The cry is out in the mainstream media for the Church to "modernize" and get with the times. This call is not exclusive to any one denomination. James V. Schall takes a hypothetical look at what would happen if a "liberal" Pope led the Catholic Church.
The first consequence would be that anyone with a half a mind will realize that the Church has contradicted its own solemnly sworn and defined principles. In other words, on its own grounds, it is not worth believing. It has rejected its one claim to credibility, that is, its adherence to the stated deposit of faith and the teachings that flowed from this. In fact, it now agrees that what was wrong in one era is right in another.
If the Church, over its long history, insists that some thing is wrong, then it suddenly decides that what is wrong is right, what follows? What follows is simply that no one, believer or non-believer, should ever again give such a Church second thought. It cannot, on these premises, be true.
So what those who advocate abortion, birth control, gay life, euthanasia, cloning, and what not really are seeking is the undermining of the one authority in the world that says these practices and those who choose them are wrong, wrong before God and before themselves. The Church did not itself concoct these theories as if it could fashion what it wanted, as those who want it to radically change think it can.
Such people do not understand that the only claim the Church has to our belief is its faithful consistency to the deposit of faith, which it did not somehow "make up" by itself. Once this position is internally and intrinsically undermined, as it would be if the Church approved these things, it would have absolutely no claim to anyone's belief, or even anyone's taking it seriously. Under the rubric of the advent of a "liberal" pope, we have, in fact, the desire that the authority of the papacy to credibility be itself eliminated.
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3 comments:
Hey, Powerblog, the Catholic Church used to hang Jews up and torture them, then burn them at the stake. Now they say that God’s covenant with them is still in effect.
Isn’t this an admission that the Church was wrong in the past?
And couldn’t the Church now be wrong about birth control and divorce?
Well I don't know where you learned your history but of all medieval institutions, the Church stood alone in Europe in its consistent condemnation of Jewish persecutions. Yet they happened anyway. England expelled all Jews in 1290; France in 1306; Spain in 1492. Europeans disliked the Jews for their affluence and for the closed nature of their society, which seemed to scorn Christians. Jews were commonly believed to use Christian blood in their rituals, to desecrate the host, and to engage in ritual murder. Kings increasingly saw Jews as nonsubjects and therefore detrimental to their kingdoms. When the Black Death arrived in the 14th century, the Jews were accused of polluting the wells or incurring divine disfavor through their rituals. Pope Clement VI issued bulls in 1348 repudiating these widely held beliefs, insisting that the Jews' lives and property be respected. But his words, and those of his successors in the 14th century, were ignored. By the beginning of the 15th century, the only safe place in Europe to be a Jew was in the lands of the pope.
So long as you base everything on the Word of God you will be never be wrong.
Boy, that’s rewriting history for you.
The Inquisition was an arm of the Catholic Church, and it was a priest of the inquisition who convinced Ferdinand and Isabella to expel the Jews from Spain. Most of the expelled Jews died.
The Crusaders left a huge body count of Jews in their wake as they made their way to the Holy Land. The Crusades were started by a Pope.
Pope John Paul II “…made the momentous apology -- a pope apologizing! -- for the sin of anti-Semitism.”
It was John Paul II who allowed historian David I. Kertzer to look into the Vatican’s secret archives. Here is a synopsis of the book he wrote:
The Popes Against the Jews
The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism
A groundbreaking historical study based on documents previously locked in the Vatican’s secret archives: The Popes Against the Jews graphically shows how the Catholic Church campaign of demonization against the Jews helped make the Holocaust possible.
Pope John Paul II, as part of his effort to improve Catholic-Jewish relations, has himself called for a clear-eyed historical investigation into any possible link be-tween the Church and the Holocaust. An important sign of his commitment was the recent decision to allow the distinguished historian David I. Kertzer, a specialist in Italian history, to be one of the first scholars given access to long-sealed Vatican archives.
The result is a book filled with shocking revelations. It traces the Vatican’s role in the development of modern anti-Semitism from the nineteenth century up to the outbreak of the Second World War. Kertzer shows why all the recent attention given to Pope Pius XII’s failure to publicly protest the slaughter of Europe’s Jews in the war misses a far more important point. What made the Holocaust possible was groundwork laid over a period of decades. In this campaign of demonization of the Jews—identifying them as traitors to their countries, enemies of all that was good, relentlessly pursuing world domination—the Vatican itself played a key role, as is shown here for the first time.
Yes, the Catholic Church was anti-Semitic until about the time of Pope John. A clear reversal of church policy and admission that the church was wrong.
So it stands to reason the Church could be wrong about birth control and divorce.
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