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Monday, April 4, 2016

Cardinal Dolan on Apostolic Exhortation: “Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church is trying to be faithful" Featured

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Cardinal Dolan 500Timothy Cardinal Dolan

[CORRECTED]

The “Joy of Love” is about to explode upon the Catholic world, no doubt overthrowing the teaching of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, in line with all of Tradition, on the impossibility of  Holy Communion for those living in a state of continual adultery. The overthrow will be veiled in ambiguous references to the “internal forum,” “integration,” and a “path or journey” culminating in admission to Holy Communion according to the “competence” of the local ordinary or the “episcopal conferences” Paul VI invented to begin the process of fragmenting the universal discipline of the Church Universal in the context of the “liturgical reform.” 


In short, if what seems likely comes to pass, practice will hollow out the dogma on the indissolubility of marriage, making a mockery of the very words of Our Lord Himself, which “The Joy of Love” will of course affirm resoundingly with paragraph after paragraph of empty praise.

 

The neo-Catholic establishment will immediately capitulate to the latest novelty, as it has done with all the others in the post-conciliar regime of novelty, and will then reliably denounce traditionalist opposition to the change, which will mirror the decomposition of the mainline Protestant churches. 

Leading the way to another ruinous compromise of the Church’s integrity will be neo-Catholic prelates like Cardinal Timothy (“bravo” for homosexuals) Dolan. Dolan will tell us this is nothing to get excited about.  In fact, he is telling us that already, even before he has seen the document. 

In an interview with John Allen published today, he assured the dumbed-down Catholic masses that “there have always been different ways of seeing things … you look at the Orthodox way, you look at different theories within the Catholic family. There have always been various ways of interpreting things, alright?” 

[Correction] Invoking the always reliable “Holy Spirit” as the unimpeachable source of the latest catastrophic blunder, Dolan assures us that "the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit is sincerely trying to be faithful to the timeless teaching of Jesus, and yet apply that in a very merciful, understanding, gracious way.” So let us wish the Church the best of luck on Friday, shall we?

Then again, when asked pointedly about whether there will be “a cautious opening to Communion for the divorced and remarried,” Dolan replied: 
I haven’t spent much time on that. For one, I don’t think that’s going to happen. For two, this in many ways already has happened.

Of course, there’s a conservative approach to the internal forum solution that the most conservative canonists and theologians have defended forever. I think the fear among many of us, however, is that if anything, things have become a little bit too lax.

If the pope now says, ‘Let’s go back to that traditional openness of the Church, that some things can be settled on the level of conscience’, that’s nothing new. It goes back to the arguments of Alphonsus de Liguori, and everybody else. If he says, ‘Let’s add to that in a very reasoned, prayerful, reflective way,’ that, to me, would hardly be revolutionary.
A difficult passage indeed.  Let me unpack it for the reader:  Dolan doesn’t think it will happen, but it has already happened. It could happen as a conservative approach to the “internal forum,” yet the conservative approach has become a little too liberal.  But if Francis returns to the conservative approach, when Holy Communion for adulterers wasn’t allowed, and adds to the conservative approach to allow it, that would not be revolutionary, because what won’t happen is already happening according to the conservative approach, so what’s so revolutionary about that? 
I offer Cardinal Dolan as Exhibit A for the complicity of the neo-Catholic establishment in the gravest crisis the Church has ever faced.

As for us traditionalists, we can only do what we have always done in the face of the post-conciliar madness: resist and hold fast to what has been handed down.  As Father John Hunwicke
has written concerning the probable debacle on Friday:
So might the Holy Father try to cut  the Gordian Knot about Holy Communion for remarried divorcees by kicking the ball into the long grass of Episcopal Conferences?…

We, in the Church of England, saw what happened when 'Provincial Autonomy' was allowed to ride rough-shod over Doctrine, Tradition, Bible ... and even the Dominical Imperative of Unity. It is a thoroughly nasty and miserable experience.

Any attempt to introduce anything remotely like it, or anything that could act as a first step towards anything remotely like it, into the Catholic Church, should be resisted by any and every means of Resistance that orthodox Catholics have or can devise.

As a former Anglican, I warn you: decades of internal warfare within the Church on this subject are exactly what the Church Militant can do without. For most of my priestly ministry in the Church of England, this question hung like a dark shadow over my head. Any attempt by anybody [emphasis in original] to inflict a similar wound upon the Catholic Church merits, as Cardinal Burke has intimated, Resistance in whatever forms may be necessary, and with as much vigour as God's Grace gives us….

It raises the ultimate question of whether Christ is King, or whether each nation bows down before the idol of its own national Zeitgeist.
Those are the words of a true son of the Church Militant. 

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Last modified on Monday, April 4, 2016
Christopher A. Ferrara

Christopher A. Ferrara: President and lead counsel for the American Catholic Lawyers Inc., Mr. Ferrara has been at the forefront of the legal defense of pro-lifers for the better part of a quarter century. Having served with the legal team for high profile victims of the culture of death such as Terri Schiavo, he has long since distinguished him a premier civil rights Catholic lawyer.  Mr. Ferrara has been a lead columnist for The Remnant since 2000 and has authored several books published by The Remnant Press, including the bestseller The Great Façade. Together with his children and wife, Wendy, he lives in Richmond, Virginia.