Cardinal Who Runs the Synod ("Walking Together"): "It Is a Grace That Today Christendom Is No More."

Excuse my French, but I am so bloody SICK of anti-Catholic idiots like Cardinal Grech I could retch! I suggest he read Integralism, with its copious citations on Christendom from the Angelic Doctor, the Fathers and Doctors, and the pre-conciliar Popes.

From Fr Z's Blog

Corriere della Sera

The man who runs the Synod (“walking together”), Mario Card. Grech.

“It is a grace that today Christendom is no more. Because we felt we had arrived: the Church as a” perfect society “.  And whoever is perfect doesn’t feel the need to seek, to improve, to convert, to set out on the path listening to the Spirit, wheras this is the Gospel.”

“È una grazia, che oggi non ci sia più la cristianità. Perché ci sentivamo arrivati: la Chiesa come “società perfetta”. E chi è perfetto non sente il bisogno di cercare, di migliorare, di convertirsi, di mettersi in cammino in ascolto dello Spirito, mentre questo è il Vangelo».

By “la cristianità”, he means “Christendom”, not just generic “Christianity”.  He absolutely would think that “Christianity” is no more: Rather, our separated brethren and sistren are ahead of us on the cammino and we have a lot of catching up to do!  He means “Christendom”, no question, and my Romans agree.

We deny his absurd premise, of course: Christians of Christendom never thought themselves “perfect”.

Aren’t writers from those dark days constantly criticized by more woke moderns as being pessimistic about man, concerned about outdated things like “sin” and “propitiation”?  If the liturgical worship of Christendom, as it was raised to God for a thousand and more years, was concerned about guilt, sin and propitiation, that suggests that Christians didn’t see themselves as not needing to change.

Moreover, that is not what was meant by “perfect society”.

If Grech knows where the ecclesiological formulation “perfect society” comes from, given the present Traditionis Open-Season ethos he is perhaps taking a cheap shot at the post-Tridentine ecclesiology of figures such as St. Robert Bellarmine, a Doctor of the Church… which Grech ain’t… and anyone who values all that sort of stuff, like traditional Mass and sacraments.

Grech was Card. Baldisseri’s Number Two at the Pachamama Amazon Synod (“walking together”) and he was one of the writers of the Post-Synodal (“walking together”) Exhortation.    In October 2020, by the way, when COVID-1984 was ramping up, churches were being closed and people were being denied the sacraments, Grech said in an interview with Antonio “2+2=5” Spadaro, Jesuit editor of La Civiltà Cattolica and administrator of a site in honor of Pier Vittorio Tondelli:

It is of concern that someone feels lost outside of the Eucharistic or worship context, for it shows an ignorance of other ways of engaging with the mystery. This not only indicates that there is a certain spiritual illiteracy, but is proof of the inadequacy of current pastoral practice. It is very likely that in the recent past our pastoral activity has sought to lead to the sacraments and not to lead – through the sacraments – to Christian life.

Those silly people who are so backward that they just want to go to Mass and confession. Our pastoral activity should help them not to need to go to Mass and confession so much!  There are other ways, after all.   I’m reminded of a song by the Official Parodohymnodist here, about the old program “RENEW”, just the sort of thing that bishops are doing again for the sake of “evangelization”, reliving the 70’s and 80’s.  To the tune of the old Burt Bacharach song…

♫ What do we do when we do RENEW?
We get together and we drink some coffee.
We read some Scripture and we hug each other.
I’ll… never go to Mass again.
I’ll never go to Mass again. ♫

Enough of Bacharach and more Bellarmine.

For Bellarmine, “perfect society” did NOT mean perfected and completed such that nothing else was to be done.  It meant that the Church, as founded by Christ, had all the elements necessary to guide all men to salvation.  This ecclesiology was absorbed, not rejected, by later writers such as Pius XII in Mystici Corporis Christi and it was a foundation in Lumen gentium.  Vatican II embraced and expanded the view that the Church is a “‘community brought together by the profession of the same Christian faith and conjoined in the communion of the same sacraments, under the government of the legitimate pastors and especially the one vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff.”

Note Lumen gentium 14:

They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion. He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a “bodily” manner and not “in his heart.” All the Church’s children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.

This does not reject the image of the Church as a “perfect society”, it expands it.

But that’s not popular today, especially when certain people seem not to care that formal membership in the Catholic Church is of any particular advantage.

Enough of that for now.

I would ask the Cardinal about that horrible time of Christendom and the missionary orders of men and women there were, the saints who were willing to go to the ends of the earth – never to see their homes again – and risk death to bring the Catholic Faith to others.

I would ask the Cardinal about the horrible time of Christendom, which developed the structures of society that improved human life at all levels, including economics, the sciences, archtecture, art, and music.

I would ask the Cardinal about the horrible Christendom that gave him everything he is now basking in, including what culture he has… not to mention his paycheck.

Does any of that sound like not seeking or converting or setting out on the path?  By the way, you have to know Italian Church jargon to hear how cliché laden this is… like with “cammino”, a word so over used that it is practically meaningless.

Speaking of cardinals…

Immundas ales, asserimus, quae suos stercorant nidos:
his plerique similes, qui nullam rem servant honestam.