Monday, April 16, 2012

Ad multos annos, Holy Father!

Happy Birthday Holy Father! On Saturday, at the Family Retreat, we sang 'God Bless Our Pope!' by Cardinal Wiseman in anticipation of his 85th Birthday, which is today.
It is hard not to become fixated on the latest smoke-signals about the SSPX's response to the latest document from Rome. We don't know what the response is. We don't know what it was responding to. We don't know what the Holy Father will make of it. Speculation is inevitable but probably pointless. Pray!

The lay theologian John Lamont has made a list of propositions from Vatican II documents which many - really, the vast majority - of theologians teaching in Catholic institutions would find difficult to accept, not because they are contrary to the Church's Tradition but because they are not contrary to it. It is a useful list to ponder. My favourite:

Lumen gentium 14:

"Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church."

A close second:

Dei Verbum 19:

"The four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1)."

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