Just some further reading. I’ve been pretty busy in the last week or so doing stuff for $$ on the new nun document.

You can read my first bit on it at the Remnant here.

“I believe that one of the major causes of the great collapse of Catholicism has been the torpedoing of the religious life. And make no mistake, that was done deliberately, consciously and with great malice. I believe that the two things that had to happen to effect the result we have seen, was the attack first on the Mass and then on the religious. It was necessary to stopper up the two great conduits of grace into the lives of the Faithful, the Holy Sacrifice and the life consecrated to prayer and penance. Both have been nearly destroyed by the revolutionaries, and what survives of both are now under renewed attack.”

Chris Ferrara followed up with a few extra notes of his own on the irony of the “pope of inclusion” calling people to “go out to the peripheries” forbidding monasteries to recruit from other countries:

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“Notice that this provision does not per se forbid recruitment of novices solely to insure the survival of a monastery, which could be understood to address the hasty recruitment of ill-suited candidates in order to keep things going. Rather, it forbids only recruitment from other countries for that purpose. That is, the Pope of Inclusion, the Pope who rails constantly against ‘walls’ that restrict immigration, now makes national origin alone a criterion for exclusion from every convent-monastery in the world.“_

And Chris again, the busy little bee (how fast does the guy type, anyway?) followed with more on the same subject at Catholic Family News:

With his apostolic constitution Vultum Dei Quaerere (“Seeking the face of God”) (VDQ), dropped like a blockbuster bomb during his vacation, Francis mandates sweeping changes in every cloistered convent in the world, requiring the adoption of new constitutions and “forms of cloister” to be approved by the Vatican and centralizing control over all local cloisters. The liberal La Stampa approvingly summarizes the document as a whole, thus: “Francis mandates wide changes for contemplative women religious, requests revision of all constitutions.” Catholic News Agency hails the “new norms focused on prayer, centralization.”

And on another topic, we’ve finally heard from someone at the higher levels saying what we all know.

Brandmuller: Benedict’s resignation legal, but disastrous.

_**a pope emeritus is extraneous to the whole canonistic-theological tradition.

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The resignation of the pope is possible (can. 332 § 2). That does not mean it is also certain to be morally licit. Liceity requires objective institutional reasons, directed to the “bonum commune Ecclesiae,” not personal reasons. One example of resignation is that of Gregory XII, made in 1415 to put an end to the schism. Pius VII and Pius XII also prepared bulls of resignation in case of imprisonment by Napoleon or Hitler.

From the pastoral point of view, however, it seems particularly urgent to combat the error – widely diffused in the situation created with the resignation of Benedict XVI – of maintaining that, through the resignation, **the ministry of successor of Peter is stripped of its unique and sacred character and put on the same level as temporary democratic functions.

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Today there is an urgent danger that this secular-political understanding of the papacy could lead to the point that from then on a pope could be issued, as are the occupants of secular positions, requests to resign when the person of the pope or his exercise of the office may meet with opposition.

“….the resignation of a pope presupposes – and at the same time creates – a very dangerous ecclesial situation. At this moment there is no lack of persons or groups that follow the retired pope and that, dissatisfied with what has happened, could threaten the unity of the Church and even provoke a schism. It seems, therefore, that a future juridical regulation of the papal resignation might not exclude this perspective.

Maybe if his successor were recognisably a Catholic this might be a somewhat less pressing problem. Perhaps future canons should consider making not being a heretic a more explicit job requirement.

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_“The first necessity is the integration of can. 332 § 2, which establishes only that the pope’s resignation of office ‘libere fiat et rite manifestetur.’ The reference – an obvious one – to canons 185 and 186 that generally regulate the resignation of an ecclesiastical office is not suited for the exceptional case of the resignation of the pope. Moreover, the simple declaration of free resignation on the part of the person in question is not enough, because depending on the circumstances that statement could easily be forced, and the resignation therefore be invalid.

Such situations could lead to a schism. It is therefore indispensable to establish the procedure for certifying the effective freedom of the act. It is not enough to say that the act is valid until the contrary is proven because – since the pope is involved here – the resignation must be followed immediately by the election of the successor.

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“Such situations could lead to a schism.”

Ja THINK?!

WTF is wrong with these people?

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Meantime, I’m doing some stuff, that might end up being useful to some people who have for a long time been ignored by the Church.

I’d appreciate some prayers that I don’t screw it up.

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