Merciful Cardinal Tagle And The New Springtime Of Self-Esteem

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tagle and francis

In America recently, and now speaking from London, “Philippine Francis” Cardinal Luis Tagle is traveling the world and making a name for himself.

The London Telegraph reports:

The “harsh” and “severe” stance adopted by the Catholic clerics towards gay people, divorcees and single mothers has done lasting harm, one of the most prominent members of the Church’s new generation of Cardinals has acknowledged.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines, said the Church had to learn lessons from changing social attitudes and a greater understanding of psychology and recognise the “wounds” its judgmental approach had caused in the past.

He was speaking after addressing thousands of young British Catholics at the “Flame II” rally in Wembley Arena in London where he gave an impassioned call for Christians to learn again the meaning of the word “mercy”.

Do sinners wound the Church or does the Church wound sinners?  Why is Cardinal Tagle making an apology tour?

The 57-year-old cleric who is widely considered to be a possible future Pope, was given an ecstatic reception from the crowd as he told them that “only mercy can save humanity”.

Does that mean anything?   Did they stand up for that?

Speaking afterwards, he said it was clear that the tone taken towards gay people, divorcees who remarried against Catholic teaching and unmarried mothers had left many feeling “branded” and socially ostracised.

We’ve been harsh, we’ve wounded, we’ve had a tone, we’ve branded, we’ve burned. We even made a social sin. We’ve been an awful bad Church all these years, especially if you have a gay sex habit or a second husband.  We were extra mean to you!

Then there’s that psychological damage just uncovered through research.

He added that improved understanding of child psychology had exposed the scale of harm done to children by the disciplinarian stance taken in schools.

The word “mercy” has been the central theme of Pope Francis’s pontificate but has exposed sharp divisions over possible moves to relax the ban on remarried divorcees receiving communion.

Cardinal Tagle told The Telegraph: “We have to admit that this whole spirituality, this growth in mercy and the implementation of the virtue of mercy is something that we need to learn over and over again.

He said that the past approach in Catholic schools and other institutions had often been to dictate rules and tell people that they were “for your own good”.

“Now with our growing sensibilities, growth in psychology, we realise that some of them were not as merciful,” he said.

“Now with the growth of insights in child psychology we see some of the wounds inflicted with that – and so we learn.”

Withholding Holy Communion is causing irreparable mental damage. Change course, apply inclusive mercy liberally, and a new springtime of self-esteem will surely blossom.

If anyone needs ‘mercy’ it’s Holy Mother Church.  God save us from these oppressors.

Pontifical Council For Culture: What They Don’t Know About Women is A lot

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venus tied

The Catholic faith has nothing whatsoever to do with feminism and Our Lady was no women’s libber. The Pontifical Council for Culture’s new outreach to women is awkward to say that least.   What they produce is telling since it’s decidedly un-manly, appealing neither to men nor women.

The Vatican has removed the controversial Venus Restored (1936) by Surrealist artist Man Ray from the website of its Pontifical Council for Culture. The image, a plaster cast of a nude torso – with no head or face, no arms and no legs – tightly bound with rope, was intended to draw attention to its annual plenary assembly on Women’s Culture: Equality and Difference. It succeeded more than expected.

The assembly took place last month, between February 4th and 7th.

The image provoked international outrage from Catholic women’s groups in particular, who saw it as reflecting what Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests says is “the Vatican’s patriarchal, dysfunctional view that holds women in spiritual bondage”.

This response is the true essence of our Church in the age of FrancisMercy.  Moving ‘Forward’ as Pope Francis famously counseled on the anniversary of the Paul VI Vernacular Mass, is simply capitulation and submission.  In the end it brings neither respect nor mercy from the enemies of the Faith.

Partnering with Dissident Media in the Time of Mercy

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united against death penalty

At Catholic World Report Carl Olsen takes the Catholic publications to task who recently scolded the country and the courts on the death penalty, all in the name of the Church.

Three things stand out to me on reading the editorial. First, the use of “must end,” rather than “should end.” There is an obvious sense of moral absoluteness in the headline, and it is carried further in the text, which says of capital punishment: “The practice is abhorrent and unnecessary.” Those adjectives are dubious, to put it mildly. The use of “abhorrent” is especially strange considering the word conjures up a clear sense of objective evil, even though capital punishment, when administered lawfully, prudentially, and proportionally, is nothing of the sort.

Secondly, the arguments presented are essentially utilitarian or emotional in nature, and no mention is made of the reasons, based in the Church’s social teaching, that have traditionally (and consistently) been given in support of capital punishment. Dr. Steven Long, professor of theology at Ave Maria University, brings attention to this fact in a post at Thomistica.net:

Are the editors of the journals involved–or the bishops who so commonly describe the death penalty as contrary to human dignity as though it were a malum in se–familiar with the work of the late Eminence Cardinal Avery Dulles on this question?  Or the teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church?  Hundreds of years of Catholic teaching in conformity with the teaching of the Fathers and Doctors has acknowledged that implementing the penalty is a prudential matter and that the penalty is essentially valid.  Pope Piux XII taught that the penalty is valid across cultures.  The wisdom of applying this penalty is essentially a prudential matter.  But as prudential there is no such thing as “de facto abolition” since circumstances change, and–again, contrary to the journals and the new enthusiasm–deterrence is a necessary and essential part of criminal justice.

After walking through other published reactions to the joint appeal, Olsen reiterates his frustration with such un-Catholic moral posturing.

Finally, I want to point out that my 2012 article was not an argument for or against the death penalty, but rather a work outlining what the Church has taught and does teach about the topic. And yet I was criticized, in the comments, for being both too pro-capital punishment and too anti-capital punishment. Perhaps the problem is that for the majority of people this is an all-or-nothing topic, yet the Church’s tradition and teaching are not easily or rightly shoved into either extreme.

(And, to state what should be obvious, but might not be: the matter of the death penalty is distinctly different from the matters of abortion, assisted suicide, and other grave evils that are, by their very nature, immoral. The death penalty can be misused and abused, and there are substantial arguments that can and have been made for using it rarely or not at all, but it is not, in itself, immoral.)

I am, in fact, sympathetic to the call to abolish the death penalty, but I think there are good, cogent, and objective reasons to allow for it in certain situations and in certain places, in accordance with what the tradition and Catechism state. What I find bothersome, again, is the note of moral superiority taken by some who insist the death penalty must be abolished, a note that is decidedly strident and off-putting compared to the careful, rich, and even-handed teachings found in Catholic social doctrine.

Clergy and professional ‘c’atholics abusing the divine credibility of the Church to build up the state and it’s faithless agenda are marks of our time.  For many years now we have expected this kind of thing from the once-condemned America Magazine and the National Catholic Reporter.  What’s new is their partnering with formerly reliable sources like EWTN and the National Catholic Register.  Who do you think blinked?

What are the faithful to believe when the unprecedented abdication of a good pope and the appearance of his replacement lead to honors and support for dissident media? Must we all close our eyes and change our Faith into something worse now?