Monday 19 May 2014

Bergoglio and Quarracino Neognostics?

: Quidlibet : Bergoglio’s Revolution: Six Key Points
http://www.fathercekada.com/2013/11/21/bergoglios-revolution-all-according-to-plan/


I do not think Father Cekada quoted Bergoglio wrongly. This quote is ultimately from Bergoglio, via an interview in July last year, via the blog of Father Cekada.

"The Church is taking a very close look at pastoral initiatives for marriage. My predecessor in Buenos Aires, Cardinal Quarracino always used to say: ‘I consider half of today’s marriages to be invalid because people get married without realizing it means forever. They do it out of social convenience, etc…’ The issue of invalidity needs to be looked into as well.”


This reminds me of a Bible passage. Protestants have often misused it to protest against celibacy. Here we have a real issue.

First Epistle Of Saint Paul To Timothy : Chapter 4 : [1] Now the Spirit manifestly saith, that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error, and doctrines of devils, [2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy, and having their conscience seared, [3] Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and by them that have known the truth. [4] For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving: [5] For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

Challoner comment:

[3] Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats: He speaks of the Gnostics, the Marcionites, the Eneratites, the Manicheans, and other ancient heretics, who absolutely condemned marriage, and the use of all kind of meat; because they pretended that all flesh was from an evil principle. Whereas the church of God, so far from condemning marriage, holds it a holy sacrament; and forbids it to none but such as by vow have chosen the better part: and prohibits not the use of any meats whatsoever in proper times and seasons; though she does not judge all kind of diet proper for days of fasting and penance.


Let us also get to Haydock Comment:

Haydock Comment [same book/chapter] : Ver. 3. Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats, &c. Here says St. Chrysostom[1]* are foretold and denoted the heretics called Encratites, the Marcionites, Manicheans, &c. who condemned all marriages as evil, as may be seen in St. Irenæus, Epiphanius, St. Augustine, Theodoret, &c. These heretics held a god who was the author of good things, and another god who was the author or cause of all evils; among the latter they reckoned, marriages, fleshmeats, wine, &c. The doctrine of Catholics is quite different, when they condemn the marriages of priests and of such as have made a vow to God to lead always a single life; or when the Church forbids persons to eat flesh in Lent, or on fasting-days, unless their health require it. We hold that marriage in itself is not only honourable, but a sacrament of divine institution. We believe and profess that the same only true God is the author of all creatures which are good of themselves; that all eatables are to be eaten with thanksgiving, and none of them to be rejected, as coming from the author of evil. When we condemn priests for marrying, it is for breaking their vows and promises made to God of living unmarried, and of leading a more perfect life; we condemn them with the Scripture, which teaches us that vows made are to be kept; with St. Paul, who in the next chap. (ver. 12) teaches us, that they who break such vows incur their damnation. When the Church, which we are commanded to obey, enjoins abstinence from flesh, or puts a restraint as to the times of eating on days of humiliation and fasting, it is by way of self-denial and mortification: so that it is not the meats, but the transgression of the precept, that on such occasions defiles the consciences of the transgressors. "You will object, (says St. Chrysostom) that we hinder persons from marrying; God forbid," &c. St. Augustine, (lib. 30. contra Faustum. chap. vi.) "You see (says he) the great difference in abstaining from meats for mortification sake, and as if God was not the author of them." We may observe that God, in the law of Moses, prohibited swine's flesh and many other eatables; and that even the apostles, in the Council of Jerusalem, forbad the Christians, (at least about Antioch) to eat at that time blood and things strangled; not that they were bad of themselves, as the Manicheans pretended. (Witham)

St. Paul here speaks of the Gnostics and other ancient heretics, who absolutely condemned marriage and the use of all kind of meat, because they pretended that all flesh was from an evil principle: whereas the Church of God so far from condemning marriage, holds it to be a holy sacrament, and forbids it to none but such as by vow have chosen the better part: and prohibits not the use of any meats whatsoever, in proper times and seasons, though she does not judge all kinds of diet proper for days of fasting and penance. (Challoner)

We may see in the earliest ages[centuries] of Christianity, that some of the most infamous and impure heretics that ever went out of the Church, condemned all marriage as unlawful, at the same time allowing the most unheard of abominations: men without religion, without faith, without modesty, without honour. See St. Clement of Alexandria, lib. 3. Strom.

Ver. 5. It is sanctified by the word of God, and prayer. That is, praying that they may not, by the abuse we make of them, be an occasion to us of sinning and offending God. (Witham)

The use of all kinds of meat is in itself good; but if it were not, it would become sanctified by the prayer which we usually pronounce over it, and by the word of Christ, who has declared that not that which enters the mouth defiles a man. (Calmet)


Seeing this comment, shall we say I was wrong to think of this passage in the context?

But the fullfledged Gnostic is rare. One version of it is certain versions of radical feminism, calling marriage a trap for women. It is pretty undiluted. A diluted version would be to call not all marriages wrong, but half of them. And that is what Bergoglio praised Quarracino for doing.

Is there anything Gnostic in either beyond agreeing with Gnostics, in the case of radical feminists about all marriages and in the case of Quarracino and Bergoglio about half of them?

I think there is. Either way, whether marriage is most usually a way in which men oppress women (as the feminists say at their most radical moments) or whether marriage is (as the other set clames) half of the time something one was not sufficiently consenting to, one thinks of marriage as a state for which man is inept. Or therefore as a state inept for man.

Not as something cocreated with man, and to be relinquished only for a higher calling (which may involve more suffering and for which one needs more maturity).

That is also the problem with when "the Church" raised the age of marital consent from the 14 / 12 limit to the new 16 / 14 limit. It implies the Church had in some cases been two years wrong about who was apt for marital consent or whom marriage was apt for. Which the Church - the real one of two thousand years and its predecessor in the Hebrew nation reaching back beyond Patriarchs to Adam - obviously has not been. Not on a Christian view, at any rate.

But since the old 14 / 12 limit implied that God was giving sufficient maturity if not in each case at least in cases ranging around the age of puberty of the person, so the newer age limit implies this is not so. And Quarracino / Bergoglio are even flouting what the newer age limit (16 / 14) granted God as regards confidence in His creature, especially if sanctified with the grace received through the Sacraments.

It is so much closer to agreeing with Krauss and Dawkins that if God constructed us, he did so with errors. Which is one way of being a Neognostic.

Indeed, if tomorrow Atheism as such was regarded as so untenable as it is, Krauss and Dawkins might perhaps be Neognostics rather than Christians. This does not mean that everyone would or that one must cease fire against Atheism, intellectually speaking.

But it does mean a Christian believing God created us for happiness in this life and the life to come ought not to compromise as much with Krauss and Dawkins and similar people as I think Quarracino and Bergoglio are hre doing. Perhaps these two do not believe that either.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
19 / V / 2014

* Footnote from Haydock Comment: [1] Ver. 3. St. Chrysostom, Greek: om. ib. ou koluomen, me genoioto. St. Jerome, (lib. 1. contra Jovinian. tom. 4. p. 156) Si nupserit Virgo, non peccavit....non illa Virgo, quæ se semel Dei cultui dedicavit; harum enim si qua nupserit, habebit damnationem. See St. Augustine (lib. 30. contra Faust. chap. vi.) both as to marriage and meats.

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