Edit: Matussek has suggested that the church tax, which is levied in Germany and managed by the government, is going away. It's been suggested in certain other quarters that this last vestige of confessional Europe has been used as a medium for the auto-destruction of the Church in Germany. We've tried to keep our intrusions on Matussek's blunt and awesome observations to a minimum.
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| Matthias Matussek |
After the Council the Church was placed increasingly in the hands of Liturgical dilettantes and fussy hobby-thinkers, who presented themselves as an Avantgarde organized against volksreligion and Tradition.
(kreuz.net) Pope Benedict XVI knows "that the form of the Una Sancta [One Holy} with its Dogmas and Traditions must be protected against the hobbyists."
Matthias Matussek wrote this in the recent edition of the bitterly anti-Church German boulevard magazine 'Spiegel' [basically, it's Germany's Time Magazine]
The magazine was founded after the Second World War by a former Nazi journalist and a Lieutenant of the Wehrmach.
Matussek's article appeared under the title: "Rock in the storm -- why Catholicism could not be Protestant."
The Pope has to be a Rock Now More than Ever
For Matussek the Pope has to be a successor of Peter now more than ever -- "the rock, on which the Church was once founded."
Because: "He is not only responsible for the 1.2 Billion Catholics, but also for the Tradition, which Chesterton once called >>the Democracy of the Dead<<. Tradition may not be betrayed on behalf of the tiny, German parish, which constitutes no more than two percent of the World Church.
Not a Reformer, but a Resistance Fighter
Benedict XVI, for Matussek, didn't come to Germany as a reformer, rather as a "great figure of contradiction".
"The Catastrophe, which has to do with us, is the memory loss of Catholics."
Matussek traced the problem to the time following the Second Vatican Council.
Then the Church was placed "increasingly in the hands of dilettante Liturgists and fussy hobby-thinkers, who presented themselves as an Avantgarde organized against volksreligion and Tradition.
Already in 1968 Pope Paul VI wept over the "weighty and complex disruption, which no one had expected after the Council." [Not entirely so, Msgr Bandas returned from the Council in abject despair and did his best to prepare for what he foresaw.]
Discussion instead of Holiness
Matussek brought the problem to a point: "The Church has been caught in the modern trap."
He defined the modern trap as: "Much head, little heart." [Which brings to mind Mozart's comment that, "Protestantism is all in the head"]
One has lost the feeling for Holiness and Grace: "In place of that, discussions take place."
Link to kreuz.net...
Photo: © Melanie Feuerbacher, Wikipedia, CC
What an excellent article, full of detail on important issues (although writing it, one fears falling into the discussion camp!). I might add one note to the holiness/discuss it to death dichotomy. On the discuss-it-to-death side, the discussion among the intellectuals is almost entirely about history and never about what must be done now, and here. They seem like curators of a museum, happy to collect the salary to conduct tourists through an art show: 'the Church's contribution to Europe etc. etc.' They lack a practical dimension altogether, other than the vaguest of recommendations like 'drive safely.'
ReplyDeleteOn the holiness side, there is or should be another dimension, too, also of a practical nature, that makes a necessary bridge to holiness. That dimension was sketched in SSPX's United States conference last October in Kansas City, in which the theme 'Christ the King' was the topic. The topic is not tangental to our dilemma, it is central, and it is political as well as theological, even though regarding a related topic of 'religious liberty,' SSPX has been clear to say this matter is theological, not political.
The concept of Christ the King has many facets, but that one of them is political/economic was recognized by the closing remarks of the presider that exhorted the faithful to run for political office as Catholics and to begin to form guilds (in other words, to begin to bring Catholic structures into economic life--and there are other untapped Catholic solutions to the economic crisis we suffer presently if only we would put the matter squarely in front of us or put another way, if only we would unleash ourselves from the secular state; distributism is not an academic discussion nor can it be separated from Christ, as some Catholic organizers of 'distributist movements' presently pretend!).
There is hardly any initiative that would require more holiness of its supporters than a political campaign that included the Restoration of Christ the King at the center of society. But that is what Quas primas says we must do.
And there is hardly any initiative that offers more pay off.
What is the alternative? To continue down the road set during the protestant rebellion--I mean, the Reformation. So called. What we refer to as secularism. What Benedict attempts to distinguish into 'good secularism' and 'bad secularism.' It is a dead end. No one can name any initiative in secularism that has not ended in further pauperization of Christ's flock in every sense of the term. Unions? Please. Democracy? Corrupted and utterly ruined. We are closer to slavery now than we were in 1517 and then we were in 1960.
We Catholics must be holy warriors for Christ. They faux-Catholics can be erudite presenters for their secular states. Secularism needs them and is ever closer to realizing it needs a tame church to further enslave the masses, a church of Christ without Christ. Our holiness must have a political expression, and some of us will die for it, and we will come from tradition, not from the 'other side.'
Just to say, I thought I was following this blog, because I am very interested in the topics, but I think I was only signed up for twitter, which I never consult. Over in your right side column, maybe you might change the wording to say Twitter Followers. I'm pretty sure that's twitter because it has my No Porn avatar or whatever it's called, and not my blog avatar. Anyway I want to follow this blog, how? And I can't believe this post got no comments, and so many others. This is fine material.
ReplyDeleteThanks wlb! the "Followers" box is for blog followers and the twitter is on the topmost box. Am I missing something? Your "no porn" icon is in the blog followers box.
ReplyDeleteI'm not getting notices of your posts, is all I know. Which I would like to!
ReplyDeleteHmm, very weird. I think entering your e-mail address in the e-mail followers box will send you notifications when they occur.
ReplyDeleteWell, didn't I have to enter it already to get my avatar entered there? I think you should set up a temporary email address and then enter it in the box and see if the notification system is working. If you run into glitches, you should move to wordpress. They don't have those words you have to type in to fool the spammers. They use another system and it works fine, all background. (Now I have to do it again to enter this reply--I have to get up close to the screen to peer at the words: is that an a or an o? Wait, is that capital?? Etc.)
ReplyDeleteI still get notifications from the blog in my e-mail test. Entering your e-mail address under e-mail notifications will get you notifications of new posts sent to your e-mail, but it won't notify you in your blogs followed. If you want to follow the blog, that's a separate function you engage by clicking on "follow this blog" box under "Blog Followers".
ReplyDeleteI hope this helps. Maybe there's too much stuff?
Thank you so much, also for your advice. Whitelillyblog has also given great advice himself in the past for which I'm very grateful.
ReplyDelete