Editorial: Radicati nella fede, October 2015
Newsletter of the Catholic community of
Vocogno, Diocese of Novara, Italy
We wrote last month that the new post-Conciliar Mass, the cradle of agnosticism and continuing uncertainty about the Faith, since it entertains an extenuating dialogue between the priest and the assembly, is no longer focused solely on God. Absurdly, in the new Mass, so human and community-minded, also those who believe in hardly anything [at all] can be there and continue in their doubts.
Those who are unbelievers can be there and look for the best human reasons to continue going to church, perhaps thinking of the psychological or social benefit that can still be found there. This is semi-agnosticism – the agnosticism of those, even if they cannot put themselves in the presence of God, cannot make up their minds to leave the Church completely. It’s “a sort of Catholic agnosticism”.
This “Catholic Agnosticism” nurtured by the new Mass, doesn’t stop with the Rite, but invades all aspects of Catholicism, in every facet of life. It’s universal agnosticism, which involves everything – in fact, it’s “catholic”.
Catholic agnosticism cannot make up its mind to be with God, and is extremely dangerous for this reason – it deceives. It deceives you, it makes you think you are still a Catholic, while you no longer are; and in deceiving you it makes tears and pain impossible, which could bring a conversion.
The Catholic agnostic has serious doubts about the Faith, but still wants to belong to the Church. Why is this? Because sin is not reasonable, it is contradictory, it has no logic. Sin is nurtured on sentiment, not reason. He no longer really believes, but still holds onto the Church. He holds on perhaps nostalgically because of his roots or perhaps, in a world that is all about being social, he still needs to belong to something; there has to be a “club” even for him.
And how can such a believer still belong to the Church? He must ask the Church to adapt to modern agnosticism. He must ask, he must expect, the Church “ to become more human” so that it’s still interesting to people like himself, who no longer know Who God is and what He wants; to people, like himself, who do everything in their search for God but they reject Revelation. If they still believe in the existence of God, they maintain that one is free to seek out and have free thought regarding Him, given that Revelation, Tradition and Scripture, are basically human expressions to be reintegrated into man’s continuous journey…
In essence, they are asking for a “latitudinarian” church, reminiscent of the Anglicans: in Anglican England, alongside the high church and low church, an increasingly “Broad Church” was established in the 19th century, i.e. “skeptic, blessed in its dogmatic skepticism, limited to a certain exterior convenience, adaptable to all other doctrine” (C. Lovera di Catiglione, The Oxford Movement, Morcelliana 1935, p. 42).
We too have arrived at a "Broad Church"; a church without dogma, with no absolute morality, which keeps some exterior convenience, and with this, the need to adapt itself bit by bit to the demands of society.
These agnostics in our Church, since they still think they are Catholics, are asking for this "Broad Church". And who are they asking? The Pope, of course!
At present, we are witnesses to this tragic foolishness: the latitudinarian, agnostic Catholics, still wanting to belong to the Church, are asking the Pope ‘to broaden’ on everything – doctrine and morality. They are asking the Pope to make a great big “home-Church”, where absolutely everyone can live. Everyone, that is, except the non-latitudinarians - the Traditional Catholics.
And being agnostics, they don’t ask what God wants, but what the Pope might allow! This is pure folly.
The months to come will be the theatre of these latitudinarians of every order and level: lay-folk, priests, bishops and cardinals. They will fight to obtain from the Pope as many concessions as possible, but everything they attain will have no value whatsoever, as they never ask what God wants.
The Church is God’s; Her only Lord is Jesus Christ and only those who ask for the truth and what the will of God is, belong to Her. The concessions of the ecclesiastics, more or less “broad” and more or less in trend with the immorality of the world aren’t worth a thing. They aren’t worth a thing since ecclesiastics only have the authority to restate the will of God and help souls fulfill His will.
God has spoken; He has revealed Himself; He is no longer an unknown God: He isn’t a God for agnostics. If He were, we wouldn’t have the Church, nor the Pope, nor bishops, nor priests.
We have the Pope to guard what already exists, i.e. the things of God. The Pope doesn’t construct a God for the ‘agnostics of the moment’; this would be monstrous, indeed, it would be atheism.
The Pope isn’t a sort of “King Midas” that by a touch renders something good that isn’t good at all.
The Pope has the sole authority to restate what God has revealed and has asked for, nothing more.
For this reason, in the months to come, we need to ask for the grace not to be scandalized, not to falter in the Faith in seeing so many agnostic Catholics applaud the hierarchy’s possible concessions to the spirit of the world on doctrine and morality.
Besides, we won’t be scandalized if we hold steadfastly to this question: Does God want all this? Does God want us to widen our views on non-Christian religions, on the divorced and remarried, on the discipline of the sacraments? Does God want all those soft words on “fashionable” immorality? Did God ever speak like that? What does the two thousand year old Magisterium of the Church – which echoes Holy Scripture – say?
Not what the Pope would allow, but what God wants: This is what we have to ask ourselves.
Our soul will be safe only in this manner, the Church Herself will be saved only in this manner; and the Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests and lay-folk likewise.
At the end of our lives we will appear before God, and we’ll be judged on whether we have done His will, not by what we have attained from the Pope.
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
