Thank you for this article helping us understand what is happening in Ukraine.
If a Catholic bishop said anything like what the Moscow Patriarch said, the pope would remove him from office. So why doesn't the pope remove Kirill? If he indeed has the authority over all the Churches, he should do it. We have seen Pope Francis remove bishops against their will. What stops him from excommunicating Kirill? Not for failing to recognize the authority of Rome but for failing to be a Patriarch of Moscow. Not an excommunication that extends to the office and each successor, but an excommunication of the man for misuse of office. Of course, Kirill would not accept this, but that is beside the point. Does the pope even claim to have jurisdiction over Russia?
Why would the bishop of Rome excommunicate someone who was not in communion in the first place? It ecclesiologically makes no sense to excommunicate members of churches and ecclesial communities that already separated from the Catholic Church hundreds of years in the past.
I think I see where you’re going, but I don’t think Rome could claim that authority over Moscow without tacitly claiming it over Constantinople as well and damaging work done on that front. It’s tricky enough to walk a tightrope without attempting a double backflip on it.
That is the problem though. Does Rome claim any authority over Moscow? Then use it. Does Rome deny any authority over Moscow? Then publicly disclaim authority over Constantinople. Unity with the Greeks would not be too difficult if the pope publicly announced that he has no authority over them.
The problem is all this inconsistency. Is the pope a monarch who condemns Trump, removes the bishop of Arecibo, and bans Latin Masses from parish bulletins in Kalamazoo? Or is he a humble figure who accompanies dictators without too much judgment? Or is he a paper tiger?
Is anyone else mystified by this papacy's seeming incoherence on the most impactful issues it positions itself on? Why, for instance, does it sweep aside all notions of a "just war" (and by so doing, rejects the notion of an "unjust war"), while in almost (in terms of the calendar) the *same breath*, twists itself into tortured knots to justify the faithful participating in the grave moral evil (and the extremely dubious technical achievement) that is the Covid vaccine. Any dispassionate witness of these two teachings should be left bewildered at the inconsistency: when is a black/white good/evil moral proposition not subject to a simple binary choice/judgement? And, more important: why? Why is this context so different than that context? I confess that despite my desire to unfailingly follow His Church as our surest path to salvation, at times like this I am left shaking my head and wondering how the Church can vacillate from JPII's unwavering support for human dignity to what we witness now.
I am not mystified, because it is not incoherent. Incoherence is claiming to want to follow the Church, but then rejecting its teaching on vaccines for Covid-19. Incoherence is claiming that Pope Francis is somehow betraying St. John Paul II's position, when the opposite is the case.
So your assertion is that the teaching of the Church on the "vaccine" (remind me, is the purpose of a vaccine not the *avoidance* of the illness the vaccine targets?) is not subject to scientific examination, and possible rejection by discerning laity? That is not the church the Church purports itself to be. Catholics are about faith AND reason. JPII was exemplary in this regard. I am suggesting we are currently coming up short - as a faithful follower of His Church, this pains me deeply - but as a faithful follower, I can not ignore it.
The Church issued no teaching on the scientific data about any of the Covid-19 vaccines, so there is nothing to scientifically examine. It issued through the CDF a note on the morality of receiving such vaccines, which said that it was licit to do so. I don't think that the note, consistent as it is with earlier instructions on the subject, can be rejected by "discerning laity".
But the vaccine itself *can* be rejected by the laity. (I know this, because I have personally rejected it, and quit a job over the Biden vaccine mandates.) The CDF does not state that there is no cooperation with evil in being vaccinated, instead, it posits that there is "remote" cooperation, which must be weighed against the social benefit of being "vaccinated" - and Omicron has shown that benefit to be illusory. So the "discerning" would be weighing an illusory benefit vs. a participating in a "remote" evil. Not a compelling choice. Bottom line, you will find this quote in the CDF: “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”
The CDF's instruction actually bases the liceity of receiving the vaccines not on their efficacy, but on the danger posed by the spread of Covid-19. I agree that in your own discernment, you may choose not to receive the vaccines because you judge them to be ineffective or unnecessary. Where I disagree is with the implication of your initial comment that it is immoral in general to receive the vaccines.
Not in dispute: the cell lines used in development/testing of the "vaccines" are derived from abortions. The CDF doc leaves it up to discerning (there's that pesky term again) Catholics to make the judgement on morality for themselves. Its purpose was to give us (non-scientific) information valuable in making that judgement. Some may not want to do further (perhaps science-based) pre-judgement investigation.
I think the CDF seems to make a pretty clear judgement on morality in the note:
"In this sense, when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available [...] it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process."
And when you have finished justifying the recent teaching on vaccines, if you are not hopelessly dizzy, you can justify the wholesale disposal of just war theory by Francis. Please do so in an intellectually rigorous manner. You can start by showing how Aquinas's view of just war is fundamentally flawed. We'll wait.
The historical view of just war is not fundamentally flawed, but someone who has applied it to the wars of our time and concluded that any of them are just has made a fundamental mistake. It was St. John XXIII who said it first, in his encyclical Pacem in Terris: "Thus, in this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice." This is not to say that a country defending itself is necessarily unjust, which I don't think Pope Francis means by his comments on the subject.
The Ukrainians are currently fighting a war. Is their war just? This is the core problem in the Holy Father's position. You can't condemn all war as unjust without condemning those who are defending themselves by means of war. Hence the entire concept of just war theory.
This is a pattern in Francis' reasoning. He doesn't seem to think about the unintended consequences of what he says.
The war being fought by the Ukrainians is the same war that the Russians are fighting. So in that sense, the war is unjust. Does that mean that it is unjust for the Ukrainians to defend their country? That's not off the table, as defence can be unjust in some circumstances. But Pope Francis said in Fratelli tutti that defence can be legitimate, and has made comments on Ukraine's defenders that seem to imply the legitimacy of their fighting. When the pope says "war is always unjust", it means that war always has an unjust component, not that every side is necessarily acting unjustly.
You can do just about anything in an unjust way - that's not the point. The point is the Ukrainians are clearly engaging in the act of warfare. They are killing people and blowing stuff up as the army would say (in their country and in Russia). It's certainly lamentable, but that doesn't make it unjust - at least not in its essence.
If the Holy Father just wants to talk about how awful warfare is, that's great. He should do that in my opinion, but he's going well beyond that. There is an ancient tradition in the Church around just war theory. By using the language of just war theory to talk about how awful war is he's going to be understood to be attacking the very idea of just war theory. I don't know if he's doing that or not (perhaps he really is attacking the foundations of just war theory), because as it typical for this pontiff, he speaks in a confusing way. He brings darkness where light is needed.
I do not claim to know Francis' thought process, but I think it might be accurate to argue that he tends to speak pastorally when, because of his position, he should be speaking doctrinally. That to me seems to be the pattern.
I am somewhat disappointed that you opted to discuss the Covid vaccine (thus derailing your own thread before it got out of the gate) rather than President Biden's wholehearted support for legalized abortion (a direct parallel for "profoundly scandalous national figure receives photo op with the Pope like everything is fine, seriously demoralizing the faithful of that country").
The shoes have not finished dropping on the Covid "vaccine": Pfizer has until year end to make public its internal documents (per court mandate) on "vaccine" efficacy. (Pfizer tried to string disclosing these docs out over the next 70 *years*. Wonder why they would prefer that schedule.) Also, I want to note a news item that got spiked by the MSM big-time about this "vaccine" lie:
So stay tuned on that channel. Yes, the current support for ongoing US abortions(/genocide, disproportionately occurring among non-whites [& don't get me started on that sidebar]), has far greater moral weight. But: my fear is that if US Catholics gave an honest accounting of what they personally believe, we would see that there is significant support among practicing Catholics for abortion - there were 60 "Catholic" congressional cosigners of a public letter which openly supported "cHoICe" just last year. So abortion is another active front in the hearts/minds/souls for Catholic *laity*, which muddies my argument. (God be praised that Catholic clerics still speak with one voice on abortion.) And my argument was intended to be limited to the imprecision exhibited by the current papacy of His Church.
That is a good point. Still, I would encourage you to spend more time praying outside abortion clinics with other Christians, if you are able; you will still end up in arguments about vaccines or about just war theory or about the Pope or, prior to the pandemic, whether children are kept in cages at the border, or even about whether the rosary is idolatry, until one learns not to argue while praying because these distractions are sent by the enemy (easy way to tell is ask them to pray an Our Father with you and they leave rather than praise God - even the ones who are allegedly trying to convert you). Don't do it if you don't have someone with you... attacks are more intense alone.
Thank you for this article helping us understand what is happening in Ukraine.
If a Catholic bishop said anything like what the Moscow Patriarch said, the pope would remove him from office. So why doesn't the pope remove Kirill? If he indeed has the authority over all the Churches, he should do it. We have seen Pope Francis remove bishops against their will. What stops him from excommunicating Kirill? Not for failing to recognize the authority of Rome but for failing to be a Patriarch of Moscow. Not an excommunication that extends to the office and each successor, but an excommunication of the man for misuse of office. Of course, Kirill would not accept this, but that is beside the point. Does the pope even claim to have jurisdiction over Russia?
Why would the bishop of Rome excommunicate someone who was not in communion in the first place? It ecclesiologically makes no sense to excommunicate members of churches and ecclesial communities that already separated from the Catholic Church hundreds of years in the past.
I think I see where you’re going, but I don’t think Rome could claim that authority over Moscow without tacitly claiming it over Constantinople as well and damaging work done on that front. It’s tricky enough to walk a tightrope without attempting a double backflip on it.
That is the problem though. Does Rome claim any authority over Moscow? Then use it. Does Rome deny any authority over Moscow? Then publicly disclaim authority over Constantinople. Unity with the Greeks would not be too difficult if the pope publicly announced that he has no authority over them.
The problem is all this inconsistency. Is the pope a monarch who condemns Trump, removes the bishop of Arecibo, and bans Latin Masses from parish bulletins in Kalamazoo? Or is he a humble figure who accompanies dictators without too much judgment? Or is he a paper tiger?
Is anyone else mystified by this papacy's seeming incoherence on the most impactful issues it positions itself on? Why, for instance, does it sweep aside all notions of a "just war" (and by so doing, rejects the notion of an "unjust war"), while in almost (in terms of the calendar) the *same breath*, twists itself into tortured knots to justify the faithful participating in the grave moral evil (and the extremely dubious technical achievement) that is the Covid vaccine. Any dispassionate witness of these two teachings should be left bewildered at the inconsistency: when is a black/white good/evil moral proposition not subject to a simple binary choice/judgement? And, more important: why? Why is this context so different than that context? I confess that despite my desire to unfailingly follow His Church as our surest path to salvation, at times like this I am left shaking my head and wondering how the Church can vacillate from JPII's unwavering support for human dignity to what we witness now.
I am not mystified, because it is not incoherent. Incoherence is claiming to want to follow the Church, but then rejecting its teaching on vaccines for Covid-19. Incoherence is claiming that Pope Francis is somehow betraying St. John Paul II's position, when the opposite is the case.
So your assertion is that the teaching of the Church on the "vaccine" (remind me, is the purpose of a vaccine not the *avoidance* of the illness the vaccine targets?) is not subject to scientific examination, and possible rejection by discerning laity? That is not the church the Church purports itself to be. Catholics are about faith AND reason. JPII was exemplary in this regard. I am suggesting we are currently coming up short - as a faithful follower of His Church, this pains me deeply - but as a faithful follower, I can not ignore it.
The Church issued no teaching on the scientific data about any of the Covid-19 vaccines, so there is nothing to scientifically examine. It issued through the CDF a note on the morality of receiving such vaccines, which said that it was licit to do so. I don't think that the note, consistent as it is with earlier instructions on the subject, can be rejected by "discerning laity".
But the vaccine itself *can* be rejected by the laity. (I know this, because I have personally rejected it, and quit a job over the Biden vaccine mandates.) The CDF does not state that there is no cooperation with evil in being vaccinated, instead, it posits that there is "remote" cooperation, which must be weighed against the social benefit of being "vaccinated" - and Omicron has shown that benefit to be illusory. So the "discerning" would be weighing an illusory benefit vs. a participating in a "remote" evil. Not a compelling choice. Bottom line, you will find this quote in the CDF: “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”
The CDF's instruction actually bases the liceity of receiving the vaccines not on their efficacy, but on the danger posed by the spread of Covid-19. I agree that in your own discernment, you may choose not to receive the vaccines because you judge them to be ineffective or unnecessary. Where I disagree is with the implication of your initial comment that it is immoral in general to receive the vaccines.
Not in dispute: the cell lines used in development/testing of the "vaccines" are derived from abortions. The CDF doc leaves it up to discerning (there's that pesky term again) Catholics to make the judgement on morality for themselves. Its purpose was to give us (non-scientific) information valuable in making that judgement. Some may not want to do further (perhaps science-based) pre-judgement investigation.
I think the CDF seems to make a pretty clear judgement on morality in the note:
"In this sense, when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available [...] it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process."
And when you have finished justifying the recent teaching on vaccines, if you are not hopelessly dizzy, you can justify the wholesale disposal of just war theory by Francis. Please do so in an intellectually rigorous manner. You can start by showing how Aquinas's view of just war is fundamentally flawed. We'll wait.
The historical view of just war is not fundamentally flawed, but someone who has applied it to the wars of our time and concluded that any of them are just has made a fundamental mistake. It was St. John XXIII who said it first, in his encyclical Pacem in Terris: "Thus, in this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice." This is not to say that a country defending itself is necessarily unjust, which I don't think Pope Francis means by his comments on the subject.
The Ukrainians are currently fighting a war. Is their war just? This is the core problem in the Holy Father's position. You can't condemn all war as unjust without condemning those who are defending themselves by means of war. Hence the entire concept of just war theory.
This is a pattern in Francis' reasoning. He doesn't seem to think about the unintended consequences of what he says.
The war being fought by the Ukrainians is the same war that the Russians are fighting. So in that sense, the war is unjust. Does that mean that it is unjust for the Ukrainians to defend their country? That's not off the table, as defence can be unjust in some circumstances. But Pope Francis said in Fratelli tutti that defence can be legitimate, and has made comments on Ukraine's defenders that seem to imply the legitimacy of their fighting. When the pope says "war is always unjust", it means that war always has an unjust component, not that every side is necessarily acting unjustly.
You can do just about anything in an unjust way - that's not the point. The point is the Ukrainians are clearly engaging in the act of warfare. They are killing people and blowing stuff up as the army would say (in their country and in Russia). It's certainly lamentable, but that doesn't make it unjust - at least not in its essence.
If the Holy Father just wants to talk about how awful warfare is, that's great. He should do that in my opinion, but he's going well beyond that. There is an ancient tradition in the Church around just war theory. By using the language of just war theory to talk about how awful war is he's going to be understood to be attacking the very idea of just war theory. I don't know if he's doing that or not (perhaps he really is attacking the foundations of just war theory), because as it typical for this pontiff, he speaks in a confusing way. He brings darkness where light is needed.
I do not claim to know Francis' thought process, but I think it might be accurate to argue that he tends to speak pastorally when, because of his position, he should be speaking doctrinally. That to me seems to be the pattern.
Pfizet's covid vaccine caused an 83% miscarriage rate.
I am somewhat disappointed that you opted to discuss the Covid vaccine (thus derailing your own thread before it got out of the gate) rather than President Biden's wholehearted support for legalized abortion (a direct parallel for "profoundly scandalous national figure receives photo op with the Pope like everything is fine, seriously demoralizing the faithful of that country").
The shoes have not finished dropping on the Covid "vaccine": Pfizer has until year end to make public its internal documents (per court mandate) on "vaccine" efficacy. (Pfizer tried to string disclosing these docs out over the next 70 *years*. Wonder why they would prefer that schedule.) Also, I want to note a news item that got spiked by the MSM big-time about this "vaccine" lie:
https://www.westernjournal.com/pfizer-whistleblower-steps-forward-emails-describing-use-aborted-fetal-cells-vaccine/
So stay tuned on that channel. Yes, the current support for ongoing US abortions(/genocide, disproportionately occurring among non-whites [& don't get me started on that sidebar]), has far greater moral weight. But: my fear is that if US Catholics gave an honest accounting of what they personally believe, we would see that there is significant support among practicing Catholics for abortion - there were 60 "Catholic" congressional cosigners of a public letter which openly supported "cHoICe" just last year. So abortion is another active front in the hearts/minds/souls for Catholic *laity*, which muddies my argument. (God be praised that Catholic clerics still speak with one voice on abortion.) And my argument was intended to be limited to the imprecision exhibited by the current papacy of His Church.
That is a good point. Still, I would encourage you to spend more time praying outside abortion clinics with other Christians, if you are able; you will still end up in arguments about vaccines or about just war theory or about the Pope or, prior to the pandemic, whether children are kept in cages at the border, or even about whether the rosary is idolatry, until one learns not to argue while praying because these distractions are sent by the enemy (easy way to tell is ask them to pray an Our Father with you and they leave rather than praise God - even the ones who are allegedly trying to convert you). Don't do it if you don't have someone with you... attacks are more intense alone.
“This pope can be firm and straight only with traditional Catholics, but not with Moscow…” My thoughts exactly.
Traditional Catholics aren't taking up arms