Our Vatican Secretary of State has condemned the rearming of Europe: "if we make arms we will use them." Actually, if we make them we may deter Putin; if we do not we will be overcome by him and others. Parolin is in denial: of the reality of Evil... in Putin, but also in Chinese Communism, Jihadist Islam, and sexual depravity in Catholic clergy.
The indulgence toward Putin, Xi, and Hamas is of the same type as the tolerance of Rupnik, McCarrick and a legion of clerical predators. The root cause seems to be a superficial, overly positive view of human nature. Such a rosy, Pollyanna view of life is the heart of the progressive vision: we can find happiness and salvation through education, science/technology, therapy, sexual liberation, diplomatic negotiation and defeat of the oppressor classes. Our tragedy is that such a view has penetrated much of our hierarchy and clergy.
One of the greatest strengths of the Catholic view of life is realism about Evil: sin (original, mortal, venial), the demonic, and judgement including hell. Such tough realism has been largely replaced by a soft, quasi-passivist, effete ethos of cheap compassion. The gospel of Mercy prevalent in the current pontificate is toxic, unlike that of St. John Paul, in that it is not balanced by truth, judgment, and wrath. This leads in the real world to capitulation to the predators: clerical, Communist, imperialist, and Jihadist.
The Vatican as a sovereign state has not years, not centuries, but millennia of diplomatic experience. Its historical memory well knows the realities of "the world, the flesh and the devil." But an amnesia seems to have set in over the last decade as the Francis papacy has assumed a role as chaplain to Western Progressivism and advocated a particular ideology involving disarmament, immigration, climate, death penalty and other.
Through most of my adult life I consulted respectfully the diplomatic announcements of the papacy. Clearly, the infallibility in faith and morals does not include the diplomatic and the political. Yet, the Vatican has, in addition to an incomparable historic memory, a distinct and privileged position: truly global, it pledges allegiance to no nation, alliance or ideology. It communicates daily with clergy all over the world and so has a truly international, and (as close to as possible) a transcendent perspective. With recent developments I no longer extend such respect to the voices around the pope.
In Talking with Strangers, Malcom Gladwell points out that we are normally vulnerable to deceit because our social life requires a level of trust. Con men, sociopaths and predators often prevail because most of us properly work from an assumptive trust. Perhaps the most gullible and vulnerable among us are, ironically, the more virtuous, idealistic and altruistic. This would include, obviously, those who become priests. As a group, they are exceptional in motivation: generous, peace-seeking, open-minded, compassionate. Understandably, they project their own motivations on others. As a group, they are perhaps least personally in touch with the base, evil, violent side of human nature. This makes them the least capable of confronting the genuine evil and demonic.
This systemic blindness was countervailed in traditional Catholicism, prior to the 1960s, by closeness to death, sickness, poverty, war as well as a rigorous supernatural ethos attuned to sin, evil, and punishment.
Perhaps the most Holy-Spirit-inspired movement within 20th century, global Catholicism was the focus upon the Divine Mercy in St. Faustina and St. John Paul. Concurrent with this are darker developments. The emergence of the therapeutic is compatible with Mercy, if situated within a traditional sense of reality. But the triumph of the therapeutic, within a broad, secularizing progressivism, leads to disorders of indulgence, relativism, and illusion.
So, we have seen in the last decades a perfect storm of naivete, credulity, gullibility and effete weakness as our clergy, already disposed to empathy and blind to evil, live in a denial that effectively enables evil-doers. The traditional trust in our clergy has been replaced by widespread suspicion. There is good reason for this. If our priests, because of their goodness, are systemically indisposed to agonistic engagement with evil, this weakness is intensified by the influence of the secular, therapeutic, and progressive.
A more traditional theology does not of itself overcome sin and evil; many of our worst clerical predators (Maciel) were conservative. But a perspective rooted in our Tradition will countervail powerful, erroneous forces of modernity prevalent in our Church.
As laity we remain filial, docile, receptive and obedient to the hierarchy in regard to dogma and worship. We do not enviously ambition, through some "synodality," to share in the apostolic authority bestowed in holy orders. We have our own missions to perform in our world. In the current context, as we pursue our vocations, in areas of diplomacy, politics and culture we do well to receive with strict scrutiny pronouncements from a hierarchy singularly ill prepared and ill disposed to engage the powers of darkness.
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