“LaCI and Beans” Back at It Again! Attack US Bishops for Their Enthusiastic Implementation of Law

Father Zed takes on Beans Faggioli and the anti-Catholic 'La Croix International'.

From Fr Z's Blog

Go to radical-liberal, anti-tradition La Croix International, (LaCI) run by a cadre around openly-“gay” (and HERE) Robert Mickens.  Mickens, you will recall, is so filled with animus for John Paul II and Benedict XVI that he lost his place with the UK’s ultra-liberal catholic weekly Tablet (aka The Bitter Pill) after a disgusting public exchange on Facebook in March 2014 – HERE – in which they hoped for Benedict’s swift death.

Liberals mean what they say when they are being mean, something the Tablet recognized.

At the “About” page of LaCI (would that be “lacey” or “lackey”?) you see that professional provocateur Massimo “Beans” Faggioli is underneath Editor in Chief Mickens, suggesting his influence.

Usually when you are slumming around on catholic media sites you will encounter paywalls for articles, perhaps after a few freebies.   Today there is a piece from Beans at LaCI that they really want you to read: no paywall.  It was originally at another tired lefty-outlet, Commonweal. LaCI ballyhoos it with a click-bait blurb ironically highlighting something of minor importance in Beans’ true-to-character Dàzìbào.

Why some US bishops think Vatican II is a failure
The narrative of mission and renewal advanced by some American bishops today judges Vatican II to be a failure and rejects some of its major reforms.

It is no coincidence that bishops in the United States are among those who have implemented Benedict XVI’s Summorum pontificum with the greatest enthusiasm; many of them have publicly embraced the revival of the pre-conciliar Mass. [*gasp*]

It’s in the context of this rejection of Vatican II that one can understand the current vogue in American Catholic intellectual circles for various brands of integralism and “options” for retreat from the modern world.

LaCI and Beans.  Sounds like an 70s TV show.

Note the slam at US Bishops and the reference to “Summorum pontificum” (sic – it’s Pontificum, guys).

Note also the trajectory.  If a US Bishop implements Summorum Pontificum – which, by the way, is LAW directly from a Roman Pontiff – and does so “enthusiastically”, then he is an integralist who rejects Vatican II’s openness toward “the modern world”.

This is malicious, stupid and hypocritical.

It is malicious, because it targets certain bishops for attacks by others.  It is stupid because it is, on the face of it, just plain false… name US bishops who reject Vatican II.  Please.  It is hypocritical because these same people want everyone to fall down in awe and unthinking obedience, perinde ac cadaver, for every off-the-cuff word from the mouth Francis, or his every tittle and jot, as if he were not the Roman Pontiff but rather a hybrid of Skynet and the Fifth Apparition of Vishnu.

The same people who fought John Paul and Benedict for decades, insulting them and dragging their feet over every well-explained teaching or rightly-promulgated law, now demand that you conform semper, ubique, omnes…. OR ELSE.

Would this be a good point to quote John Paul II – pre-emnient Vatican II Pope – from 1988 in Ecclesia Dei adflicta?  “6. … by virtue of my Apostolic Authority I decree… c) respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition, by a wide and generous application of the directives already issued some time ago by the Apostolic See for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962.”

Like the Red Guards of old, they pit one Pope against another and trash anyone who might still respect a predecessor…. well, certain predecessors.

Beans’ stock in trade – as is the case with most of the aspirants of the New catholic Red Guards – is to create straw-men, over whom they tisk and remonstrate.  They then associate their living targets with these straw men.  It’s a terror tactic.  The historic Red Guards got their marching orders – often ephemeral suggestions from whoever was up on a given day. They created their slogans with Big-Character Posters, and then they terrorized and rounded up anyone associated with an unapproved view or job or family for public humiliation, “re-education” and torture.

Faggioli is a diligent hopeful, who pumps his copy of the little book of sayings with vigor.

Micken’s complicity? Go to the actual 1600+ word piece at LaCI to see how much of it deals with US Bishops and Summorum Pontificum.  You find, pretty much, only the click-bait blurb, above.  That’s about it.

However, there is something else of interest.  Faggioli nearly writhes in adulation of German theologian Peter Hünermann who edited commentaries on Vatican II.  But so much has happened – to wit, two pontificates the libs didn’t like – that new commentaries are needed: “a comprehensive re-interpretation of the council for the twenty-first century”!

A re-re-interpretation tailored for us!

What else is this but a panic attack?

In many spheres of the Church’s life the implementation of Vatican II has proven to be an unmitigated disaster.  I’m not making this up.  Look at the stats.  There are many factors to blame, but let’s not pretend that Vatican II, new Pentecost that it was, produced a fresh new springtime of life in the Church.  I can’t forget Paul VI and his observation of cracks and fissures.

Anyway, Beans writes of Hünermann much in the style of the Second Nocturn of Matins (… ooops, a reference to something pre-Conciliar!  I must be an integralist who HATES VATICAN II!)

1968 – “The 3 July and 24 July proclamations are
Chairman Mao’s great strategic plans!
 Unite with forces that can be
 united with to strike surely, accurately
 and relentlessly at the handful of class enemies.”

Do you remember the dust up not long ago?  A functionary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications wanted retired-Benedict to write a puff endorsing a series of books, including work by Hünermann.  The series was a defense of Francis’ theological chops. Benedict not only didn’t want to read it – partly because of the bitter attacks on his person by Hünermann – but wrote that he had no intention of reading it. The functionary, a different Viganò, then redacted Benedict’s rejection letter to give the false impression that Benedict was all for the books!  He sort of lost his job over that, but not really: a new job was swiftly created.  HERE

In any event, Hünermann is Beans’ guy:

He was one of the few who publicly expressed his hope that the cardinal from Buenos Aires would be elected: “Pope Francis’s gestures, words, and the program for his pontificate in Evangelii gaudium demonstrate the difference between [John Paul II and Benedict XVI] and this pope, who did not take part in the council.

He opened a new age in the Catholic Church’s way of living Vatican II: not conditioned by his own personal experience and his own ‘oral tradition’ about the council.”

Beans sees great hope in this new project of re-interpretation of the Council.   If only all those US Bishops would stop obeying the Roman Pontiffs St. John Paul and his successor Benedict!  If only they would drag their feet and marginalize the ever growing numbers of young people who have “legitimate aspirations”!  If only we would stop calling “sacred and great” what our forebears in the Faith loved and handed on as a gift.  No!  We must spurn what is old and embrace the newest re-interpretation!

Pò sì jiù!  Down with the Four Olds!

We shall over come.

Dear readers, the journey will be difficult. The road will be long. We face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of our limitations. But we also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American Bishops. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our church and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great church so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.