THREE PRIESTS IN BOAT

TOWARDS THE LAST PLACE

REVELATION

 

It is useful to speak of the Church, When you call sayttamente or indirectly to the believers, in strictly theological terms. It is not utile, rather it is detrimental to talk in sociological terms, because these are the subject oflla which ideology - not faith - is the form.

Expenses, come i promoters of this online magazine, live their faith in the Church with pastoral responsibility genuinely, limit its interventions on issues of current ecclesiological considerations historic-dogmatic that they always stay at the level that it is for a speech, precisely, strictly theological. The adjective "theological", other parte, makes sense only if derived from a concept of theology rigorously formulated agree with the Church's mission that the Church has always entrusted to the theologians. That mission - which I have exhibited in scientific terms in the epistemological treatise entitled True and false theology (1) - Is essentially always and everywhere in promoting the growth of the life of faith among believers through the 'rational investigation of the contents of revealed doctrine, that the ecclesiastical magisterium infallibly preserves, authoritatively interprets and transmits faithfully in every time and in every place.

The theological proposals, regardless of the method of their linguistic and conceptual expression, are valid only insofar as they depart from the dogma and illustrate it through interpretative hypothesis, must always be presented as provisional and relative, and to be always under consideration and eventual approval or disapproval of the ecclesiastical magisterium.

For these solid and unquestionably valid reasons, the promoters of this online magazine are used to enter the theological debate sure, with a great sense of responsaidat theecclesial quantity, that their views do not deny even incidentally the verità of dogma, that is, the faith of the Church, Common to all of them before and on both sides of every hypothesis of theological interpretation, ending that is to relativize what is absolute in matters of faith. At the same time, they always try to avoid the use of peremptory tones, as if their theological interpretation was the only acceptable, with exclusion of all other; and ending that is for absolute what is relevant in matters of faith.

However, since not all those involved in the theological debate think like us, success is that our scientific contributions were sometimes rejected by newspapers at the head of which there are Catholic intellectuals of great nobility, but also too prone to inadvertently mix strictly theological opinions with the opinions of other: ideological, policies … always on the basis of sociological surveys, often inevitably partial and always unrelated to the substance of supernatural Church of Christ.

From these Catholic intellectuals are also sometimes been accused of not openly criticize the Holy Father Francis and not to report his alleged intentions heretical and therefore not to oppose the "schism" that would be in place in the Church. We do not intend, however, to give in to these pressures. We are convinced that the task of theologians is not to contribute to doctrinal confusion, equating ogni externalization of a clergyman in a definitional pronouncement of the Magisterium, or even worse: interpreting any act of the Pope as an endorsement or promotion of ideological faction within the Church. Until now, by the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council to the Extraordinary Synod on the new evangelization in relation to the family, do not have any news of the publication of an official pronouncement of the Magisterium which has been modified with the substance of a dogma: nor ecclesiological, nor that concerning the sacraments of marriage, of Penance and the Eucharist.

It has often been talked about instead of some ambiguities in the text of some of the documents of Vatican II that they intended to propose a new formulation - the intent, more comprehensible to the mentality of modern man - of Catholic doctrine, and it is fair respectfully deprecate such ambiguities (2) and ask the post-conciliar magisterium of clarifying authoritatively (3), but without confusing even more the consciences of believers speaking in an irresponsible way of "heresies"; What theologically untenable because, according to the documents approved by the shareholders and confirmed by the Pope, Vatican II did not at all introduced new dogmatic formulas in opposition to or in place of those already laid down by the previous ecumenical councils infallibly.

There was also talk of operational choices, responding to conservative criteria adopted by the Popes who have succeeded in this period: Blessed Paul VI, St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI. Choices that may be deemed inappropriate or ineffective, from the pastoral point of view, but only on the basis of personal criteria as objectionable, certainly not based on any dogmatic or moral criterion established by the Church for all who exercise the Petrine ministry.

There has been talk finally, above all, of interventions by bishops who were fathers of the Council, the suo time, and which are now the Synod Fathers, which are expressed in terms doctrinally questionable, and in fact were then harshly criticized, also by other council fathers, during the course of the Second, just as today they are during the course of the Synod which will conclude at the end of the 2015, and with the apostolic exhortation that usually publishes the Pope collecting, at its discretion, the recommendations of the Assembly. The history and the record of this dialectic of the opinions of theologians and bishops' pastoral guidelines, although raising alarm in those who rightly care about the fate of the Catholic faith, not authorize but to talk about a real "schism" in place in the Church, seen that the different opinions "work in progress" not "make text", that is, they do not constitute the authentic magisterium of bishops in communion with the Pope and do not contribute to forming - much less to deform - the faith of the Church.

I do these things I keep repeating for years, without being neither understood nor approved by the fanatics of change and reform, which are based on systematic scientific theories not only unsustainable but also clearly heretical (4). Theories that they have always tried to impose Catholic public opinion through an image of the council as a doctrinal revolution, interpreting documents of this solemn act of the Magisterium in the light of an arbitrary "hermeneutic of rupture", as it had to complain about Pope Benedict XVI. Which Pope Ratzinger also spoke of a "Council of the mass media", only telling the backstory of the Assembly, favoring intervention of some theologians and some council fathers to speak of a '"soul of the Council", of a "spirit of the Council", artificially constructed systematically ignoring the texts officially approved, which instead are the true elements of doctrinal guidance of the faithful and the only "data" useful for a strictly theological interpretation.

Something very similar happens in our day with the Synod. Even today the most progressive reformers or fanatics go favoring intervention of some theologians and some Synod Fathers to imagine a Church that "goes forward in breaking the ties with the past" and blessing everything so far had been denounced as sinful situation and that did not allow full communion with the Church, if it had not been before the conversion. Some of them came to present themselves to the public as the Catholic faithful interpreters of the intentions of the Pope, which sounds a sacrilegious presumption and despicable manipulation of consciences, but it has no theological value, because of the Pope, whoever he is, imported for the purpose of obedience in faith, only its official pronouncements, those in which manifests actually the intention to speak as Pastor of the universal Church and to bring the Christian doctrine de fide a moribis, engaging the charism of infallibility that it is in exclusive.

If, therefore, on the one hand I have been fought by the progressives or reformers more fanatical and more equipped with means of coercion moral, Now that I am torn by the most fanatical among the traditionalists or conservatives, we understand that it has become a vital need to find a space that allows public law to carry out its apostolic mission without having to take the piece of the Progressive Party or the conservative. To this I willingly accepted the proposal made to me da don Ariel S. Levi Gualdo give life along with father John Cavalcoli to a site on the Internet that is dedicated only to the orientation of the faithful through doctrinal theological studies not related to the ideologies and not tied to political interests; a site that for this reason wants to protect from any abusive censorship and that undertakes to survive by self-financing.

_____________________

(1) See Antonio Livi, True and false theology. How to distinguish the authentic "science of faith" from an equivocal "religious philosophy", Leonardo da Vinci's publishing house, Rome 2012. For a discussion of my thesis, see the truth in theology, curated by Marco Bracchi and Giovanni Covino, with contributions by Nicola Bux, Giovanni Cavalcoli, Christian Ferraro, Serafino Lanzetta, Dario Sacchi and Piero Vassallo, Leonardo da Vinci's publishing house, Rome 2014.
(2) This is what has made, among others, Enrico Maria Radaelli with his latest essay, titled The Church overturned. Survey aesthetic theology, on the form and language of the magisterium of Pope Francis, Editions Gondolin, Verona 2014.
(3) This is what has made, with reasonable grounds pastoral, as an authoritative theologian Brunero Gherardini in Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. A speech to do, Mariana Publishing House, Frigento 2010.
(4) See in this regard my first contribution to this online magazine: The ecclesiology of Hans Küng historicist [who].

Click below to listen to a Marian song of the popular tradition