Ed Peters Sees Canon Violation in Vatican Snub

Edit: Waaaaaaa! Team America isn’t welcome at the Vatican. I wonder if it means Cardinal Dolan won’t be the first high school wrestling coach to be the pope. Obviously, George Weigel has had some issues with this current papacy, since he doesn’t quite get the access now he once enjoyed under John Paul II, but Ed Peters finds another avenue to object to this state of things in the Vatican. It’s probably too much to expect that they were disinclined for doctrinal reasons?

George Weigel’s essay on the shut-down of the American press conferences is spot-on, in my view, and I post here only to add a canonical perspective on events.Law.1983 CIC 212 § 3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they [the Christian faithful, which includes cardinals] have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.Universi Dominici imposes secrecy concerning all matters directly or indirectly related to the election of the Roman Pontiff. UDG 10, 12, 48, etc.

Weigel the Gallican, Weigel the Febronian, Weigel the Jacobin?

Garibaldi, the Scourge of the Church

Unlike some of the following bloggers, Weigel just can't seem to get it straight whose side he's on. Shall we take him at his word?

Vatican Accuses Enda Kenny of attacking the Church to divert attention from euro crisis [Tablet]

Ego te Absolvo...

Father Zuhlsdorf's commentary on Intimidation...

Even the left listing Allen of NCR gets it, here.

But the critics of the Church and the Vatican conveniently and repeatedly refuse to acknowledge what underlies the problem in the first place, here. They repeat the lie often enough and plenty of people believe them.

Erin Go Bonkers - George Weigel - National Review Online

H/t: pulp.it 

In case you're wondering what Febronianism is, it's here.

The politico-ecclesiastical system outlined by Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim, Auxiliary Bishop of Trier, under the pseudonym Justinus Febronius, in his work entitled "Justini Febronii Juris consulti de Stata Ecclesiæ et legitimâ potestate Romani Pontificis Liber singularis ad reuniendos dissidentes in religione christianos compositus" (Bullioni apud Guillelmum Evrardi, 1763; in reality the work was published by Esslinger at Frankfort-on-the-Main). Taking as a basis the Gallican principles which he had imbibed from the canonist Van Espen while pursuing his studies in Louvain, Hontheim advanced along the same lines, in spite of many inconsistencies, to a radicalism far outstripping traditional Gallicanism. [u]He develops in this work a theory of ecclesiastical organization founded on a denial of the monarchical constitution of the Church. [/u]The ostensible purpose was to facilitate the reconciliation of the Protestant bodies with the Church by diminishing the power of the Holy See.

^Underlining ours.

George Weigel Defends Americanism: Again.

Once again George Weigel proposes something for the reasonable consideration of Roman Catholics in the USA. He banks on the fact that most Americans are unaware of what was at stake when the Masonic Garibaldi finally triumphed over the Papal forces to unify Italy in that fateful year of 1870, while the Prussians trounced the French further north, and he does not fail to disappoint in that he adds more confusion than clarity in the bargain while running rough shod over Church teaching in the bargain. In his latest article for the National Review he says, after piling some well deserved abuse on the Masonic republics that have ruled Italy since 1870, that the Church somehow benefited from the loss of its temporal power. He even gets a few licks in on the old Soviet Union, continuing to try to convince us that Communism was overcome and that John Paul II had something to do with it. Perhaps what he's selling is favored with a few in the modern Papacy, but his verbiage would have been regarded unfavorably by sensible churchmen before 1965.

Weigel is aware of these things, but he explains sentences like this away by an appeal to a historical argument, suggesting a decided Modernist cant to his daring do.

76. The abolition of the temporal power of which the Apostolic See is possessed would contribute in the greatest degree to the liberty and prosperity of the Church. —Allocutions "Quibus quantisque," April 20, 1849, "Si semper antea," May 20, 1850. (Condemned as error).

He even makes a citation of good old Evelyn Waugh writing in his Sword of Honor, citing the incomparable Norman, Guy Crouchback:

News of the King’s flight came on the day the brigade landed at Salerno. It brought Guy some momentary exhilaration.

“That looks like the end of the Piedmontese usurpation,” he said to his father. “What a mistake the Lateran Treaty was. It seemed masterly at the time — how long? Fifteen years ago? What are 15 years in the history of Rome? How much better it would have been if the Popes had sat it out and then emerged, saying, ‘What was all that? Risorgimento? Garibaldi? Cavour? The House of Savoy? Mussolini? Just some hooligans from out of town causing a disturbance. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a poor boy whom they called King of Rome?’ That’s what the Pope ought to be saying today.”

Mr. Crouchback regarded his son sadly. “My dear boy,” he said, “you’re really talking the most terrible nonsense, you know. That isn’t what the Church is like. It isn’t what she’s for.”

It's interesting reading, but is that really what Evelyn Waugh had in mind to reconcile the Papacy's concordat with Italy in 1933? He leaves this unanswered and proceeds on to defend the erroneous notion that the Papacy need not have had its temporal power, and that this temporal power was an impediment.

George Weigel is in love with the State, but like Frederick II of Prussia, he knows the importance of religion to the run of the mill out there, and he writes for them, he influences them in terms they appreciate and understand, even if he leads them down the wrong path in the end.

You can have the Church as the institution She claims to be, with the rules she's always had, or you can deny that she has those rights ascribed to her in the Syllabus of Errors, but you can't have it both ways. If you're not a Catholic of all times, you're not really a Catholic at all, you're just an apologist for Modernism and Freemasonry, which is what Weigel has always been. No friend of the Church is he.

Next thing you know, old George Weigel will be saying that the Church was wrong about there being no separation of Church and State, cheeky devil.

Read further...

Weigel Defends (Neocons) Pope

As Zoe Romanovsky reports, Weigel gets praise from America Magazine. If he gets praise, it might have to do with he fact that Weigel echoes the tired anti-clerical language of Liberal Catholics, but invokes it to praise the person of the Holy Father, if not the institution of the Papacy, how masonic...

Really, George Weigel is a Hegelian statist who likes the idea of religion, even if he does find its deeper claims and political aspirations distasteful.

Like Peggy Noonan, a careerist, "defending" the Catholic Church, perhaps, more like Grima Wormtoungue in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: these flatterers leave much to be desired in the league of sincerity, but owe everything to their status as infighters and journalistic schemers:

To be sure, the Catholic Church ought to hold itself to a higher moral standard than other similarly situated institutions. But after too long a period of denial, the Catholic Church is now at the forefront of combating the sexual abuse of the young in the United States. And no one in the church has done more, over the last decade, to compel the sclerotic institutional culture [Wow, somebody's mad that he doesn't have the free access he enjoyed when John Paul II was in power] of the Vatican to face these problems than Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI.

These are the facts. [No, these are your impressions] Thus the concern naturally arises, on this Easter, that those who continue to portray Catholicism as a global conspiracy of sexual predators are indulging in the last acceptable prejudice, anti-Catholicism, while aiming at nothing less than the destruction of the Catholic Church's credibility as a global moral teacher.

From InsideCatholic:

Read the article already...

Vietnamese Communists Threaten Redemptorists

Remember when we were told by George Weigel and Francis Fukuyama that Communism was dead and that we were entering into a new golden age? Don't you believe it.

Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) – The People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City issued a statement in which it slammed the city's Redemptorist community for going against "the Party's policies and the nation's laws". Catholics now fear more anti-priest violence. Signed by the Committee's chairman Pham Ngoc Huu, the statement was released on 28 December and published by all state media.

The statement accused the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, which is located on the south side of the city, of organising mass prayer vigils "with the participation of many priests, religious and lay people from other regions of the country without the permission of local authorities in order to distort, falsely accuse and criticise the government."

The press release also said that the Redemptorists used the church bulletin board to "post articles and images leading believers to misunderstand the Party's policies and the nation's laws".

In the last two years, the Redemptorists' church has indeed held a number of prayer vigils in support of its sister church in Thai Ha (Hanoi), which has been fighting to regain its land, unfairly seized by the city.

Since then the Church and the faithful of Our Lady of Perpetual Help have been under close surveillance by uniformed and plain clothes police, who tape and take picture of those who take part in their activities.

Local authorities have also installed loudspeakers on buildings surrounding the church to disrupt the church's services, including the vigils.

The statement singled out the vigil of 27 July, which was held for two priests brutally beaten up in Dong Hoi (cf J.B. An Dang, "Priest beaten into a coma by police. Catholics Protest throughout Vietnam," in AsiaNews.it, 28 July 2009).

Similarly, People's Committee Chairman Huu singled out Fr Joseph Le Quang Uy, a well-known local pro-life activist, for giving "a hand to hostile forces, and reactionaries to conduct propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam "

Father Le Quang was equally accused of “taking advantage of his role in leading prayer vigils to distort the social, political and economic situation of Vietnam," which in turn gave him an opportunity to "denounce the government for human rights violations” and thus "undermine national unity.”

In the last few months, the clergyman also criticised the government for allowing bauxite mining in areas in central Vietnam inhabited by Montagnards. For this reason, he was attacked by state media, which called for his conviction on charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison (see J.B. An Dang, "Redemptorist priest could be accused of plotting to overthrow Vietnam’s Communist regime," in AsiaNews.it, 2 July 2009).

More broadly, Huu has accused the Redemptorists of failing to heed the Pope's instructions. During an ad limina visit by Vietnamese bishops, Benedict XVI had in fact said that "a good Catholic is a good citizen."

A Redemptorist spokesman, Fr Peter Nguyen Van Khai, responded by accusing the authorities of distorting the sense of the Pope's words, because the Holy Father had also called for "a healthy collaboration between the Church and the State through dialogue.” Unfortunately, the government seems unwilling to accept such collaboration.

For many Catholics, the authorities seem more likely to resort to violence and the campaign against the Redemptorists appears to be but the start of a new anti-priest campaign.

Link to original...

h/t: Pewsitter

George Weigel animus delendi against the SSPX and Tradition

Gregorian Rite

George Weigel thinks enough time has passed since the "red and gold" debacle that he can now re-enter the fray. As usual, it's against the SSPX.

In his column, The Catholic Difference, Weigel purports to tell us what is going on in the CDF-SSPX discussions. And it's no good for the SSPX.

Goto, Gregorian Rite for the rest of the article...