On the Ultimate Folly and Futility of Worrying About Swishy Bishops and Other Liberal Dissidents in the Church, and "PR" Regarding the Pope

  [compiled from remarks of mine in a recent thread on my Facebook page. Thomas Hunt's words will be in blue]
It doesn't matter what Pope Francis does. If he doesn't care at all or about "PR", or if he (on the other hand) becomes a master of all the "proper" techniques and media-savvy, it won't matter a hill of beans. The secular society believes and spins what it will, regardless of any of that. Jesus and Paul and Peter didn't care what the pagan Romans thought of their teachings. They just taught 'em. And that's why they were all killed, along with some help from the Sanhedrin.

The pope can say anything and it'll be distorted, and won't satisfy his critics. Didn't Ven. Pope Paul VI speak forcefully enough in 1968 about contraception? Did that stop the nonsense? No; the liberals went right on believing that the Church would change its teaching.

Since people are so obsessed about the Synod, let that decide for them. If some Catholic is so stupid as to not know that Church doctrine and dogma can't change, then little will educate them in the first place. Laymen need to give assent to magisterial teaching and to not rashly speculate that it could change when in fact (for the faithful Catholic) this is impossible.  

The pope works with the bishops. It's called collegiality. The Synod will straighten out all the business about divorced Catholics and receiving communion. I'm not worried about it. Bishops say lots of stupid things. When they get together in councils the Holy Spirit does extraordinary things, despite the inevitable shortcomings of men. Bishops speaking individually are not the magisterium. The Synod is part of that. Synods take votes and decide issues. Case closed.

Cardinal Kasper seems to have some liberal views. I agree. All theological errors come from Germany and England and The Netherlands (+ the US). No surprise there. It was the same at Vatican II with Dollinger (who denied papal infallibility and was excommunicated). Ho hum. ZZZzzzz (-_-) .

One day all the chronic worriers and complainers will have to stop worrying about the pope and the Church: stop acting like they have no faith that God guides and protects her.

These standard, stock, garden variety complaints are very boring to me by now, after having observed them online for 17 years. Folks of a certain sort endlessly complained about John Paul II, who is now a saint (so people like former apologist Bob Sungenis now attack the canonization process as a result).

In the thread, Thomas Hunt, who was expressing many of these concerns wrote: "no one believes doctrine will officially change. Of course it won't." Great. So let's get on with our lives, serving Christ, and relax and not be so concerned. There have always been problems in the Church, yet somehow we survive, don't we? We're still here teaching all the same biblical, apostolic stuff we've always taught.

Complaints and "o woe is us" lamentations are almost always silly and a waste of time. They don't accomplish anything. This is why I keep advising the complainers and worriers to just relax and wait for the Synod to make its decrees. I'm not worried about it at all. The Church has made it this far and will continue to be the One True Church.

My point is that Cardinal Kasper is just one man and his views won't prevail in the Ssynod. Much ado about nothing. Some people think it is a huge crisis that one bishop says stupid things. I yawn and say, "like this is something new, or anything that will change Church teaching"?

The faithful need not depend on one bishop or several liberal bishops (actually or imagined) to obtain their faith. They have all the resources under the sun available to help them: especially the Catechism. So I'm not worried about them. If they have to be led by the hand in everything, chances are they are lousy Catholics in the first place. I'm doing everything I can to help educate them in the faith and to try to spread the joy obtainable therein. But every man stands before God alone. Saying "my bishop taught me the wrong thing" won't be any excuse on Judgment Day.

I wrote recently in my revised book about Orthodoxy, that Germany, England, and the US were the source of much of the dissent in the Church: that it was that way during Vatican I in 1870 and exactly the same today ("some things never change"). I don't sit around worrying about it day and night. My philosophy is that spreading light overcomes the darkness. I defend Holy Mother Church and her true doctrines, and that is an excellent way to spend my time. Every time I teach truth I oppose any liberal bishop who is out there.

Pope St. John Paul II was bashed endlessly for not cracking down on liberals as much as the critics thought he should. When he kissed the Koran that was viewed as akin to Judas' betrayal (and I was called a "modernist" for defending him at length several times and arguing that it didn't mean all the nonsense it was said to have meant). Everything is exactly the same now as it always was. 

The thing to do is what I've said all along in this thread: simply reiterate orthodoxy and let the loose cannons spout their nonsense if the must (just like bears crap in the woods), but with increasing irrelevancy as time goes on. The liberals and the heterodox thrive on attention: as do also the radical Catholic reactionaries on the other end of the spectrum. That's most of their game. If we ignore them, they are deprived of the big thrill they get in being dissidents. Consequently, I do my best to ignore them as much as possible.

Thomas Hunt wrote about another in my thread (both are Catholics): "Your very personal approach is one you learned as a Protestant." I replied:

That doesn't necessarily follow. Blessed Cardinal Newman wrote a lot about how laymen opposed the many Arian bishops during the Arian crisis in the 4th century (when Protestantism was still 12 centuries away). If they had simply followed the bishops like sheep, wherever they led, we'd all be Arian Jehovah's Witnesses today. But the laypeople knew their faith and played a crucial role in maintaining apostolic trinitarian orthodoxy.

How is it "Protestant" to simply say [as the second Catholic noted above, did], "I try to understand my faith by mining the teachings of the Church in Scripture, the Catechism and documents published by the Vatican"? That's perfectly Catholic. There is nothing un-Catholic about it whatsoever. The Protestant doesn't do that. He does only the first and not the second and third things. Then he takes a head count of how many Protestants believe so-and-so and decides which of the many hundreds of denominations to join. That is erroneous  private judgment as a rule of faith; not what was written above.

It would be like claiming, "its a Protestant mentality to read Dave Armstrong's books and learn more about the Catholic faith." It's no more "Protestant" than to read the layman Chesterton 90 years ago. Any Catholic who knows anything knows what the magisterium teaches and what it is, and whether a lay apologist like myself is accurately conveying and defending the same teachings or not. It's perfectly possible, by virtue of seeking truth and asking God to guide one in that quest.

Clearly, it's always better to have an orthodox bishop rather than a liberal one, but on the other hand, the resources are out there and Catholic truth awaits anyone who is serious about finding it. It's as close as the Catechism.

We are what we eat. If we're in an environment where there is a lot of modernist garbage, chances are we'll pick up some of it. It's almost inevitable unless we are vigilant and prayerful. It's especially true among intellectuals, because they hate to be ostracized in academia as not "with it." Even C. S. Lewis was spurned and despise among many of his Oxford colleagues and denied a professorship at Oxford (he only got one in the 50s when he moved to Cambridge).
We are supposed to look to our bishops, especially for teaching. When we cannot do that we suffer loss (all of us)--even if we can still find truth for ourselves by study and prayer. . . . Personal study is very good and necessary. But thinking that that means bad bishops don't have a very negative effect on all of us, is naive.

All of us, huh? One bad bishop or 300 of them (if, theoretically, there were that many) doesn't have the slightest effect on my Catholic life. Not one iota. It has absolutely zero effect on how I spend my day, how orthodox I am, my apologetics. Nothing. Zero, zip, nada, zilch.

What influences me is the magisterium and writings and lives of orthodox, obedient Catholics, the saints, the Bible, etc.

Yes, we look to bishops for teaching, but particularly in council, and in line with the pope, because that is when they are speaking magisterially. Individually, they do not have that charism. We give them a lot of respect, because they are in authority over us, but sometimes they can say erroneous things, and if we know our faith, we know when that happens and we are not obligated to accept their teaching at that point, because it's wrong and false.

I already noted how in the 4th century, the laypeople massively rejected the Arian bishops. This is how Cardinal Newman developed his famous emphasis on laymen and the sensus fidelium, because he had studied that period of Church history. He in turn greatly influenced Vatican II, which brought back a renewed emphasis on the laity, which was only reclaiming an ancient heritage in the Church.

Thus, what I'm arguing right now is quite in line with Blessed Cardinal Newman and Vatican II: i.e., the magisterium and most developed Mind of the Church. 

. . . implying that their influence is negligible because I can study for myself is a Protestant reaction.

It's not at all. We are supposed to know our faith, just as Protestants do. It's not an exclusively Protestant notion, to have an intelligent, educated, informed faith. They adversely influence ignorant Catholics. The problem is ignorance, not some supposed Protestant method if a Catholic actually knows his or her faith! You're the one thinking like a Protestant here because you relegate entirely Catholic things into a supposed "Protestant-only" box, as if Catholics have to only be dumb sheep and be led entirely by bishops, and learn little or nothing on their own. That went out as early as the wide availability of books, and a corresponding widespread literacy, in the mid-15th century.

Catholicism does not allow us to be only individuals. We are always part of the flock.

No one said it did. [Name] said he studied the Bible, the Catechism and the councils. That's utterly Catholic. Protestants only do the first thing, because they deny the infallibility of tradition and the Church, so that's all they have in terms of bottom-line authority: how they try to solve problems. But they can't do it with the Bible only, which is why they are so hopelessly divided.