The authority conundrum

There are Catholics who love love love love ecclesiastical authority…until they find themselves on the wrong end of the authority whip they profess to love. They taunt evangelicals with formulaic questions like, "What's your authority for that interpretation? and "What's your authority for the canon?" (BTW, there's nothing wrong with asking how Protestants justify the canon or justify their theology, but casting the issue in terms of ecclesiastical authority begs the question.)

So long as ecclesiastical authority is on their side, they can never speak too highly of the pope's authority or "the Church's" authority. When, however, the ground shifts under their feet and they find themselves on the losing side of ecclesiastical authority, their love affair with papal authority or the Magisterium cools to temperatures approaching absolute zero. 

Watching RadTrads and avant-garde Catholics duke it out is kinda like watching the fight between fundamentalist Mormon polygamists and mainstream Mormons. Within the Mormon paradigm, both sides are right and both sides are wrong. Outside the Mormon paradigm, both sides are hopelessly wrong.

With pardonable hyperbole, we might say that for RadTrads, tradition ends with Pius X, but for avant-garde Catholics, tradition begins with Pius XII. RadTrads have the past while their adversaries have the future. But the team with a lock on the future is unbeatable. Living leaders have a decisive advantage over dead leaders. The living can overrule the dead while the dead are poorly positioned to overrule the living. 

It's especially ironic to see converts to Rome attempt to school cradle Catholics and even bishops, cardinals, and popes on true Catholicism. They're like slumlords who buy an apartment complex, then discover that they bought a dog. It's falling apart. The roof needs to be replaced. The plumbing needs to be replaced. The electrical wiring needs to be replaced. The complex is infested with rats and termites.

Book Review: Infiltration by Taylor Marshall

https://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2019/06/book-review-infiltration-by-taylor.html

De Chirico: Rome will Absorb “Pope Francis”

Marking Time

In an article with the same title, Leonardo De Chirico asks, “What Happens If Catholics Think the Pope Is a Heretic?” The short answer is found at the end of the article:

Nothing is going to break abruptly and, more importantly, no biblical reformation is possible under these conditions. Roman Catholicism will be stretched and go through a stress test, but will be able to handle both Francis’ catholicity and his critics’ insistence on the Roman component. The synthesis will be expanded, but the gospel will not be allowed to change Rome. This is the reason why the Reformation is not over.

The article primarily catalogues the ruckus that has been going on in the controversies surrounding “Amoris Laetitia” and the subsequent protests, first from the Dubia Cardinals, then from the “Filial Correction” crowd (Roman Catholic priests and theologians), and finally from Fr Thomas Weinandy, who wrote an open letter to Bergoglio stating, “a chronic confusion seems to mark your pontificate obscured by the ambiguity of your words and actions.”

De Chirico asks, “What is happening in the Roman Catholic Church? Is Rome on the eve of an internal breaking point with disastrous consequences?”

Interestingly, he frames the issue as one of “Roman” elements vs “catholic” ones. “Pope Francis” and “Vatican II” on the “catholic” side (De Chirico uses the word “Catholic” with a capital “C” from time to time, but I think he means small-c “catholic).

He suggests, however, that the “inner and constitutive dynamics of Roman Catholicism” – and the synthesis of “Roman” and “Catholic” will enable the system to survive, because the system was created in order to accommodate various swings back and forth between both.

Here is his larger explanation: