MGB:_First Things is a reactionary website. Reactionaries, by their very nature, have a false and idealized sense of history, which warps their understanding of the present and their list of solutions for the future, which are their idealized vision of a glorious past. That their editor pines for bishops who are more like members of Temple Priesthood that Jesus spoke out against is unnfortunate but not expected. He pines for the glories of Catholic power in the cultural Potempkin villiage that was the 1950s where the Church always had the answer. Thinking the priest could stop divorce by threatening loss of Communion with remarriage is imagining a dream world. It also misreads by Mark on divorce and Paul on worthy reception.
Schmitz’s idealization of a Church immune from civil governace is at best tone deaf and at worst aiding ad abetting the Omerta hiding the abuse of young people by clergy. Any of it’s talent base who reads such words should either demand he resign or leave themselves. That it come with St. Pius X as an example is to use Pius as a front for the same tactics by St. John Paul II, who had Justin Rigali as his enforcer of the American Episcopacy in the Vatican. Ask any bishop of that era. Rigali is lucky is not in jail. It is only because one of his priests took the fall for him. Rigali should be defrocked.
As for Modernism, what is not to love? It has won and both Pius X and Pius IX before him have been discredited in their screed against it by the harshest critic, the future. The anti-modernists think these works were doctrinal. There were not. They were works on how to read doctrine from a rather cramped authoritarian basis that only carry weight in the CDF, and the extent that they do so makrs the CDF irrelevant. Francis is fixig that.
Schmitz’s idea of faith seems to be loyalty to the human institution of the papacy, which his side regards as magical. My analysis of the Syallabi by both Popes Pius shows that what they were objecting too has mostly come to pass in modern theology and scriptural scholarship. That means that they were either prophetic or reactionary. They weren’t prophetic.
http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2017/09/dei-filius-annotated-modernistically.html
http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2017/04/quanta-cura.html
http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2017/04/responding-to-syllabus-of-errors-of.html
http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2017/03/syllabus-of-errors-by-pius-x-on.html
Each of these documents were not matters of faith to be believed in but argument about authority which most now admit were lost by these popes, especially after the laicization of the study of theology and the improved education of clergy.
Pity that the comments section is closed. We would have fun with this, although I suspect the trolls have moved on.
Schmitz’s sorrow at lessening the hierarchy within the Church leading to less secular power for it would be funny if it were not so sad. It is this pridefulness by clergy that Jesus spoke against at the Last Supper when he commanded the aposltes not to mirror the world. Schmitz would have us still tried to lead it. I bet he wants to bring the crowns too. His attitude, which the clericalists share, has long turned the ritual of the washing of the feet into a sad mockery.
Schmitz wants a harsher presentation of the moral law, but the moral law is for our happiness, not the edification of God. It is a gift, not a scourge. Of course, the hyper-moralists usually focus on sexuality. When Cupich wants to get guns off the street to stop the murder, there are suddenly crickets to be heard about the sin of murder and the calls go out for people arming themselves.
Yearning for the papacy of St. John Paul is a practice of the very young and converts during his time. It was hardly a golden age. Cudos to the Vatican II priests who survived it and are thriving now. This is a time of wonder in the Church, which scares the reactionaries who pine for their past-future that never was.
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