Basic news for far too many conservative Catholics: “Prudential judgment” concerns itself with “how best to put into practice the teaching of the Church”, not “whether to put into practice the teaching of the Church” and sure as heck not “how to fight against the teaching of the Church.”
Extra bonus fact: “Prudential judgment” is best manifested by making, you know, prudent judgments. If you belong to a subculture with a long history of massively imprudent judgments like “The Iraq War was a great idea!” or “Torture! The Thinking Catholic’s Solution to Terror!” or “Maciel! Wonder Priest of the Age!” or “Trump: The Constantine of our Time!” or “Obama! Sinister Kenyan Muslim Agent of Shariah Who Will Take All our Guns!” or “Corapi! Every Story He Tells is Certainly Not a Fabulist Lie!” or “Lifesite News/Breitbart/Fox/Infowars: Your Fonts of Undiluted Truth” or “Steve Bannon: Catholic Hero of the Alt Right” or “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Pay the Magisterium No Mind” or “Pope Francis: Commie Threat or Gay Menace?” or “Church Militant: School of Prophets, Bulwark Against the Church of Nice, and Guide to Real Catholicism” then after one or two decades of being so wrong about so much so many times for so long, you should consider the possibility that you just lack prudence and are in no position whatsoever to tell the Magisterium anything about your superior prudential judgement ever again.
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5 Responses
Maciel, Church Militant and others are not “conservative.” They are right wing. They are not the same thing. As in politics, conservative and right wing are not the same thing. The Proud Boys are not conservatives. Neo Nazis are not conservatives. I wish people understood this.
No true Scotsman?
Look at who and what the conservatives support, and you will know what conservatives are. People who are elected to power and high office.
Catholic conservatives are almost completely supporting Trump. The USCCB leadership, is by omission and commission, doing so too.
If there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis
Corapi always made me wonder, was there ever a time when he was genuine? I didn’t really follow him back then, were there people who called him out before his big scandal?
Speaking of frauds, can we talk about Fr. Ripperger? The things he says about his exorcisms just seem bizarre and blatantly made up. Is he actually performing exorcisms? I wonder what his bishop thinks.
Every story of exorcism I heard, whether valid or invalid, whether truth or confabulation, seemed bizarre and difficult to believe.
Bizarrerie is not a good indicator of validity of exorcism. That’s why I fully believe that all stories of exorcisms should best stay private between the exorcist and the formerly possessed (except in cases of blatant abuse). Any words spoken by the devil through the possessed are to be ignored and promptly forgotten, not repeated.
Preaching about exorcisms doesn’t serve any good purpose and only hands the pulpit to the devil. It only feeds the pride and vanity of the exorcist to talk of the devil because it seems that he gained and shares some secret knowledge.
Frankly, if an exorcist speaks out publicly about exorcisms, he should immediately be removed from the office because he no longer preaches the evangel (=gospel), but kakangel. It’s a shift from Christianity to occult, blasphemy and idolatry.
There are two simple reasons for that:
1. The devil speaks only lies (John 8:44). He’s possesses a supernatural intellect and it’s impossible for a mere human to get into a fight with him. There’s no way to compel him to tell the truth and there’s no way to tell the truth from his lies. And even if he tells the truth, it’s never of any good to us, so why parrot him?
2. To make the exorcism seem like something exciting and attractive, the devil is given way more due than his own. Maybe it’s due to pride and vanity of the exorcist, but again, it doesn’t serve any good purpose. It also makes the devil seem more than he actually is — judged and defeated.
Exorcists will talk of what “sources” of possession there are, how the devil gets us and gets into us to possess us, and so on. This is blatant fatalism that aims to throw us into despair with no possible recourse. We’re doomed to be possessed if we don’t do exactly as we’re told… by the devil.
So we strain the gnats and swallow the camel. We wonder if there are evil ingredients in Asian cuisine and whether we ought to eat them or if it’s an affront to God for whatever reason, and we’re not concerned that we’re not showing love towards the owner of the restaurant when we order him to stop serving his tainted food. He will offer steep discounts to those not well-off, he will give food to the needy, but we will tell them to not take advantage of that because that food might lead them to be possessed?
And then there’s Jesus clearly stating where evil comes from: Mark 7:14-23.
Outstanding! Very relevant to current discussions about Tridentine Mass, as many adherents to it seem also to be the “cafeteria catholics;” and explains why Francis may be seeing the Tridentine mass as a divisive artifact, and not entirely the spiritual expression its proponents claim. I say this as someone who sings in a choir that is dedicated to the traditional music of the Latin liturgy (Novo Ordis) performed in a liturgical context. However, I try not to confuse my esthetic preferences with moral or spiritual superiority.