My good friend Msgr. Msgr. Hans Feichtinger has a piece at Crisis today about Fallacia superans… Fiducia supplicans. He is a priest of the Diocese of Passau with an STD my school the Augustinianum and worked in the CDF from 2004-2012.
Here’s a taste:
Fiducia Supplicans: A Crisis of Trust
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Pastorally, the very serious question is what the blessings for irregular, and even more for homoerotic, unions are supposed to be good for. Stabilizing such unions, in many cases, is questionable. The most recent attempts by Cardinal Fernández to explain the new blessings as a prayer to liberate couples from anything contrary to the Gospel make them, in part, into something like an exorcism—is that really what we are going for? The hope that the solution proposed here will remove the issue from ongoing synodal and ecclesial debates will not be fulfilled.
In reality, as is evident from how this document is being debated and (not) received in the worldwide Church, this is not about pastoral care but about tensions among bishops, and between bishops (conferences) and the Holy See. It is about a pernicious crisis of trust among the members of the hierarchy, the College of Cardinals very much included. It is also about a lack of trust among priests toward bishops and the Holy See, which is the most relevant issue here, because, after all, these blessings are supposed to be given by priests.
The lack of consultation among bishops and priests in the process of elaborating this text is tragic, revealing, and a bit terrifying. Becoming a “more synodal” Church cannot mean creating an ever less synodal Vatican. Neither must it mean excluding priests (in parish ministry) at the degree we see currently at the Synod of Bishops 2023-24 (otherwise significantly enlarged with laypeople and religious).
How can young priests take older prelates seriously if the latter do not return the favor or, rather, if they do not begin with an advance of trust in the young clergy. After all, are we not praying for an increase in vocations? It seems very hard for some bishops to believe that God might call men to the priesthood who are not like they have been. It should be obvious that such an attitude pulls out the rug under anyone who claims to be close to the teachings of Vatican II or a proponent of synodality, not to mention that it may just be a lack of trust in God’s providence.
[…]
And here is a key point which we must be vigilant about. It is how libs have always worked: creeping incrementalism. They aim at changing doctrine through slow erosion by heteropraxis. Violate the law or rubrics long enough and you shift what people believe to the point that it no longer looks like what the Church teaches in black and white.
[…]
The claim that the changes proposed are built, somehow, on a continual “development” of the Church’s doctrine and practice is not legitimate. First, because such a claim introduces the notion of a doctrinal change through the back door of a new practice;
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There’s a good deal more.
In the traditional Roman calendar, today is the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor. He was a great warrior for the Church in the face of the Protestant Revolt.
On this coming Sunday, Holy Church begins to sing in a new key. We have come around, in the traditional calendar, to Pre-Lent.
