Gleanings (3): Vatican, or Vatican III?

(The Gazette - May 28, 2009)   "We're all in this together", 96 short pages at 14 euros and 50 on behalf of St. Raphael the publishing company full of the usual stuff: the sexual morality of the church to burn, the divorced and remarried to be admitted to Communion, the celibacy of priests to send to Ramenghi, the obtuseness of ethics from Catholic shake off, and then the collegiality, openness to the world, the people of God who directly elect the bishops, as if they were mayors. All sprinkled with snobbish horror "the stream of people" who "when the pope arrives, have more or less the value of the carnival." If there had at least given the rush to sign this act duet with his former opponent Don Louis Verzi, one might wonder why the Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini has taken the trouble to go so fast in the library with the usual litany progressive-modernist. Because, from the standpoint of publishing the news, not so fresh, it is just this: after years of war between the San Raffaele hospital in Milan curia, Cardinal cultivating doubt and the priest who chases immortality signed peace.

But, in these terms, the question would be idle.   With the bustle of chic clericals Verzé dialogue with Don is just a caress given by the cardinal to his followers, a discourse of the moon for those who wanted to see him for the post of Pope Benedict XVI. For others, grateful that the Holy Spirit in the conclave decides otherwise, the message is different: the substance and method.
As regards the substance, is easily understood. The Cardinal, with a sparring partner like Don Verzi, has a good game with a studied reluctance to show his design of a new church. At Don Verzé sure that when Christ will return to earth will have faith because there will still be the San Raffaele (his hospital, not the archangel) responds by evoking the gray areas of ethics on which loves to venture without taking a single contribution to discern the white from black. At Don Verzé that speaks of Christian morality inconsistent with the world trusts with regret that, in effect, "today there are many requirements and regulations that are not always understood by the simple faithful." At Don Verzé haunted by a church that does not chase fast enough science delivers its "do not know," I will not decide "gaps in doctrine and hope.

The cardinal is one octave below the priest's manager, but between the lines of wing stroke is. Except that it conceals the cardinal in a matter of method: to put a little 'order in this boat, my dear Don Verzi, "not just a simple priest or a bishop. It is necessary that the whole church is going in and reflect on these cases. "  
To make it short, what we need a Vatican Council III. Who else but the cardinal antagonist, could evoke without becoming ridiculous? Indeed, even boasting that he had dreamed of since the Synod for Europe in 1999. But to get there, not enough to enunciate a new doctrine, we need a method to pass it in public. And the method consists in the repeated publication of works and operas, including one with Don Luigi Verzé is just the latest example. The strategy Martiniana, works and operas are so many progressive-modernist history patterns of the kind which, until Vatican II understood, drew up the Roman Curia and on which the Council Fathers were expected to discuss. The fact that now are disseminated through the press rather than delivered by courier to the bishops that will depend on the nature of the Vatican III, to reconcile the media. Will be celebrated in the newspapers, on TV, on the Web and it is obvious that the schemes are in history than in those places curiae dusty.

After the election of Benedict XVI, a media council is the only card left in the hands of liberals. In conclaves of 1978, the dossettiani Bologna had circulated among the cardinals a memo entitled "For a renewal of the papal service in the church at the end of the twentieth century." Seven chapters that started by defining the church after Paul VI "increasingly inadequate to the needs of human life." And continue with the requirement that "the gospel is proclaimed in this distinction by the ethos", the establishment of a "collegial body that is at the level of the supreme leader of the Catholic Church", "the synod of bishops with a capacity Legislative true ", the bishops elected on the spot" between spontaneity and ecclesial communion ", to the notary's vision of the papacy. Since then, no Pope has put the dismantling of the Catholic church, but no progress has ceased to think. Over the years, have given voice to a teaching alternative media-took the shape of the archbishop of Milan. Not by chance, the Dossett Alberto Melloni speaks openly of "church of Martini."

The operation has succeeded more than adequate   for what-to-ear average Catholic appears as a heresy in most public opinion the Church is entirely normal.
And then, the faithful are called the "Church of Martini, why not go all the way by convening a Vatican III media? Strictly speaking, it could be regarded as already being seen that the "preparatory schemes" countersigned by Martini are already under respectful debate in the halls of catechism courses for engaged couples, homilies, the Chairs of the teachers of religion, seminaries and go like hot cakes when one does not know what a gift to the parish priest or the old aunt who is so of the church.
But there's more. A Vatican III media would jettison a Vatican II, which begins to lose a few rounds. The most dramatic acts of the pontificate of Benedict XVI's speech to the Roman Curia in 2005 to the motu proprio on the Mass in the ancient Roman rite until the lifting of the excommunication of the bishops Lefebvrists, leave no doubt. And progress, while continuing to consider valid the points that have helped to call on the pre-conciliar church, now feel that the so-called spirit-of-council works less. The myth crunch, better equip themselves with a brand new, a Vatican III that allows to make a revision in the conception of ethics and the sacraments from which would emerge a new religion with a new morality, a new priesthood.
An alternative, perhaps provocative, there would be, completed the Vatican I, which expects to be concluded by 1870.

© Il Foglio --   Alessandro Gnocchi and Mario Palmaro

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