Saturday, October 20, 2018

Francis, your legalism is showing...


My last Facebook post:



Dr. Germain Grisez, in a talk entitled "Legalism, Moral Truth and Pastoral Practice" given at a 1990 symposium held in Philadelphia, had this to say:

"Theologians and pastors [pay attention here Francis] who dissent from received Catholic teaching think they are rejecting legalism because they set aside what they think are mere rules in favor of what they feel are more reasonable standards. Their views are thoroughly imbued with legalism, however. For dissenters think of valid moral norms as rules formulated to protect relevant values. Some even make their legalism explicit by denying that there is any necessary connection between moral goodness (which they restrict to the transcendental level of a love with no specific content) and right action (which they isolate at the categorical level of inner-worldly behavior). But whether their legalism is explicit or not, all the dissenters hold that specific moral norms admit exceptions whenever, all things considered, making an exception seems the best - or least bad - thing to do. Most dissenters also think that specific moral norms that were valid in times past can be inappropriate today, and so they regard the Church's contested moral teachings as outdated rules that the Church should change."


Dr. Grisez reminded his listeners at the Philadelphia symposium that, "During the twentieth century, pastoral treatment of repetitious sins through weakness - especially masturbation, homosexual behavior, premarital sex play and contraception within marriage - grew increasingly mild. Pastors correctly recognized that weakness and immaturity can lessen such sins’ malice. Thinking legalistically, they did not pay enough attention to the sins’ inherent badness and harmfulness, and they developed the idea that people can freely choose to do something that they regard as a grave matter without committing a mortal sin. This idea presupposes that in making choices people are not responsible precisely for choosing what they choose. That presupposition makes sense within a legalistic framework, because lawgivers can take into account mitigating factors and limit legal culpability. But it makes no sense for morality correctly understood, because moral responsibility in itself is not something attached to moral acts but simply is moral agents’ self-determination in making free choices. Repetitious sinners through weakness also were handicapped by their own legalism. Not seeing the inherent badness of their sins, they felt that they were only violating inscrutable rules. When temptation grew strong, they had little motive to resist, especially because they could easily go to confession and have the violation fixed. Beginning on Saturday they were holy; by Friday they were again sinners. This cyclic sanctity robbed many people’s lives of Christian dynamism and contributed to the dry rot in the Church that became manifest in the 1960s, when the waves of sexual permissiveness battered her."

Dr. Grisez then went on to explain that, "Pastors free of legalism will teach the faithful how sin makes moral requirements seem to be alien impositions, help them see through this illusion, and encourage them to look forward to and experience the freedom of God’s children, who rejoice in the fruit of the Spirit and no longer experience the constraint of law.."

3 comments:

Paul Anthony Melanson said...

In a Pentecost homily several years ago, Francis advanced a false irenicism which, he said, is opposed by those who "adopt rigid and airtight positions," who "become locked into their own ideas and ways of doing things..." Such people, he asserted, "choose the part over the whole, belonging to this or that group before belonging to the Church. They become avid supporters for one side, rather than brothers and sisters in the one Spirit...Christians of the 'right' or the 'left', before being on the side of Jesus, unbending guardians of the past or the avant-garde of the future before being humble and grateful children of the Church."

Such is the false irenicism of Francis as he prepares the world for demon worship and the man-god.

Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand (whom Pope Pius XII referred to as the "20th century Doctor of the Church," refutes this distorted idea of unity. He writes, "St. Paul says there always will be heresies and he adds that God permits them to test the faithful. The disunity that is based on the incompatibility of truth and falsehood cannot and should not be avoided...To deplore disunity as such, instead of deploring heresies, instead of condemning these and calling them by their name, implies first of all that one would keep unity even at the cost of truth. But, of course, true unity presupposes unity in truth. Error, falsehood, can never be the basis for true unity. That holy, supernatural unity of which our Lord speaks in the priestly prayer ut unum sint - that all may be one - can come to pass only in the profession of divine truth, in the membership of the Mystical Body of Christ. It is a unity which includes some but, by the same token, excludes others. As Father Werenfried van Straaten [the Bacon priest, my note] reminds us, 'Jesus' prayer that all may be one'...may not be separated from His other words: 'I say unto you that whoever does not enter by the door of the sheepfold is a thief and a robber...I am the door!' The same principle is expressed in the first encyclical of Pope Pius XI: Pax Christi in regno Christi, the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ. Even on the natural level, unity that is not grounded in truth is either a very silly or a very dangerous thing. That shallow comradeship so typical of modern society, for example, in which we approach everyone regardless of his relation to God in a spirit of 'tolerance' - the spirit incarnated in the words of Frederick II of Prussia: 'Let everyone attain beatitude in his own fashion' - that is a foolish pseudo-unity lacking any common principle to truly unite men. Such 'togetherness,' however, can be worse than foolish; it can be a sinister force when it is based not on a lack of principle, but on a common error - on an idol. The togetherness found in Nazism or in Communism is an amazing thing. Devotion to the common idol goes so far that the devotees are ready to die for it. So many young Germans gave their lives in the war while screaming, 'Heil Hitler!' They had given themselves in unity, to the devil." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 3-4).

This false irenicism will continue to play a significant role in this "pontificate" as the push for a one-world religion intensifies.

Unknown said...


THE CHURCH IN AGONY



Penance Penance Penance

to avoid Divine vengeance
e
for not showing any remorse

and trying our will to enforce



The reign of the Impostor has arrived

the Church, of TRUTH is being deprived

the whole world hangs on his lips

while being readied for a total eclipse



The true followers of Christ

trying to pull off the heist

are persecuted for non-compliance

and being countered with defiance



When it will seem that all is lost

everything sacred has been tossed

God will deliver us from our agony

and reign forever in all His Majesty



SO LET IT BE WRITTEN, SO LET IT BE DONE

A M E N


Rita Biesemans, written December 19 2013

TLM said...

Word on the street is that Francis is about to roll out a new 'YOUTH MASS' at the end of this SIN ODD. (this coming Sunday, I would presume) Something that his 'behind the scenes commission' has been working on for a few years I would also presume. I mean after all, the current N.O. Mass is not at all void enough of the sacrificial aspect that they would like. Oh no! They have to 'revise' and 'tweak' a little more so that whatever abomination they plan to roll out isn't a Mass at all. You know, we must incorporate the ENTIRE 'Spirit of Vatican ll' to include EVERYONE! And while we're at it, we must suppress the TLM because it is so 'RIGIDLY YESTERDAY'!!

Lord Jesus, please save us from this monster that is sitting in the Chair of Peter! If this is a chastisement, when is it that we have had enough??

Site Meter