Don't be shy. Say something.
Regarding DH: that unfortunate document, is, thankfully, being consigned to a quiet death through the rather Cromwellian interpretation given it by the Holy See and the Holy Father.
I further refer you to the infallible Syllabus of Errors (along with Quanta Cura) promulgated by Pius IX in 1864 for the Church's true and Apostolic teaching on these issues.
+G.J.
Don't worry, David, the esteemed Fr. Jape, which I've always pronounced "Jape", (Hah-Pay? Who knew??) is only paying you a profound compliment by all this attention. My suspicion is that he considers you less than utterly beyond hope, and therefore quite worthy of his time, and quite likely a strong ally our common cause of illiberalism.
My take is that you only differ with him on precisely how far down to lay the axe. I also think he is not taking into full account how much further "gone" Canada is than the U.S.--so much more "gone" that I suspect that our Northern neighbors might well be on their way to righting the ship whilst the US sinks completely under the caustic flood.
Best regards!
Way to go Fr. Jape: YES, YES, DH is HERETICAL! It clearly repudiates the Syllabus of Errors and centuries and Roman Catholic teaching. The Holy Spirit really blew that one during Vatican II, getting all caught up in the fashionable Whig-Thomist detente with liberalism. About time somebody had the cajones to say it.
Did you ever notice that when Roman Catholics--even the most doctrinally conservative--change their mind on what was once firm doctrine, they call it a "development of doctrine"? Never a change of doctrine, merely a "development of doctine." Kinda whiggish. In fact, Vatican II was nothing more than a Whiggish coup d'etat. Back to Pius IX and Leo XIII!
What do the Reformed call "development of doctrine"? Do they just split up and condemn each other? Whereas Evangelicals have no historical memory and "new" stuff is always doubleplusgood.
On DH, who is laying a trap for whom? Is Koyzis blind to its liberalism and thus revealing his sympathy for liberalism via DH? How will Koyzis express appreciation of DH without echoing such blatantly anti-Catholic offal as is found in the Australian opinion piece Jape linked to? DH by those lights brings us right into approval for gay marriage:
"Consider this passage from Dignitatis Humanae: "Finally, government is to see to it that equality of citizens before the law, which is itself an element of the common good, is never violated, whether openly or covertly, for religious reasons. Nor is there to be discrimination among citizens."
"Those calling for legal recognition of same-sex unions see this as a matter of ensuring that all citizens are equal before the law, but in his Considerations Cardinal Ratzinger barely acknowledges that these are the terms in which the debate is being conducted. Nor is there any sense that it is a question on which Catholic legislators might reasonably and justly decide to keep their personal beliefs separate from the law, because they have obligations to fellow citizens who do not share those beliefs. Sometimes a legislator cannot set deeply held moral beliefs aside without doing harm to his or her own integrity, and in such cases it is necessary to vote in accordance with one's beliefs, even if it means risking defeat at the next election. It is not obvious, however, that the debate about gay marriage imposes that kind of decision upon Catholic politicians."
Maybe Koyzis was hanging with the dope-smoking Charlie Sheen "spirit of Vatican II" Catholics at Notre Dame. Ugh.
The Black Knight agrees completely with Cornutus.
No more detente with Thomistic-Whig Catholics like Ratzinger and John Paul II, who failed to repudiate DH and its perspicuous liberalism.
Which all just goes to prove... first you go ahead and allow the "free exercise of religion" and the next thing you know you got dope-smoking Catholics at Notre Dame and before long...you got your Catholic defense of gay marriage. Its all a slippery slope.
The Black Knight also agrees with JAPE when he says over in the Japery:
"Many readers accustomed to thinking as Protestants and Evangelicals, which is to say, as moderns, will be confounded by the seeming difference between the language of DH and the current application of it by the Pope. This is because they are hermeneutically bound by an individualist/rationalist need to seek out the right principle, theory, or method by which the truth may be guarded and right action prescribed, and they are set adrift from the additional inchoate resources of solid communities of tradition which might provide ballast against the waves of Lockean positivism. This, however, is not a hermeneutic or epistemological prejudice shared by Rome, which has always been closer to the Jewish midrash tradition in its awareness that no method, principle, or theory is sufficient to steer laws and doctrines in fidelity to truth and right order. Thus, creative mis/interpretation to adjust tradition within parameters that it should be able to tolerate affords flexibility and "progress" that is not bound to itself, its own theories or principles, but is subordinate to human beings standing in and defending the Apostolic line and tradition, preserving the Christian order for the next generation of faithful Christian communities."
TBK suspects that Protestants and Evangelicals--that is to say, MODERNISTS—are more confounded by the “SEEMING”??? difference between the Syllubus of Pius IX and the language of DH. But then that’s because they don’t understand that the magisterium can radically contradict earlier immutable doctrines without having to worry about little things like the principle of non-contradiction. (Didn’t Pius declare religious freedom to be a “delirium”—if you were for it you were a bit nutty!) But not the Black Knight. He knows with Jape that objections to these kinds of contradictions can be finessed by appeals to “the development of doctrine” and by dismissing the criticism of those calling attention to the contradictions as....modernists! TBK believes it is always better to go with the creative MIS-interpretation than to acknowledge a radical change in unchangeable doctrine!
The Black Knight is a bit concerned that this might sound to protestant-evangelicals-modernists as ironically just a tad post-modern—-the text or tradition is so plastic it can be bent to suit the zeitgeist or the counter-zeitgeist. Heads it is religious suppression (Pius IX and the Syllabus) tails it is religious freedom (DH and Vatican II). But in the end, TBK agrees with Jape that the magisterium can’t be bound by the principle of non-contradiction, since that principle is nothing more than Lockean positivism. Of course, those protestants and evangelicals—those modernists—might ask if the magisterium can pull that trick with religious liberty, why can’t the Church make the same move on, say, contraception? Heads it is Humanae vitae, tails it is condoms (in some future enc
....encyclical). You can always square that circle with a little bit of creative MIS-interpretation!
TBK
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I can't help but start to imagine how much bolder & more engaging a personality might be drawn forth from me, in the digital realm at least, if I were typing under a sufficiently vague & evocative online handle. An alluring prospect!
(Of course, for all anyone out there knows, 'Paul Bowman' is a pseudonym. You'd think one would have bothered to come up with something more interesting though.)
Not merely emboldening pseudonyms, but in the case of TBK (no relation, I hope, to BTK), but substantial and injudicious use of the third person as well. This is not mere enhancement, but personality cubed.
Cheers!
Heh. About two or three times since I started blogging I've had someone suggest that "Gideon Strauss" is a pseudonym. But no, that's what my parents called me. It would have been cool to have been baptized "The Black Knight," though, although I am not quite up to the level of sarcasm of our current TBK.
Since Jape quoted MacIntytre and the institution of Knute Rockne has been mentioned in passing, The Black Knight thought he would relay a little anecdote: TBK was part of a faculty (philosophy and religion) dinner party, at an institution to go unmentioned, with MacIntyre back in 1991/92. M was talking about the philosophy faculty at Notre Dame, how they didn't have any "fundamentalists" but they had a lot of orthodox Christians etc. TBK asked him how the philosophers got along with the theology department. Without missing a beat, MacIntyre replied, "The problem with the theologians over in the theology department is that they think the way I used to--when I was an atheist."
TBK liked that.
When I met Rich, Gideon, one of the first things I asked him was whether Gideon Strauss was indeed your real name. It seemed so magnificently improbable.
We agreed it was a cool one.
Kudos to your parents, so.
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