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
[…]
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;
[…]
There’s a good deal more.
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Dear Fr. Z:
Fiducia supplicans is as apt a label as Traditiones custodies is: not at all.
Though what is discussed as identified by your former CDF pal “is not about pastoral care but about tensions among bishops,…” the answer, besides the side issue of some bishops growing a pair, is:
1. Leave your partner.
2. Get to confession.
3. Resolve never to go back.
4. Do penance.
5. Be grateful that healing is available sacramentally.
Google translated Fallacia superans as overcoming delusions. That could be interpreted in a couple ways. It could intend that the delusions are overcoming common sense or it could imply that we are overcoming said delusions with common sense.
What would be the best way to translate that while keeping the intended meaning?
The Holy Father shrugs off criticism of F.S. by saying things like, “This is just about God blessing everyone… everyone. My small-minded critics just don’t understand that.” I suppose that he thinks he can get away with that sort of vacuity because no reporter or other interlocutor ever calls him out for oversimplification. If a mafia hit squad comes to church for to ask for a blessing before their next hit, do they get one? If the Planned Parenthood clinic staff ask for a blessing before they do their daily batch of abortions, do they get a blessing? So, no, we don’t dispense actually blessings to *everyone* in every circumstance, do we? My great hope for the next conclave is that the African cardinal electors team up with others from “the peripheries” and say, “No mas.”
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.
In fact, the bishops in the West have been working toward declining vocations, and very effectively at that. They may SAY that’s not the objective, but the reality is that either they have the IQ of morons, or they know perfectly well that their policies and behavior have caused the vocations drought. So, one must conclude that they want that result. Indeed, I suspect that the flaming extremists among them actively prefer shrinking seminarian classes over making any substantive changes in their ways, i.e. they have consciously decided that ever-dwindling numbers is better than the alternative of returning to orthodoxy. This is why they have promoted seminary professors and courses full of drivel, newspeak, pabulum, and heresy, and fit only to turn out muling and puling priests who could not conceive of standing up to FS and the like.
My great hope for the next conclave is that the African cardinal electors team up with others from “the peripheries” and say, “No mas.”
My great hope is that the next new pope, from the balcony at which he first greets the world, takes a large copy of TC and burns in front of the world and declares it is null. Then the next day starts to formally retract virtually every document Francis is responsible for. Including re-instating deposed bishops, with official papal apologies.
One step forward and two steps back..
Tony O., I would like to see the next Pope do the sane with Vatican II documents.
@redneckpride4ever
“Google translated Fallacia superans as overcoming delusions.”
Google translate failed first year Latin.
“Fallacia” is the nominative singular for “deception, falsehood ” “Superans,” from “supero,” is the nominative singular present active participle for “exceeding, overflowing.” Both being nominative, both words pertain to the subject doing the action. (Google would have been correct if it was “fallaces superans”)
“Fallacia superans” means something like “overwhelming deception.”
Today is The Presentation of the Lord.
On this day, designated by Saint John Paul II in 1997 as World Day of
Consecrated Life, men and women in all forms of consecrated life
celebrate their own special vocation in the Church.
Let us join our prayers with theirs
St John Paul II pray for us
@redneckpride4ever: maybe ‘getting over delusions’? That way ‘overcoming’ can’t be seen as an adjective. It really is amazing how unclear English is.
TonyO,
Looking at varieties of Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, etc. precedent, might one expect a rapid growth of ‘(neo-sacramentally-married) gender-identifer’ vocations once incrementalism has crept far enough and ‘Argentine-style magisteriality’ has been sufficiently exercised?
When I see what is transpiring with regard to FS, it reminds of a scene from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” where Tevye, who has “bent” to accept non-traditional situations with two of his daughters’ love lives, when confronted by his third daughter marrying a non-Jew which was against both faith and culture, does a “on the one hand’ and a “on the other hand” response to this. He finally concludes, if he bends so much to accept this, he will break; he rejects this situation saying “There is no other hand!”
With FS, I also say “there is no other hand!’
“ 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.”
And right there is the rub…what the libs will do with it.
“Looking at varieties of Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, etc. precedent, might one expect a rapid growth of ‘(neo-sacramentally-married) gender-identifer’ vocations once incrementalism has crept far enough and ‘Argentine-style magisteriality’ has been sufficiently exercised?”
One hopes not, Venerator. But if it does, there will still be a Church that is the true Church. Look for me there. As Beregond said to Pippin just before the siege of Minas Tirith, “Hope and memory shall live still in some hidden valley where the grass is green.”
It’s a great opportunity for a cleric to take the two aside, one by one, to explain why the Church holds that only marriage between one man and one woman is valid. The priest or deacon can talk about how their situation weighs on their soul, and ask if they would like to go to confession. Without reconciling with the community, a blessing would not be tenable.
Doubtful even the looniest bishop would command him to forgo the sacrament of reconciliation to go right to a “blessing”. Not even a Cupich or a Tobin or a McElroy.
‘The Holy Father shrugs off criticism of F.S. by saying things like, “This is just about God blessing everyone… everyone. My small-minded critics just don’t understand that.”’
Putting the most charitable gloss possible on it, perhaps the Holy Father *can* manage that distinction himself, and he’s just that much more elevated than his “small-minded critics.”
Granting that, though, should the Holy Father not be even more mindful of 1 Corinthians 8:13?
jhogan, but Tevye got worn down. There was another hand, but I agree with your point. Some things are too much. This is one of those. But people are so weak, and so easy to manipulate.
At GloriaTV, is it, someone made a good point about FS. If this is not a different kind of blessing than the blessings we had, why was Fiducia Supplicans even needed? Why did we need a letter about something that doesn’t change anything.
Cardinal Ranjith for Pope!
“This is just about God blessing everyone… everyone. My small-minded critics just don’t understand that.”’
God does give blessings to everyone…everyone. Life, for example, is a blessing. God also calls each of us to holiness – another blessing. He makes grace available to those who call on him in humility, asking for forgiveness for their sins – an unparalleled grace. St. Thomas asserts that even the people in hell suffer less punishment than they would otherwise suffer if not for God’s mercy.
Even small-minded Catholics know such things. If Francis’s mind is so blown apart that he has no limits – and no wits either – he can call people small-minded who accomplish the task of swallowing two truths and the distinction between them, what does that say of the person who cannot grasp distinctions, and who is so close-minded that he cannot even credit the act of making distinctions as being worthwhile?