denying the Resurrection and the Gospel miracles and the divinity of Christ, notwithstanding this vague report that he has altered "some of his opinions." Which might these be? It would be helpful to know if one of our most influential cardinals still believed Christ never rose bodily from the dead. Show me, if you can, where he specifically renounced the opinions expressed in Jesus the Christ that the Resurrection was not an historical fact and that the miracles described in the Gosopels never happened. In fact, I know of no such renunciation of past beliefs.
You are reading far, far, far too much into a few out-of-context lines.
[any 'miraculous' event] always comes about through the action of created secondary causes. A divine intervention in the sense of a directly visible action of God is theological nonsense.
This affirms miracles, but simply says that God uses secondary causes to bring them about.
As for the resurrection, he doesn't deny it, simply the historical character of the witnesses to it.
Here is Avery Dulles' review of the book.
Jesus the Christ
By Walter Kasper
New York, Paulist Press, New edition, 1977. paperback, 283 pp., $5.95.Tübingen's distinguished Catholic dogmatician, Walter Kasper, here presents a remarkably concise, complete, and informative Christology. Rooted in the ancient and medieval tradition, he is also fully in touch with recent exegetical and philosophical trends. In compact style, Kasper handles practically all the standard Christological questions, such as the pre-existence of the Son, the hypostatic union (one person in two natures), the virginal conception, the freedom and sinlessness of Jesus, his Messianic claims and titles, his miracles, and his resurrection. Refusing to separate Christology from soteriology, Kasper likewise treats the redemptive character of Jesus's sacrificial death. On all these points, Kasper stands with the ancient councils and with the mainstream of the theological tradition.
Kasper is opposed not only to the liberal Christologies of the nineteenth century but, even more emphatically, to the twentieth century secular and anthropological Christologies, which present Jesus as the culmination of the evolutionary process and as the supreme fulfillment of essential humanity. In Kasper's estimation, such theories (represented by Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner, and Wolfhart Pannenberg, among others) inevitably tend to reduce Christ to a mere symbol of cosmic and human evolution. Particularly sharp are Kasper's criticisms of the Dutch Catholic theologian, Piet Schoonenberg,whom he accuses of falling into modalism and of directly contradicting the ancient councils by holding that Jesus is a human-not a divine-person. (Schoonenberg's reply to these charges may be found in his recent article, "Spirit Christology and Logos Christology," In Bijdragen, 38 [1977], 350-375.)
Kasper, on the contrary, seeks to validate the ancient dogmas in terms of an approach influenced by Schelling's "positive philosophy" and by modern personalist anthropologies. In opposition to the evolutionists, Kasper insists on the freedom and unpredictability of God's interventions in salvation history. He holds that person is higher and more ultimate than nature, and consequently that it is appropriate to speak of three divine persons (though Barth and Rahner have intimated that the term "person" in this context may be confusing). On the basis of a modern, relational concept of personality, Kasper holds that Jesus is both a human and a divine person, that is, a human person whose transcendental openness is definitively determined by his oneness with the person of the divine Logos.
Within these Trinitarian perspectives, Kasper seeks to revive the early Spirit Christology, which is biblical as well as Jewish-Christian. The Incarnation, according to Kasper, is effected by the personal activity of the Holy Spirit, whose sanctifying presence is constitutive of the human person of Jesus. The risen Jesus, in turn, sends forth the Holy Spirit as his very own, and in this way continually inaugurates the eschatological era of salvation. In developing this Spirit Christology, Kasper seeks to provide an alternative to the Logos Christology more prevalent in our time. (For a contrast on this score between Kasper and Pannenberg, see Philip J. Rosato, S.J., "Spirit Christology: Ambiguity and Promise," Theological Studies, 38, [1977], 423-449.)
In order to place Christology in an adequate framework, Kasper probes deeply into many related themes, such as human freedom, personality, corporeality, sin, redemption, salvation, historicity, and eschatology. He provides likewise, in fine print, concise and lucid summaries of the history of dogma and of modern theological opinions. In these summaries, Kasper conveys much valuable information, and his judgments, though sometimes sharp, are always carefully considered.
All in all, this work is a skillful blending of biblical, traditional, and contemporary currents in Christology. No mere reproduction of the earlier manuals, it opens up exciting new approaches to the ancient faith in the light of modern philosophical anthropology. My principal regret is that, in his effort to handle many complex questions in relatively brief compass, Kasper sometimes writes in an excessively concise style. Readers may be tempted to skip a few of the denser paragraphs, but to the extent that they do so they will be less able to appreciate this exceedingly rich, original, and comprehensive synthesis.
Avery Dulles, S.J.
Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.
Oh, you are most likely right.
Perhaps I'm thinking of a fourth secret? ;)
Kasper: "[any 'miraculous' event] always comes about through the action of created secondary causes. A divine intervention in the sense of a directly visible action of God is theological nonsense."
Harrison: "It is precisely this opinion of Fr. Kasper - which amongst other things would presumably rule out such 'directly visible actions of God' as the raising of a dead body and a virginal conception - that seems like theological (and philosophical) nonsense. Why should the One who created the material universe from nothing find it impossible or unseemly to work further marvels?"
You: "This affirms miracles, but simply says that God uses secondary causes to bring them about."
Me: It says more than this. It calls direct visible actions of God nonsense. You are the one who are not thinking as a Catholic if you believe direct miraculous acts by God have never occurred. Nor has this ever--EVER--been the teaching or the understanding of the Catholic Church.
You: "As for the resurrection, he doesn't deny it, simply the historical character of the witnesses to it."
Me: He does more than this. Reread the article. He is not denying only the form of the Gospel accounts, but the content of the Gospel accounts as well. This is why Harrison states that "We are told that the content is not historical because the form is not historical (which in itself would be a non-sequitur), only to find out that the reason for judging the form to be in fact non-historical is its (self-evidently) non-historical content - angels appearing and bodies being raised to life." In other words, Kasper is denying more than the historicity of the Gospels--because it conflicts with his modernist scientific world view. But I will go further and say that even if he limited himself to doubting the historicity of the Gospel accounts--this in itself is heretical and flies in the face of all Church teachings!
Finally, the Dulles piece is beside the point. Nowhere in it does he mention the area of concern which Harrison--and we--are focusing on--and which many subsequent scholars and theologians, including Cardinal Ratzinger, have found so radical and even heretical. Dulles was writing a book review, not a scholarly study--and the book was densely written. It is not surprising that he might have missed the radical implications of some of its musings.
In compact style, Kasper handles practically all the standard Christological questions, such as the pre-existence of the Son, the hypostatic union (one person in two natures), the virginal conception, the freedom and sinlessness of Jesus, his Messianic claims and titles, his miracles, and his resurrection. Refusing to separate Christology from soteriology, Kasper likewise treats the redemptive character of Jesus's sacrificial death. On all these points, Kasper stands with the ancient councils and with the mainstream of the theological tradition.
Yes, but I have no access to it just now or I'd cite it directly. As for taking Dulles' view over mine--it was Brian Harrison who refuted Kasper in the article I posted, not myself. Besides, Dulles was writing a book review, not a scholarly study. He nowhere is concerned with the issue we've been discussing--the historicity of the Gospels themselves--but is focused primarily on Kasper's Christology, which he asserts is mainstream. Harrison, on the other hand, is dealing directly with what we've been talking about--Kasper's radical views concerning the impossibility of God's direct miraculous intervention and he cites Kasper to prove his point.
From Si Si No No, November, 2001:
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Cardinals with No Faith
Recently we have seen that Pope John Paul II appointed as Cardinals two German Bishops, Walter Kasper and Karl Lehmann. On what merits? We have illustrated them in the past, but since time has passed, it is well to recall them in order to better understand the gravity of these appointments vis à vis the facts.
For Walter Kasper, the miracles narrated in the Gospels are not historical facts related as eyewitness testimony by two Apostles, and as testimony heard by two of the Apostles' disciples, nor are they "segni certessimi” of Our Lord Jesus Christ's divinity as defined by Vatican I dogma. Rather, they are "instead, a problem which makes Jesus' activity strange, and difficult for modern man to understand."1,2
So, in homage to "modern man," or to be precise, to prideful man who believes only in himself, Walter Kasper deems himself authorized to put into perspective the "undeniable tradition which witnesses these miracles to us."3
Let us pass over the process that Kasper employs because we've previously treated it,4 and because it is just the parroted echo of the gratuitous assertions of the worst Protestant rationalist "criticism." Instead, let us move on to the conclusions: For Kasper, the new purple biretta, what are Jesus' miracles?
"These non-historical stories," he writes, "are statements of belief in the salvific meaning of the person and message of Jesus."5 Briefly, for Walter Kasper, Jesus never raised either Jairus' daughter or the widow of Naim's son from the dead, nor did He even call Lazarus from his tomb. Neither did He ever calm tempests, nor multiply the loaves, nor walk on water, etc.
According to Kasper, the evangelists invented these "non-historical stories" the way that our grandmothers made up fables at the fireside when there was no television to corrupt children. And just as our grandmothers' fables only sought to inculcate a "morality," so too the Evangelists' "fables" about Jesus' miracles "did not intend to present Jesus as Lord over life and death."6
In any case, for Walter Kasper, also as to his assumption that the miracles did occur-which, like all of the "new theologians" he firmly doubts-Jesus could not have performed miracles simply because he was not God. Jesus, he says, never advanced such "claims," and at Caesarea Philippi, Peter merely confessed, "You are the Messiah," and Jesus also proclaimed this before the Sanhedrin.7 But when the first Christian community confessed that Jesus is the Son of God, it did not in fact mean that Jesus really is the Son of God, but only wished "to express the idea that God manifests and communicates Himself in an absolute and definite way in the story of Jesus." End of story. In fact, the first Christian community did not intend "to acknowledge a dignity for him that would further his claims." Naturally, it was St. Paul's and St. John's habit to further Jesus' "claims."8
In our day, we are fortunate to have the Dutch Catechism to sort out all of this for us. Kasper partakes of its heresy, namely that "the doctrine of Jesus' divinity and humanity constitutes a development of the original conviction that this man is our divine salvation."9
You have read it correctly: salvation is "divine,” but Jesus is simply "this man"! And this would be "the original belief of the faith," indeed, the primitive Church's belief and faith!
We could stop here because we don't see how a man can still exercise his priestly function, be made a Bishop, and today even be made a Cardinal who, in his writings, negates fundamental Christian doctrine, i.e., Our Lord Jesus Christ's divinity, which, rather than heresy ought to be called apostasy.
If Jesus is not God but was made so by his later followers, there can logically be no resurrection. And in fact, Walter Kasper negates the Resurrection. For him, "the empty tomb represents an ambiguous phenomenon, open to different possibilities of interpretation."10 And interpretations of the Resurrection are "beliefs and testimonies produced by people who believe," and who, via the "new theology's" strange logic, necessarily lie, and who also simply attest to whatever facts that they have been lead to believe.
Undoubtedly, he continues, a certain "grossly erroneous type of assertion that Jesus was touched by their hands and ate at the table with his disciples...runs the risk of justifying a too coarse Paschal faith."11 But fortunately, as to the spiritualization of this "coarse" Paschal faith which has been the Church's faith for 2000 years, lo and behold, we have Walter Kasper to inform us that these apparitions were nothing more than "meetings with Christ present in the Spirit."12Clear, no?
So, for Walter Kasper, Our Lord Jesus Christ was not divine, there were no miracles, no resurrection and, therefore, no ascension.13 And in error's inexorable "logic," there was no Immaculate Conception or divine maternity. Consequently, Walter Kasper actually teaches the windy rehabilitation of Nestorius. Isn't that also logical? If, for Kasper, Jesus is not God, then Nestorius was wrongly condemned for having denied Mary the title, "Mother of God."14Everything squares in the new Cardinal's "logic." What a pity that it is the logic of apostasy and of total rejection of Revealed Truth!
Bishop Dolan @ St. Gertrude's in Cinci would certainly take umbrage with that assertion. Are you claiming he and his Churchlette are not Catholic? That seems like the pot calling the kettle black, to say Archbishop Thuc's consecrations aren't legitimate, but Lefebvre's were.
To say nothing of course, of the eastern rite Bishops. Perhaps they aren't "traditionalists" since they haven't been schismatics for a while.
I guess you would have laughed at the King of France's complaint on being presented with his new Archbishop of Paris that "At least the Archbishop of Paris should believe in God!" That was back in "traditional" days of the 1700's. Maybe the Pope then was a heretic too - going around appointing atheists as Bishops! Harrumphh!
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