The Triumph of Pornotheology

 

The Neothomist Father Cornelio Fabro (1911-1995) was ordained in 1935 for the Stigmatine Order.  He held chairs of theoretical philosophy, metaphysics, philosophy of history and philosophy.

 Last week, the criminal proceedings against two priests, Prof. Dariusz Oko and Prof. Johannes Stöhr, were to be heard before the Cologne district court.  It was then postponed by two months.  If convicted, the accused priests face three months to five years in prison for publishing a scientific article that shows the mechanisms by which homosexual networks in the Catholic Church sexually corrupt and exploit minors and adults.  They were reported for "incitement to hatred" by a Catholic priest who professes to be homosexual and who carried out "homo blessings" last year, including in a gay sauna, and who has played an inglorious role in the past because of his vice  .  In defense of Prof. Oko and Prof. Stöhr, a petition was initiated that says "No to the censorship of the word", because that's what it's all about: Voices that stand in the way of the spreading homo-heresy should be silenced.  Prof. Oko coined the term homo-heresy to designate the double phenomenon of homosexual cliques in the Church, who cover for each other and get jobs and at the same time work more or less in secret to change the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.  We are talking about the Church branch of the international gay lobby, which has received increasing support from the establishment and the mainstream since the 1980s as AIDS spread.  A few decades ago another priest coined the term pornotheology, which should be recalled in this context to show that the development goes back further.

Porntheology is a term coined by Father Cornelio Fabro, a stigmatist, to describe a particular progressive current that overthrew Catholic moral theology after Vatican II.  This phenomenon emerged in the early 1970s and has since infiltrated the teaching profession.  Against this background, the attacks on Benedict XVI can be understood.

The triumph of pornotheology

 by Stefano Fontana*

The editorial by Riccardo Cascioli, editor-in-chief of the Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, on the gay lobby as the matrix of the attacks against Benedict XVI.  makes it clear that this is, of course, a network of personal connections to ensure mutual cover and to combat common enemies in the church, but also theological positions promoted as a cover for one's aspirations and concrete actions.  The gay agenda consists of mutual favors among its members, but it also boasts theological justifications to bring about a change in church ethics to cover its behavior.

The internal support of the lobby is, therefore, also aimed at changing the official teaching of moral theology, for example by changing the text of the catechism on homosexual acts or reducing the adultery of remarried divorced people who live together more uxorio to a kind of accident on the path of discernment, and more.

Stefano Fontana

This approach, of which there are clear signs today not only among theologians but also in ecclesiastical authority and in the Magisterium of the Church, does not come out of nowhere, because the (theological) prerequisites for it were created more than fifty years ago.  In the early 1970s, the philosopher and stigmatist Father Cornelio Fabro spoke of a "pornotheology" practiced by "pornotheologists".  In his book The Adventure of Progressive Theology 1 he wrote that post-conciliar moral theology:

 "(...) landed in the dirt and legitimized the unbridled hedonism of the consumer-oriented bourgeoisie... all that remains is situational ethics, the morality of (psychological, sociological, political) compromises and one's own comfort".

These “porn theologians” have “placed themselves on the other side of the barricade, on that of hedonism and vulgarity”, they speak “with the utmost seriousness of the liberating function of Marxism and the most excessive Freudianism … they openly take sides against the chosen people, of believers" and "what used to be mud and moral misery is now considered the realization of personality".

"Pornotheology," said Father Fabro in an even more emphatic tone, "is the mockery and slander of the morality that has shaped and stamped the martyrs and saints."

These statements coincide with the denunciation of the "collapse of Catholic moral theology" that Benedict XVI.  in his note on sexual abuse of April 2019, and Cardinal Ratzinger's famous admonition in the Mass pro eligendo Pontifice of April 18, 2005, that so many in the Church are ready "to be tossed about by the gust of some doctrine...  to leave", under which nothing remains but "one's own ego and its desires".  This statement may have always been understood in a metaphorical sense, but in the light of Fabro's "Pornotheology" it becomes understandable in its literal sense.  Benedict XVI  will admit that Father Fabro was ahead of him: he foresaw everything long before him.

 

In 1973 P. Fabro coined the term “pornotheology”

Father Fabro wrote what I have just mentioned after two events that took place in the Church of those years: the meeting of Italian theologians in Ariccia in January 1971 and the publication of the Dizionario enciclopedico di teologia morale edited by L. Rossi and A. Valsecchi   (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Moral Theology) 1973 in the publishing house Paoline (Paulus-Sisters).  As we know, between the late 1960s and early 1970s, Catholic publishers were very busy unleashing a veritable editorial bombshell that was to lead to a new theological Kulturkampf within the Church.  In this bomb, the above two events are of great importance.  In the first the understanding of theology was changed, in the second that of moral theology.

At the Ariccia conference and in the 651 pages of the conference proceedings, theology was understood as anthropology.  Father Fabro writes:

“Revelation must be filtered, i.e.  mediated, reduced to the dimensions of human subjectivity and brought to a horizontal line... This means that the entire work of tradition and of the Magisterium must be purged".

He names Karl Rahner as the “main person responsible for the destruction”.  The editor of the conference proceedings was the Rahnerian Alfredo Marranzini SJ.

The new theologians change the method of theology.  They believe it is fundamental to convey revelation through the ages, and they believe that the Church  must enter the world and collaborate in the goals it has set for itself.  Until then, theology had been based on Sacred Scripture, Tradition, the teaching of the Fathers and Councils, and the infallible Magisterium of the Church.  The new theology is to be grounded in history, people, the plurality of human languages ​​and situations.  With the banishment of metaphysics, it must rely on hermeneutics.  For the Rahnerian Duilio Bonifazi (priest of the Archdiocese of Fermo) it must comprehend "being as time and time as being".  The choice of Heidegger could not have been more aptly formulated.  In Ariccia it was decided that the skeleton of theology should no longer be dogmatics, and indeed from that moment dogma began to enjoy poor health among theologians and in the seminaries.

The 1973 Encyclopedic Dictionary of Moral Theology applied this change to moral theology.  Enrico Chiavacci (priest of the Archdiocese of Florence), who until his death called for a revision of the Church's teaching on homosexuality, wrote in this dictionary in the entry "Natural Law" that "man's nature consists in having no nature".  This means that it has only one existence, or, to return to Boniface's formulation above, that it is essentially time, situations that flow from within them are mediated by conscience, the moral norm must be read again and again  , since it can neither claim to be definitively established nor to be expressed in absolute terms.

Since then, pornotheology has come a long way.

 *Stefano Fontana is director of the International Observatory Cardinal Van Thuan for the Social Doctrine of the Church and editor-in-chief of the church newspaper of the Archdiocese of Trieste.  Fontana received his doctorate in political philosophy with a thesis on political theology.  He taught Journalistic Deontology and History of Journalism at the University of Vicenza, since 2007 Philosophical Anthropology and Philosophy of Language at the University of Education (ISRE) in Venice.  Author of numerous books.  Recent include “La nuova Chiesa di Karl Rahner” (“The new Church of Karl Rahner. The theologian who taught surrender to the world”, Fede & Cultura, Verona 2017), together with Archbishop Paolo Crepaldi of Trieste “Le  chiavi della questione sociale” (“The keys to the social question. Common good and subsidiarity: the story of a misunderstanding”, Fede & Cultura, Verona 2019).

1. Cornelio Fabro: L'avventura della teologia progressista, Rusconi, Milan 1974, new edition: Ed.  Ivi, Segni 2016.

 Introduction/Translation: Giuseppe Nardi

 Image: NBQ

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG