Thursday, May 04, 2006

it is full of hope that the Church will triumph

I'll let the words of an eminent philosopher speak. From Trojan Horse in the City of God, by Dietrich von Hildebrand, 1969. Chapter 1. What is the Latin word for Trojan anyway?

The distortion of the authentic nature of the Council ... expresses itself chiefly in the false alternatives between which we are all commanded to choose: either to accept the secularization of Christianity or to deny the authority of the Council.

[snip]

But these are false alternatives; for there is a third choice, which welcomes the official decisions of the Vatican Council, but at the same time emphatically rejects the secularizing interpretations given them by many so-called progressive theologians and laymen.

This third choice is based on unshakeable faith in Christ and in the infallible magisterium of His Holy Church. It takes it for granted that there is no room for change in the divinely revealed doctrine of the Church. It admits no possibility of change except that "development" of which Cardinal Newman speaks in the explicit formulation of what was present in the faith of the Apostles or of what necessarily follows from it.

[snip]

This is simply the Catholic position. It rejoices in any renewal that enlarges the "instaurare omnia in Christo" and brings the light of Christ in added domains of life.

[snip]

The response that we have been describing involves grave concern and apprehension over the present invasion of the life of the Church by secularism. It considers the present crisis the most serious one in the entire history of the Church. Yet it is full of hope that the Church will triumph, because our Lord himself has said:" And the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home