A Priest Theologian's Fraternal Correction of The Current Occupant of the Petrine Office

Sophia Press

Relying on the very best minds discerned to be enlightened by the grace of God, minds demonstrably faithful to the Tradition of the Church, our duty to God and Church requires nothing less that we exercise together in charity the critical evaluation of each and every word spoken by someone who lays claim to the Truth.

This blogger is not as equipped as many others to parse the Roman drama playing out. However, yours truly can point others to reliable sources, authors/teachers, who are exceedingly well trained and thus able analysts.

Food for thought: Fr. George Rutler's article at the Catholic World Report.

It begins:

Pope Francis says that his innovative teaching “does not imply any contradiction” of the Church’s Tradition but, one has to say reluctantly, it indeed does.

Those misguided partisans who accept uncritically the occasionally sideways comments of Pope Francis may find that Fr. Rutler's admonition burns up their objections like a wildfire that incinerates everything in its path. Fr. Rutler is no wildfire, however. His criticism is a controlled burn that aims to preserve the health of the forest and safeguard the citizens dwelling therein.

The article continues:

Debate has always been an invigorating and constructive way of defining and refining views, assuming that the debaters have minds of probity and reason. This is increasingly absent in our culture, where subjectivism rules, and where there is only one debater, and his opponent is a straw man of his own construction.

Yet when one reads the “spontaneous remarks” of Pope Francis on various subjects of the day, the quality of reasoning and information of facts is so fugitive, that frustration yields to sheer embarrassment. There is, for example, the Holy Father’s remarks to youth in Turin on a hot June day in 2015: even a Reuters press release said that his smorgasbord of concerns, from bankers to the weapons industry to Nazi concentration camps, was “rambling.” While constrained by respect for the Petrine office, and aware of the strains that imposes, it is distressing to look for a train of thought and find only a train wreck.

Fr. Rutler concludes:

Pope Francis says that his innovative teaching “does not imply any contradiction” of the Church’s tradition but, one has to say reluctantly, it indeed does. The shift cannot be called a legitimate development of doctrine because it neglects all the classical criteria for authentic development, most especially what John Henry Newman named “preservation of type.”

Go to Catholic World Report for the full article. Do check out the constructive comments in the combox over there.

Also: LifeSiteNews

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Fr. Rutler is a former Episcopalian (Anglican) now Roman Catholic priest. Given his extensive training and erudite writings, it goes without saying that he is well equipped to speak on matters theological. Having encountered and dissected slippery language in his former community, he knows problematic speech when he hears/reads it. At the very least, his thoughts should merit a slow and deliberate read.

Fr George Rutler: https://stmichaelnyc.org/biography-of-fr-rutler
[ Edited for length and clarity. ]

Father Rutler was an Episcopalian priest for nine years. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1979 and was sent to the North American College in Rome for seminary studies. Father Rutler graduated from Dartmouth, where he was a Rufus Choate Scholar, and took advanced degrees at the Johns Hopkins University and the General Theological Seminary. He holds several degrees from the Gregorian and Angelicum Universities in Rome, including the Pontifical Doctorate in Sacred Theology, and studied at the Institut Catholique in Paris. In England, in 1988, the University of Oxford awarded him the degree Master of Studies. From 1987 to 1988 he was regular preacher to the students, faculty, and townspeople of Oxford. Thomas More College and Christendom College awarded him honorary doctorates. For his help at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 he was honored by the City Council of New York and was made an honorary firefighter by the City of Dallas. He is a knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and chaplain of the St. Andrew's Society of the State of New York, the Robert Burns Society of the City of New York, and the West Point Society of New York.

Father Rutler has made documentary films in the United States and England, contributes to numerous scholarly and popular journals and has published 21 (and counting) books on theology, history, cultural issues, and the lives of the saints.