There has been copious coverage since Friday on the Synod and its after-effects. I’m sure we will still be processing this most disconcerting and tempestuous of fortnights for some time to come. I did see a few notes I wanted to bring to your attention. Some may be old news. Taken together they do start to reveal a certain picture, if you will.
First, while Cardinal Kasper’s reputation seems badly damaged publicly (one would hope, in fact, he would be finished), it seems the Germans are ready to continue advancing “his” errors to the end. In fact, the head of the German bishop’s conference, Cardinal Marx, seems to have happily taken the mantle of revolution upon himself (my emphasis and comments)
Speaking to reporters in Rome on October 16, Cardinal Reinhard Marx defended the interim report released by the Synod of Bishops and reiterated his early statement of support for a change in Church teaching regarding the reception of Communion by Catholics who are divorced and remarried.
“Saying that the doctrine will never change is a restrictive view of things,” the cardinal told reporters at a Vatican press office briefing. [St. Vincent of Lerins: "To announce, therefore, to Catholic Christians anything besides that which they have received has never been lawful, is lawful nowhere, and never will be lawful; and to anathematize those who announce anything besides that which has been once received has always been necessary. This being the case, is there anyone of such audacity as to teach other than that which has already been taught in the Church, or anyone of such levity as to receive anything besides that which he has once received from the Church? Sadly, Saint Vincent, there is.] Cardinal Marx, who is president of the German bishops’ conference, said that most of the country’s bishops backed the proposal by his fellow German, Cardinal Walter Kasper.
“We cannot change the Church,” Cardinal Marx said, “but we have not understood everything yet.” He stressed that the Church should serve all of the faith, not dividing them “into first class or second class or third class.” [You know, Cardinal Marx is quite right. Which is why I fail to understand why he wants to relegate those few faithful souls who do abide by all the Church's belief - or strive to do so to their utmost - to a "third class" equivalence to those who persist in manifest states of grave sin. Having a marriage fall apart is not a small "oopsie," it is a first class disaster for all involved, horribly wounds children (often irrevocably), and inflicts serious damage on the Church and the entire culture. But that is forgotten in this headlong rush to inflict leftist revolution on the Church.]
I guess I cannot say that Kardinal Kasper’s reputation is that sullied….he is being feted and awarded by the Catholic University of America. The party is Nov. 6 and all are invited. Perhaps some faithful Catholics could let this soul – in such desperate straits, whether he will acknowledge it or not – hear some charitable correction. I think it would be quite hilarious for a large number of African-American Catholics to show up and question him.
So what is up with the German bishops? Why are they so hell bent on inflicting revolution on the Church? While Pope Francis may be the ultimate author of this revolutionary push, it is the bishops of the Germanic countries that make up the core of his support and backing, intellectually, politically, and, especially, economically. So is this just more evil from that most perverse of races (apparently), which has brought us little but error for the past 500 years (Lutheranism, rationalism, modernism, Hegelianism, Heidegger, Nietzsche , Marx, Hitler, etc)? Or is it something else? Hint:
In Germany, Catholics are leaving the Church in droves, as an average of 140,000 formally abandon the Faith annually.* This is easy to track, because numbers are publicly reported in a system where Germans pay 8-9% of their income tax to receive the Sacraments. The church tax is administered by the State on behalf of the Church through a payroll deduction, for a lucrative 2-3% processing fee.
Apparently, more and more German Catholics resent this tax (and especially, the firm declaration that those who refuse to pay it WILL be denied the Sacraments, no exceptions allowed. Thus, most Germans view the Catholic Church as a cold, hard, self-interested bureaucracy that only cares for its own comfort and convenience:
First, the ordinary Germans are correct. The Catholic Church is Germany’s second-largest employer with 690,000 employees. (That’s 7 times the size of Mercedes Benz, folks.) Bishops take home between $10,000 and $15,000 per MONTH, and they don’t pay for their residence, their cars or their upkeep. You can read all about it here, but suffice to say that the German Catholic Church has been a gravy train for clerics for the last 60 years. [Think about that. 700,000 employees. That is twice as many as GM, Ford, and Chrysler - combined. Over $6 billion a year in direct income for the German bishops from the tax, much of which winds up in secular investments, with the bishops themselves the recipients of much of the windfall. The German episcopate is about the most disconnected from the Apostolic example in the entire world. But money buys lots and lots of influence.]
Second, the gravy train is about to come to an end. Fully 140,000 Germans leave the Church every year. Plus, a demographic cliff looms, and the Germans — world masters at corporate planning — can see the end coming very clearly. Estimates vary, but basically in 15-20 years the well will run dry. The old people will die. The young people won’t pay.
And so the whole “mercy” gambit is just a desperate hope that they can keep that gravy train rolling on, that they can woo people to separate with a very substantial part of their income in exchange for happily confirming them in their error and sin. I have no word for it, but disgusting. They are attacking Jesus Christ for filthy lucre.
Finally, I have held out a silent, pious hope that the events of late last week might have shocked Pope Francis out of his present……..support for novelty. I mentioned that to a few folks, who told me they thought my hope forlorn. Well, unfortunately, they were probably right. Rather than reconsider his position viz a viz the mind of the Church after the setback at the Synod, it appears the revolutionaries plan to double down on the authoritarian repression and deform the makeup of the hierarchy even more in their favor:
A couple of Italian papers have mentioned it during the weekend and also this Monday (Il Messaggero; Corriere della Sera). As a punishment for his defense of the orthodox faith against the subversive and heretical attempts of his fellow countryman Walter “A Good African is a Quiet African” Kasper and his position of firm resistance before and during the Synod, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Müller, would be sent to Siberia. Sorry, to Germany.
There are at least two major Sees available in Kirchensteuerland: Berlin, vacant, and his own hometown of Mainz, whose bishop, the Kasperite Cardinal Lehmann, is almost 79 by now.
This should open a wide path for the also widely rumored complete dismantling of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith so that it might become an inefficient ornament…….
……….Speaking of Papa Wojtyla, all reports (also in Il Messaggero this Monday) and rumors also converge in one direction: the new stage of the current purge will not stop at the Ratzingerians (such as Burke or Müller), but would now reach the Wojtylians as well. All conservative Poles in the Curia, and their allies, will be removed when the Curial reform takes place. Their offices could be simply extinguished or merged, and the new leadership would certainly be of a new (actually old liberal) kind.
Some may say “oh, it’s just a rumor!” Yeah, but on how many “rumors” has the Italian press been right in the past 6-12 months? Pretty much every one of any significance. But it’s all my fault for reporting it. Whatever.
Final final thought: Oh Father AG, is this the wagon you have hitched yourself and your order to? Is this what you expected and desired? Are you happy with the direction in which the Church is being led? Or is all this again just the fevered imaginings of us poor lost evil trads, the very worst people in the universe, according to you?