Banality on Steroids

I must say that if the Roman Catholic Church were ever to die today it would die of terminal banality. Catholics have been showered by weak, poor teaching for decades now, so the powers that be, in this instance the current occupant of the Chair of Peter, offers us banalities that might sound great to eighth graders recently emerged from some advanced course in being nice but sound empty to everyone else.

The Pope has issued a kind of manifesto to the simpering Archbishop Vinczeno Paglia, another compromiser when it comes to the one, true Church of Christ, another incarnation of Rembert Weakland, or a poor man's Rembert Weakland, whichever you like.  He has been appointed the head of two pontifical academies regarding family life. Among the topics Paglia will oversee will be the Church's teaching on abortion.  This will be somewhat of a first here, having an Archbishop who doesn't seem terribly interested in abortion heading a pontifical academy that is supposed to make Catholics aware of the authentic teaching on abortion.

Read these marching orders in the pages of Crux: https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/08/18/pope-issues-marching-orders-new-pro-life-leader/

The editors of Crux tell us on their masthead that they are "taking the Catholic pulse". They might want to know that things that are dead have no pulse.

Words are designed generally speaking to convey a certain meaning.  To wit: what is the possible meaning of Francis' "marching order" which will focus on "an authentic human ecology" to restore "the original balance of creation between the human person and the entire universe"!  (Goodness, the entire universe no less.  Has our Pope been seeing too many space movies?)  To anyone who can decipher that phrase and rewrite it into something plain, simple and compelling I will offer a reward.  If an interpreter can get through the phrase "an authentic human ecology" he will have earned the reward just for trying.

Then there's this stirring call to arms: "Reciprocal respect between the sexes and among the generations".  If that doesn't produce a whole slew of new Francis Xaviers ready to go out and convert people to the Catholic Faith I don't know what will.

Is anyone uplifted by such drivel?

I'll bet the Bishops love it, though.  With such empty words they can pretty much do as they please knowing their backsides will be covered by the current Roman Regime of Boring Indifferentists.

Amusingly, Crux magazine tells us that Francis' words give an indication of where he wants the Church to go.  They do?  Where?  What in that jumble of incoherence, pap and empty platitudes gives any indication of a solid direction the Church is supposed to be going?  Such words might do for hippies (are there still any around?) or a Woodstock, Part Two, but as "marching orders" they leave an awful lot of room for any freewheeling interpretation one would wish to give to them; substance-wise they are devoid of any meaning at all.  Two reasons why our Bishops must love them.  They're so full of oodles and oodles of Gaudiam et Spes.

The signals being sent from Rome for decades indicate with refreshing clarity that no sound catechetical teaching will be offered anymore by the Catholic Church. Articles like the one linked above are further proof of that if any more proof were needed.  Therefore the one viable solution is that lay people have to do the catechizing.  The Church has abandoned that job, near totally with this current fellow in Rome, so the job falls to parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.  That would mean real catechism classes among families.  How that would be arranged would be the purview of the individual families themselves but it might be a pleasant idea to offer a forty-five minute class on, say, a Sunday afternoon, and follow that with a big bowl of popcorn or some other special treat.  First the serious, then the fun. Old fogey grandads and grandmamas can chime in if called upon, and the whole class can easily be turned into an enjoyable family gathering.

Naturally that would mean a learning curve on the part of teachers but thanks to a number of enterprising souls there are now many resources to help in the learning journey.  A few such would be Roger McCaffrey's Roman Catholic Books, the invaluable offerings at IHS Press, Loreto Publications and many others.  Not a bad idea to first know what we're talking about.

The Church has demonstrated that it doesn't "do" catechizing.  The schools certainly wont do it.  By process of elimination that means laymen have to jump in and do the job the Church refuses to do, to teach the Faith to future generations until God takes pity on us and gives us a great Pope again.  If the Faith is to be passed on, if it is to be kept from dying out altogether, then the lay people will have to get the job done.

No one else will.