What happened to the Church? A philosophical glimmer.

Over at the indispensable Fr. Z's blog, there is an excellent post which provides a name for a defining event in my life:  "moral injury."

REVISITED:  Moral Injury, traditional Catholics and burnt out priests

An excerpt:

...Warfighters sometimes will manifest moral injury after being in combat situations for only a short time.   A lot of traditional Catholics have been enduring the injury resulting from moral conflict – being forced to betray what you know is right – for unrelenting decades without an end in sight.

I don’t want to press this point beyond proposing that there could be an element of moral injury among those who have held “legitimate” aspirations regarding Tradition.  I want to avoid generalization as well...

Balm to my soul. But wait - it gets better.

One of the commenters, Amateur Scholastic, mentioned a post at Rorate Caeli blog, by John R. T. Lamont, the link to which Fr. Z supplied:

Tyranny and sexual abuse in the Catholic Church:  a Jesuit tragedy

Lamont sets forth a stumble in philosophy which took place in the first part of the 1600s, when St. Ignatius' thinking about obedience, formulated while he was mapping a plan for religious formation using his experiences in the military as the pattern, was amplified into The Way Things Are Done for all priests, by way of the Jesuits. Lamont crisply sets forth the rules for obedience which are almost reminiscent of Buddhism and other disciplines that require emptying of self up to and including agency and any kind of critical thinking. The ultimate effect was a kind of imposed idolatry, following slavishly any command of any superior, even if blatantly immoral.

St. Thomas Aquinas, in contrast, set forth obedience in the context of the use of discernment, checking superiors' directions against moral law.

(You do need to read the whole thing. Go ahead. I'll wait.)

John R. T. Lamont's reasoning is potentially a big answer to a question which perplexes me:  what exactly happened around 1789 to foment the French Revolution? Lamont's article points back to this philosophical bobble which seeded Counter-Reformation thinking and ended up, inevitably, turning Catholics into credulous children when it came to their faith, blindly trusting the fallible men in the hierarchy.

In 1971, as a new convert, the meek acceptance of the Catholics, whose faith, Church, and community were being ruined by self-important lying bullies, mystified me. I could get behind transubstantiation and the high-flown writing of St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, but the broken-hearted silence in the face of such insolence made no sense. 

John R. T. Lamont's thesis in the post linked above, shed some light for me. I recommend reading it.

Which is the church in schism, again?

 Archbishop Vigano suspects that Pope Francis foresees an opportunity to accuse the traditional church of "schism" if it doesn't accept his absurd statements about the death penalty, civil unions, et-so-much-else-cetera.  (h/t 1P5)

I've got a surprise for both of them:  while they weren't looking, maybe Vatican II actually seeded the schism that's in progress now... what do you think?

The new church of today isn't the same as the one before 1960.  Nothing is the same:  the calendar, with its feasts and memorials, is so different that it's like two different communities.  The "mass" of the new church doesn't have any apparent link to the old one.  Seriously, folks.  Between the changes to the structure and the resolute erasure of all Latin, it's really just a very poor imitation of the Episcopal liturgy... which, ironically, is actually quite a lot nicer in most places, with far better music.

Now Pope Francis is proving the break with the past, by saying things and making changes that are simply not Roman Catholic.

If you're trying to defend him, and worrying about his behavior, you're acting like a codependent.  Because here is the absolute truth:  Pope Francis despises you.  Pope Francis does not understand what it means to be a Roman Catholic. 

Codependents are at risk of trying to get along, to fix things, to do something to keep mom or dad from getting mad at them.  Unfortunately, the only healthy way to handle what's going on when mom is drunk all the time and won't sober up is to detach in love.

No hate.  No name calling.  Just take your wallet, and go.  No more money.  No more time.  No more fretting.

We Roman Catholics actually have the right to have a healthy Church, where the hierarchy genuinely cares about us and wants us to get to heaven. This will mean hearing often about sin, how to recognize it, confess it, and avoid it, and how to be the best people we can be. If your Catholic Church doesn't do that, is it part of the failing offshoot, with drastically declining numbers, endless scandals, and priests you cannot trust? There are Catholic churches which recognize the Pope but will not cave to modernism. You can look for one and go to Mass there, just the once. OK, maybe twice - it's quite a change. Be prepared for silence. The silence is there to help you pray.

When "Progressive" ideas retard in real life: animal shelters

 In an article on Areo, Nathan J. Winograd reviews a book by Katja Guenther, The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animals.  Nathan refutes Katja's attempt to view the logistical and real-world challenges of managing the population of animals in shelters through the lens of critical race theory.

Like the attempt to declare the science of mathematics "racist," Nathan reports that Katja's conclusions appear to be drawn, in some cases, from her own generalizations about the differences of animal care performed by persons of different ethnicity or skin color.

Nathan recognizes that to implement Katja's race-based ideas would ultimately deprive animals of caring homes, and complicate the progress already made in rescuing animals and establishing successful no-kill shelters. His article is well-documented and well-written. Read the whole thing.