Posted on 11/8/2002, 1:12:00 AM by sinkspur
It’s the nature of the office that a pope has to watch what he says.
Ironically, the 1870 declaration of infallibility at the First Vatican Council has probably inhibited papal freedom of speech more than any king or emperor ever could. Since even his “ordinary magisterium,” or regular teaching expressed in audiences and letters, is considered to enjoy a divine seal of approval, popes feel compelled to sweat over every phrase. Once it drops from his lips, it passes into tradition, and hence it must be “just so.”
That’s inevitably a prescription for caution. Popes rarely speak off the cuff, and when they do, pulse rates in Vatican offices head for the sky.
Gestures, on the other hand, are by definition far more ambiguous. A pope can be himself in his actions in a way he never can be with his words. For that reason, often what a pope does is a better indicator of where his heart is than what he says. The pontificate of John Paul II illustrates the point.
Consider, for example, the December 1996 visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury, then George Carey, and several of his brother Anglican bishops to Rome. On the occasion, John Paul II gave Carey a gold pectoral cross, the same gift he offers to Catholic archbishops on their ad limina visits. He offered silver pectoral crosses to the other Anglicans.
It was a kind gesture with just one glitch: According to Catholic theology, Anglican bishops aren’t the real deal, and hence have no business sporting the symbols of the bishop’s office. Most recently, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made this point in a commentary on the 1998 document Ad Tuendam Fidem. It pointed to the invalidity of Anglican ordinations as an example of not-yet-declared infallible church teaching.
Notre Dame theologian Fr. Richard McBrien has argued that this leaves two possibilities. Either the pope holds a different view about the validity of Anglican ordinations, or he is guilty of the canonical offense of falsifying the sacrament of holy orders by complicity in the fiction that the Anglicans really are bishops.
Most observers believe John Paul was trying to encourage unity between Catholics and Anglicans, whose dialogue since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) has been a model of civility, even ahead of an ability to spell out quite yet the theological basis for that unity.
Other examples of actions speaking louder than words might include the pope’s respectful, prayerful visit to the Grand Omayyad Mosque in Damascus in May 2001, not long after the Vatican document Dominus Iesus had asserted that non-Catholics are in a “gravely deficient situation”; or his March 2000 visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem amid acrimonious debates between Jews and Catholics.
Recent weeks in Rome have offered two more examples of the pope’s “watch what I do, not always what I say” style.
On Oct. 4, in conjunction with an international conference marking the 700th anniversary of the birth of St. Bridget of Sweden, John Paul II took part in a gala vespers service in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Present for the occasion were 13 Roman Catholic bishops, plus nine Lutheran bishops from Sweden, Norway and Denmark, one other Lutheran clergyman, and three non-Catholic prelates (two Orthodox, one Anglican). There were, in other words, an equal number on both sides.
The two sets of prelates were dressed in liturgical vestments, and they processed in and sat down with equal dignity. It was difficult to avoid the impression that the pope was recognizing some kind of brotherhood in holy orders for the Lutheran and Anglican prelates that official Catholic theology would struggle to explain. Privately, several of the Lutherans said that they experienced the event as an unofficial form of papal recognition.
John Paul’s public comments on the occasion were not so daring. “In a spirit of brotherhood and friendship I greet the distinguished representatives of the Lutheran churches,” he said. “Your presence at this prayer is a cause of deep joy. I express the hope that our meeting together in the Lord’s name will help to further our ecumenical dialogue and quicken the journey towards full Christian unity.”
At the level of symbolism, however, the pope seemed to be saying more.
Two days later, Patriarch Teoctist of the Romanian Orthodox church arrived in Rome for the start of a weeklong visit, reciprocating the pope’s May 7-9, 1999, visit to Bucharest. John Paul welcomed Teoctist to the public Mass of thanksgiving for the canonization of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva Oct. 6, standing to embrace him in brotherly fashion before a crowd of 200,000, then ensuring that Teoctist was seated in an exact duplicate of the papal throne.
It was not the behavior of someone worried about underscoring his own primacy.
In fact, all the week’s choreography seemed designed to make the two prelates seem like equally eminent heads of churches. The high point came with the signing of a joint declaration between John Paul and Teoctist on Saturday, Oct. 12.
The text of the declaration was itself interesting. “Our aim and our ardent desire is full communion, which is not absorption, but communion in love. It is an irreversible path that has no alternative: It is the way of the church,” the declaration reads.
It gets down to brass tacks, calling for a relaunch of the international Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, currently in a deep freeze after a disastrous session in Baltimore in July 2000. Those talks were paralyzed by accusations of proselytism against Catholics in Orthodox nations, debates over Eastern churches in communion with Rome, and most notoriously, differing views of the limits of papal power.
More important than the wording, however, may be the way the declaration was issued. The pope’s repeated gestures of humility and fraternity, always careful to treat Teoctist like an ecclesiastical equal, were designed to assuage Orthodox fears about a Roman “imperial papacy.” In that sense, John Paul’s conduct reflected a reformed papacy that Catholic theological language is not yet able to describe.
To understand what the pope is trying to communicate, therefore, sometimes it’s a good idea to keep the pictures but turn down the sound.
When you are so lacking in awareness that you do not know about an event this notorious, how is one to argue with you?If the event were truly so notorious there would be proof it occurred. You offer nothing. The proof you offer is no different than if I said Bishop Williamson beats small children. Then on some other website, such as TCRNews, they said Williamson beats small children with a stick. Then, in some other website, they say Williamson beats small children while humming pagan worship hymns. Would you, on that basis, take it to be true? Of course not, they offer no proof, other than their mere say so. But here, you believe anything about the Pope. Why?
You hate the Pope, but like Williamson. Therefore, you require no proof about the one, but doubt anything bad about the other. So far, the whole proof you have offered is no proof at all. This is rather incredible, given it’s the Pope, there is proof of everything he does. At least you guys could try to make some up, take a shot at credibility. Your original statement:
I know there were early Christians who were martyred precisely because they refused to pay homage to false gods. I don't need anyone to try to interpret the Pope's pouring out libations in the Togo forest. It was an act of idolatry that I can see the act for myself,Your first attempt to back up this claim was from Sungenis:
For example, during prayer with an African Animist on August 8, 1985, John Paul writes: "The prayer meeting in the sanctuary at Lake Togo was particularly striking. There I prayed for the first time with animists."Sungenis doesn’t say anything about libations, and the Sungenis statement “I prayed for the first time with animists” does not even remotely enable one to track down the quote. It does not cite a document, letter, who it would have been too, anything. All it gives is the date this supposedly happened on. If you are going to claim JPII wrote something, the very least you, or your source, could do is provide some support. Finally, if he did this at all, it still provides absolutely no comment, much less proof, as to HOW he prayed with them.
Your next attempt is from the article Narses posted, written by another Traditionalist from way out there. He states:
And twice, at Kara and Togoville-at Kara this happened just before Holy Mass!--you took a dry gourd and poured a libation of water and maize flour onto the ground, a rite expressing a false religious belief.Again, not one citation, but at least one makes up the same story you are trying to make up. It would be nice, however, to see a shred of proof from you for once.
Finally, you cite to Bishop Fellay, who similarly makes a bald statement without any proof. Are we to accept it as true simply because Fellay says so? That would be hard, to say the least:
Firstly, we are not setting ourselves up as judges of the Holy See by merely laying out the facts, such as the Pope's visiting the Synagogue or the mosque, kissing the Koran, POURING OUT LIBATIONS in the Togo forest, receiving the tilak in India, gestures profoundly upsetting Catholics in their Faith. The same is true of numerous other statements and documents. If to mention such facts is to set oneself up as judge, then one must even stop thinking!As always, no proof, just an allegation from a bishop that JPII excommunicated. A little like an convict claiming the judge who sentenced him is crooked, don’t you think? Oh wait, JPII is the Pope who judged him, and sentenced him, to be excommunicated. Kind of a lot like that.
You simply lack facts that ought to be at your fingertips.I’m not the one making the allegation. It shows just how anti-Catholic you are that you think I have to disprove any ugly allegation you chose to make about the Pope.
You chose to slander a man, you have to back it up, or you are a charlatan.
I can't offer citations for every sentence I utter.Obviously.
Even when I provide them, you spend hours with long citations of your own, nit-picking ad infinitum. It is not a game I care to play. As for the 40 theological errors of past popes uncovered by Vatican I and mentioned by Sungenis, I recall reading somewhere else that these popes were in material, not formal, heresy.The only quote you’ve provided, from Sungenis and not from Vatican I, doesn’t even claim that all 40 popes were in material heresy.
If that does not suit you, I suggest you post your remarks elsewhere.There you go again, trying to tell me to go away. I will keep responding to you as long as you keep making things up. Get used to it, I’ve been on this website longer than you have, been told the same things by newbies like yourself before. We expect truth and facts on Free Republic, not innuendo and lies. Again, get used to it. If you can’t handle it, go to Democrats Underground, they’ll like your style.
It is unreasonable to expect anything more. I do not myself expect anyone else to constantly dredge up evidence for matters which ought to be generally known.This is no more generally known than that Williamson beats small children.
patent +AMDG
Do you think somebody like the editor of The Remnant or the Superior General of the SSPX would have mentioned--publicly, remember--the libations if they had not occurred?Yes, I think it highly possible. People make mistakes all the time, at the very least. Others believe this or that story, and wind up restating it. It doesn’t even take dishonesty for something like this to occur.
I do not consider Mr. Matt or the Superior General of the SSPX to be infallible. Apparently you do. Is this Superior General worship? You accuse others of Pope worship all the time. It appears you have issues of your own.
They would have been soundly castigated by their respective oppositions, Michael Matt by his counterpart at the Wanderer,Possibly, but I really doubt they respond to EVERYTHING he writes. That would make their paper a one issue paper. When was the last time they wrote about him (besides in relation to his father’s eulogy)?
and Bishop Fellay by Cardinal Hoyos in Rome. But Rome remains silent on this.Rome doesn’t respond to the latest stories in the Enquirer about the Pope meeting the space aliens either. It has better things to do than respond to every crackpot claim about it or about the Pope. Between you and the fundies Rome wouldn’t have any time to actually run a Church.
patent +AMDG
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.