The wag wearing the Spirit of Vatican II costume clearly is not a fan of the St. Louis Jesuits repertoire. But the outfit does bring up a larger question in Catholic culture. Many of the changes to the Catholic Church post 1965 were not necessarily mandated by the Second Vatican Council but were enacted under the shaky assumptions of "The Spirit of Vatican II". This is why during the 2012 "Year of Faith", then Pope Benedict XVI wanted people to contemplate the 50th anniversary of the start of Vatican II through a hermaneutic of continuity rather than a hermaneutic of rupture. Those who are not fond of some changes, like guitar masses, communion in the hand, and moving some feast days to Sundays rail through ridicule. Ironically, the musician who satirized Vatican II chose to make his point through a repetitious folk music setting which droned on the mundane rather than uplifting motifs.
The gradulalist penitential path for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion was proffered by Cardinal Walter Kasper, the 82 year old President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
At the beginning of his Pontificate, Pope Francis opined that Cardinal Kasper was a superb theologian, for ideas that were contained in "The Gospel of the Family" (2014).
[R] Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea, President of the Association of Catholic Doctors of Bucharest
Along with the 270 Synod Fathers participating in the Ordinary Synod on the Family, there were some laity participating. Planners asked for a variety of input, including a couple of Catholic Pre Cana Marriage Counselors from India.
But among the Synod interventions which have found their way out of the Paul VI Audience Hall was a pointed speech by Dr. Anca-Maria Cernea, the President of the Association of Catholic Doctors of Bucharest (Romania). Her views having come from a culture which had been wrecked by political Marxism, was insightful in interpolating how cultural Marxism could skew our weltanschauung and threaten our salvation.
Dr. Cernea's intervention in its entirety:
Your Holiness, Synod Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, I represent the Association of Catholic Doctors from Bucharest.
I am from the Romanian Greek Catholic Church.
My father was a Christian political leader, who was imprisoned by the communists for 17 years. My parents were engaged to marry, but their wedding took place 17 years later.
My mother waited all those years for my father, although she didn’t even know if he was still alive. They have been heroically faithful to God and to their engagement.Their example shows that God’s grace can overcome terrible social circumstances and material poverty.
We, as Catholic doctors, defending life and family, can see this is, first of all, a spiritual battle.
Material poverty and consumerism are not the primary cause of the family crisis.The primary cause of the sexual and cultural revolution is ideological.
Our Lady of Fatima has said that Russia’s errors would spread all over the world.It was first done under a violent form, classical Marxism, by killing tens of millions.Now it’s being done mostly by cultural Marxism. There is continuity from Lenin’s sex revolution, through Gramsci and the Frankfurt school, to the current-day gay-rights and gender ideology.
Classical Marxism pretended to redesign society, through violent take-over of property.
Now the revolution goes deeper; it pretends to redefine family, sex identity and human nature.
This ideology calls itself progressive. But it is nothing else than the ancient serpent’s offer, for man to take control, to replace God, to arrange salvation here, in this world.
It’s an error of religious nature, it’s Gnosticism.
It’s the task of the shepherds to recognize it, and warn the flock against this danger.“Seek ye therefore first the Kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
The Church’s mission is to save souls. Evil, in this world, comes from sin. Not from income disparity or “climate change”.
The solution is: Evangelization. Conversion.
Not an ever increasing government control. Not a world government. These are nowadays the main agents imposing cultural Marxism to our nations, under the form of population control, reproductive health, gay rights, gender education, and so on.
What the world needs nowadays is not limitation of freedom, but real freedom, liberation from sin. Salvation.
Our Church was suppressed by the soviet occupation. But none of our 12 bishops betrayed their communion with the Holy Father. Our Church survived thanks to our bishops’ determination and example in resisting prisons and terror.
Our bishops asked the community not to follow the world. Not to cooperate with the communists.
Now we need Rome to tell the world: “Repent of your sins and turn to God for the Kingdom of Heaven is near”.
Not only us, the Catholic laity, but also many Christian Orthodox are anxiously praying for this Synod. Because, as they say, if the Catholic Church gives in to the spirit of this world, it is going to be very difficult for all the other Christians to resist it.
It was remarkable that Dr. Cernea felt empowered to rail against the Church involving itself in climate change politics, particularly after Pope Francis' ecological cri-de-coeur Laudato Si. It is a good thing that Pope Francis takes a broad view of Synodality. The question is how he will use this information.
Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput had the privilege of hosting Pope Francis in the City of Brotherly Love a fortnight before the Ordinary Synod on the Family. The World Meeting of Families was planned before Synod '15 but Archbishop Chaput hoped that those discussions would influence the discernment amongst the Synod Fathers.
So Natural Law is applicable only to those who intellectually adhere to it. This sort of compartmentalization is common place among liberal Catholic politicians. But if Vice President Biden is bidding to appeal to real Catholics in a proto-Presidential campaign, he has some soulful promises to keep.
