Disagreeing With The Usccb?

[PhuturePriest]

Today I learned that attacking speech you don't like with counter-speech is liberal fascism.  

 

Fascist.

[Winchester]

Today I learned that it's a really, really bad idea for me to phatmass before my morning coffee. 

I think that when someone makes an outrageous statement like I did, that a reaction like yours is warranted. It's very easy to think that I was exploiting the emotions around that particular act. In fact, I still entertain the possibility that I am doing that. Your reaction should serve as a reminder to me to be thoughtful about what I say, even if I feel it to be true.

 

I think your reaction was valid. I said something charged, you reacted. That's what happens when people use invective. A good reason to be judicious with invective.

[PhuturePriest]

...And they held hands in friendship, and we all lived happily ever after.

[Winchester]

...And they held hands in friendship, and we all lived happily ever after.

Who asked you?

 

Shut up.

[4588686]

...And they held hands in friendship, and we all lived happily ever after.

 

 

Shut up, fatty.

[Luigi]

...And they held hands in friendship, and we all lived happily ever after.

 

For about 10 minutes, until somebody else said something outrageous....

[Luigi]

And BTW, the USCCB disagrees with all of you. 

[4588686]

Fascist.

I'll stab you in your fat mouth

[CrossCuT]

Im so proud of everyone! 

[Winchester]

And BTW, the USCCB disagrees with all of you. 

A selection of the actions of the entity the USCCB often suggests be vested with more power:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

 

 

Wackadoodles.

[Nihil Obstat]

The Winnipeg Statement is all the proof that is necessary that the formal decisions of bishops' conferences are certainly not protected from errors of any sort. That Statement remains a painful stain against the credibility of the Canadian bishops, who have yet to officially retract it.

 

 

I read an interesting critique of the general state of national bishops' conferences. Read it if you like. My posting it implies neither that I agree nor disagree with the content.

 

From: An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. I will not link to the source document, but it is not difficult to find if you would like to read it yourself.

This is about half of chapter 13, 

Religous Liberty, Collegial Equality, Ecumenical Fraternity

 

 

 

This democratization of the Magisterium represents a mortal danger for millions of bewildered and infected souls to whom the spiritual doctors bring no relief because it has ruined the efficacy with which the personal Magisterium of the Pope and bishops was formerly endowed.  A question concerning faith or morals is submitted to numerous theological commissions, who never come up with an answer because their members are divided both in their opinions and in their methods.  We need only read the procedural accounts of the assemblies at all levels to realize that collegiality of the Magisterium is equivalent to paralysis of the magisterium.

Our Lord instructed individuals, not a collectivity, to tend His sheep. The Apostles obeyed Our Lord's orders, and until the twentieth century it was thus.  These days we hear of the Church being in a state of permanent council, continual collegiality. The results have become apparent. Everything is upside down, the faithfull no longer know which way to turn.

The democratization of government was followed quite naturally by the democratization of the Magisterium which took place under the impulse of the famous slogan “collegiality,” spread abroad by the communist, Protestant and progressive press.

They have collegialized the pope's government and that of the bishops with a presbyterial college, that of the parish priest with a lay council, the whole broken down into innumerable commissions, councils, sessions, etc. The new Code of Canon Law is completely permeated with this concept. The pope is described as the head of the College of Bishops. We find this doctrine already suggested in the Council document Lumen Gentium, according to which the College of Bishops, together with the pope, exercises supreme power in the Church in habitual and constant manner.  This is not a change for the better; this doctrine of double supremacy is contrary to the teaching and Magisterium of the Church. It is contrary to the definitions of Vatican Council I and to Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Satis Cognitum. The Pope alone has supreme power; he communicates it only to the degree he considers advisable, and only in exceptional circumstances. The pope alone has power of jurisdiction over the whole world.

We are witnessing therefore a restriction on the freedom of the Supreme Pontiff.  Yes, this is a real revolution! The facts demonstrate that what we have here is not a change without practical consequences. John Paul II is the first pope to be really affected by the reform. We can quote several precise instances where he has reconsidered a decision under pressure from a bishops’ conference. The Dutch Catechism received the imprimatur from the Archbishop of Milan without the modifications requested by the Commission of Cardinals. It was the same with the Canadian Catechism. In that connection I heard someone in authority in Rome say, “What can we do when faced with a bishops’ conference?” The independence assumed by the conferences has also been illustrated in France with regard to the catechisms. The new books are contrary in almost every respect to the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae. The ad limina visit by the bishops of the Paris area in 1982 consisted in their getting the Pope to ratify a catechism which he openly disapproved.  The allocution delivered by John Paul II at the end of the visit had all the signs of a compromise, thanks to which the bishops were able to return in triumph to their own country and continue with their pernicious practices. Cardinal Ratzinger's lectures in Paris and Lyons indicate clearly that Rome has not endorsed the reasons given by the French bishops for installing a new doctrine and orientation, but the Holy See has been reduced by this kind of pressure to proceeding by suggestions and advice, instead of issuing the orders needed to put things on the right track, and when necessary to condemn, as the popes have hitherto always done, as guardians of the deposit of faith.

The bishops, whose authority would thereby seem to be increased, are the victims of a collegiality which paralyzes the running of their dioceses. So many complaints are made on this subject by the bishops themselves, complaints which are very instructive! In theory the bishop can in a number of cases act against the wishes of the assembly. Sometimes even against the majority, if the voting has not been submitted to the Holy See for approval; but in practice this has proved impossible. Immediately after the end of the meeting its decisions are published by the secretary.  They are thus known to all priests and faithful; the news media divulge all the essentials. What bishop could in fact oppose these decisions without showing his disagreement with the assembly and then immediately finding himself confronted with a number of revolutionary spirits who would appeal against him to the assembly?

The bishop has become the prisoner of collegiality, which should have been limited to a consultative group, not a decision-making body. Even for the simplest things he is no longer master of his own house.

Soon after the Council, while I was on a visitation of our communities, the bishop of a diocese in Brazil came very obligingly to meet me at the railway station. “I can't put you up at the bishop's house,” he said,  “but I have had a room prepared for you at the minor seminary.” He took me there himself; the place was in an uproar--young men and girls everywhere, in the corridors and on the stairs. “These young men, are they seminarians?” I asked.  “Alas, no.  Believe me, I am not at all happy at having these young people at my seminary, but the Bishops' Conference has decided that we must from now on hold Catholic Action meetings in our houses.  These you see are here for a week.  What can I do? I can only do the same as the others.”

The powers conferred upon persons by divine right, whether pope or bishops, have been confiscated for the benefit of a group whose ascendency continues to grow. Bishops’ conferences, some will say, are not a recent thing.  Pius X gave them his approval at the beginning of this century. That is correct, but that holy pope gave them a definition which justified them.  “We are persuaded that these bishops’ assemblies are of the greatest importance for the maintenance and development of God’s kingdom in all regions and all provinces.  Whenever the bishops, the guardians of holy things, thereby bring their lights together, the result is that not only do they better perceive their people's needs and choose the most suitable remedies, but they thereby also tighten the bonds uniting them.”

Consequently, they were bodies that did not make decisions binding on their members in an authoritarian manner,  any more than do congresses of scientists decide the way in which experiments must be carried out in this or that laboratory.

The bishops’ conference, however, now works like a parliament; the permanent council of the French episcopate is its executive body. The bishop is more like a prefect or a commissioner of the Republic (to use the fashionable terminology) than a successor of the Apostles charged by the pope to govern a diocese.

In these assemblies they vote; the ballots are so numerous that at Lourdes they have had to install an electronic voting system.  This results inevitably in the creation of parties. The two things do not happen one without the other. Parties mean divisions. When the regular government is subjected to the consultative vote in its normal functioning, then it is rendered ineffective. Consequently the whole body suffers.

The introduction of collegiality has led to a considerable weakening in efficacy, in that the Holy Ghost is more easily impeded and saddened by an assembly than by an individual. When persons are responsible, they act, they speak, even if some say nothing.  At meetings, it is the majority who decide. Yet numbers do not make for the truth. Nor do they make for efficiency, as we have learnt after twenty years of collegiality and as we might have presupposed without making the experiment.  The fable-writer spoke long ago of the “many chapters which have been held for nothing.”  Was it necessary to copy the political systems in which decisions are justified by voting (since they no longer have sovereign heads)? The Church possesses the immense advantage of knowing what she must do to further the Kingdom of God. Her leaders are appointed. So much time is wasted in elaborate joint statements, which are never satisfactory, because they have to take everyone’s opinion into account! So much travelling to take part in commissions and sub-commissions, in select committees and preparatory meetings! Bishop Etchegaray said at Lourdes at the close of the 1978 Assembly, “We no longer know which way to turn.”

The result is that the Church’s powers of resistance to Communism, heresy, immorality, have been considerably  weakened.  This is what its opponents have been hoping for and that is why they made such efforts, at the time of the  Council and after it, to urge her into the ways of democracy.

If we look carefully, it is by means of its slogan that the Revolution has penetrated the Church. “Liberty”--this is the religious liberty we spoke of earlier, which confers rights on error. “Equality”--collegiality and the destruction of personal authority, the authority of God, of the pope, of the bishops; in a word, majority rule. Finally, “Fraternity” is represented by ecumenism.

By these three words, the revolutionary ideology of 1789 has become the Law and the Prophets. The Modernists have achieved what they wanted.

Nobody wanted to comment? :(

[NotreDame]

Nobody wanted to comment? :(

 

It's a good post.  What is actual church teaching on the authority of a Bishop? 
 

[AugustineA]

Nihil I'm going to read that after I drink my coffee and play my obligatory Sunday game of GW2. This thread took a flaming nosedive after the article you posted..

[Cherie]

Yeah, I must admit, I was expecting more people to have commented here! I was looking forward to reading the responses.

[AugustineA]

Nobody wanted to comment? :(

 

It's a well written article. The content of the article is convincing in many respects. Or I shouldn't say convincing. The content of the article puts in words what many Catholics already feel or suspect. Cloudy, watery statements from Church representatives, diversity verging on disunity, and the increasing influence of secular culture. These three concerns are reflected in the article. Lefebvre sort of names democracy and collegiality as the smoking gun here.

 

I am woefully uneducated on these matters. I suspect there is more to it than just the problem collegiality, but I think Lefebvre understands that. Focusing on the dual problem of collegiality weakening the magisterium and bishop's councils not being held accountable, I am inclined to agree. 

 

It will be interesting to see how Papa Francis approaches this issue in his papacy. Obviously, he does not seem confrontational in the public eye, but may be very firm in enforcing magisterial teaching at the end of the day. I think we can all respect, charity and liberality are not the same thing. 

 

Returning this topic to the thread topic, is there a representative closer to the centre of the Magisterium and less tied in American politics that the OP could contact to reassure him he can choose to respectfully disagree on the issue of gun control?