The talk was not given from a prepared script nor was it recorded and therefore I can only go by what I am told by those who were there. Here are some key points that I have summarised from the accounts of many priests. If anyone wishes to offer corrections of serious errors of fact, I will be happy to amend the post.
********************
St Paul didn't believe in the divinity of Christ - he didn't deny it but his thought hadn't taken him that far. For Paul, Jesus was the model man - he showed us what we are capable of, by the example of his life. [Cp. the Office of Readings for today in the Liturgia Horarum: St Gregory of Nyssa "On Christian Perfection", beginning "More than anyone, St Paul understood who Christ is..."]
There is no evidence at all that the papal primacy existed for the first 120 years of the Church's history. The monarchical Church was a later invention.
Paul would not have fallen into the Anglican error of ordaining women priests because he was a pragmatist. St Paul was concerned not to scandalise others and therefore it was wrong for the Anglican Church to alienate the Global South by ordaining women to the priesthood - although that would be "a good thing in itself."
********************
There was quite a bit more but I think that gives you the flavour of the day. It is a great pity that over 200 priests were gathered together and this is what they were given. The Church is alive and the Church is young. There are so many inspiring topics that priests would love to hear about. For example:
- Marriage - why young Catholics are rediscovering the teaching of Humanae Vitae now that the contraceptive mentality has been thoroughly discredited, and the priest's task to preach the Gospel of Life.
- Liturgy - Pope Benedict's drive to enrich the Liturgy by recovering tradition and the call to recover the sacred in our worship.
- Prayer - the example of the ecclesial movements in asceticism and prayer, and the challenge to priests to offer sound guidance and good example.
The Westminster Cathedral newsletter for 14/15 June announced that the same "accomplished and engaging speaker" would also be speaking to the laity at Westminster Cathedral with official endorsement.
20 comments:
Those priests with more sense knew what claptrap they were likely to get from the Cardinal's cousin (his books and television appearances would have given the clue) and duly absented themselves.
I have only heard rumours about what was said at London Colney, but I was present at Cathedral Hall the following evening. I was struck (but not surprised, having read Paul: A Critical Life , by Fr. M-O'C's utter dismissiveness of the Acts of the Apostles. I can understand a methodological decision to prioritise the letters over Acts, but Fr. M-O'C seemed to be arguing for more than that: if it is in Acts but is not directly corroborated by the letters, we shouldn't puzzle over the apparent contradiction, we should dismiss Acts out of hand.
In a sense, I can understand "secular" scripture scholars interpreting scriptural texts as if they were random pieces of literature, but I really find it difficult to understand how scripture scholars who are priests can apparently wilfully disregard the mind of the Church. I also find it difficult to accept that seminarians should be encouraged to dismiss large portions of the Canon of Scripture as simply made up to serve a particular agendan (as in, St Luke wanted to make this particular point, so he just constructed this piece of fiction to make it for him).
There is no evidence at all that the papal primacy existed for the first 120 years of the Church's history.
Well, I must say, that's the nicest figure I've ever heard about the papal primacy not starting with Peter by the mandate of Christ.
St Paul didn't believe in the divinity of Christ ... Jesus was the model man
I don't mean to cherry-pick verses of Scripture, but Paul certainly thought it important enough to describe Jesus this way: "God sent His Son, born of a woman" (Gal 4:4). God didn't create His Son, He sent him, and had him born of a woman. Paul seems to be professing at least two things here: Jesus (being the Son of God) existed before he was born (thus making him more than just a man), but he was physically born (making him, at least in some way, a man).
Now, Galatians, if I recall, is an earlier letter and indisputably genuine. So this is not a late pseudo-Pauline addition or interpolation. This is simply the truth of the Gospel coming from the mouth of Paul!
I fully understand that many younger priests how could do great work in the Church in the future would not stand up and protest at this but for the old there is no excuse. It make me sick to the core to hear that 200 priests of my diocese sat like frightened childern and heard this man blaphem like this. No man who says such things should even be in the clerical state. Lord give me strengh! Pathetic, absolutly pathetic. They make me just a sick as he does.
Can anything be done to keep this priest and his heterodox from an undercatechised laity whose Faith may be shaken?
It took 5 tries for me to be able to log in!!
So many enemies within!
YUK!!!
Did we not just hear in the Gospel that Christ will disown before the Father those who disown Him before men? St Paul will be well within his rights to do the same!
Was it nature or nurture that gifted him his ability as a stand up comic?
If 200 went there voluntarily, there is much work to do, father.
"The monarchical Church was a later invention."
But Church leadership has never been monarchical, but rather patriarchal (based on the principles of fatherhood). If the Pope adopted some of the trappings of monarchy or the Imperium, it was only as a means to express his leadership in the Church according to signs people would recognize at the time. Personally, I'm glad many of these trappings have been dropped.
Sounds like Father Jerome may be just an echo chamber for the theological nonsense that has been spoon fed to so many for so long. I would think these priests would have done far better spiritually to have spent the day riding the Millennium Wheel!
In ICXC,
Father Deacon Daniel
Snore. Boilerplate Modernism.
I keep wishing these people would come up with something interesting. Different. At least once in a while. It might keep me awake.
It is doubly embarrassing when these Be-birkenstocked wrinklies act as if their tired banal blitherings are some kind of astonishing and profound revelation. Do they have any idea how trite this stuff has become. Do they know that they are just boring us all into a coma?
Indeed, why is anyone surprised at what would come from the mouth of the Cardinal's cousin? Given what it costs these days to move about the country, or even the City, I would think one would take a moment to do a little googling to see if it is worth the bother and expense.
I'm afraid, Father, that your suggestion that there are other topics to talk about that would inspire priests starts from a fallacy. I do wish we could move on from our increasingly absurd pretense that the officially recognised "Catholic" "Church" in this country has any connection whatever with the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Christ. The topics you suggest would be, as we all know, summarily rejected by the archdiocese of Westminster because they are Catholic topics and the archdiocese of Westminster wants no truck with Catholicism.
"St Paul didn't believe in the divinity of Christ - he didn't deny it but his thought hadn't taken him that far"
er... can Fr Jerome Murphy-O'Connor explain these for me?
1. "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God" Philippians 2:6-7
2. “…and of whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever. Amen.” Romans 9:5
Haydock’s Commentary
1. "Ver. 6. Who being in the form [1] of God, (that is truly, properly, and essentially God from eternity, as the ancient Fathers here observed against the Arians) taking the form of a servant, (i.e. taking upon him our human nature) became truly a man, and as man the servant of God, but remaining always God as before, thought it not robbery, no injury to his eternal Father, to be equal, to be esteemed, and to declare himself equal to God, to be one thing with him: as on divers occasions he taught the people, as we have observed in the notes on St. John's gospel, &c. (Witham)".
2. “Who is over all things God,[2] blessed for ever. Amen. Though the apostles did not often, in express words, call Jesus Christ, the God, lest the heathens, when they were not sufficiently instructed, should imagine that there were many gods, (as divers of the fathers take notice) yet here, and in several places, they clearly delivered the divinity of our Saviour, Christ. The Socinians might here observe, that the apostle calls him the God blessed for ever, and with the Greek article. (Witham)”
Now…who am I to believe? :::tongue firmly planted in cheek :cP
Fr. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor should never have have become a biblical scholar if it was going to lead him into error.
I thought that years ago when I first read his ideas. I still think it. If that's what being an exegete does to you, give it up.
But for him to address a gathering of 200 Catholic priests, and regale them (however, engagingly or charmingly,) with his ideas !
Why didn't they all stand up and tell him, as one man, he was wrong ? Never mind what this biblical scholar thinks St. Paul believed. What does the Catholic Church teach ? That's what matters !
What a missed opportunity for an affirmation of the Faith !
Sounds almost as bad as Cardinal Keith Patrick inviting Jon Sobrino to speak at the Jesuit Centre in Edinburgh last week on 15th June.
St Paul didn't believe in the Divinity of Christ???? - and the Pope isn't Catholic!
Well, in Galations Paul wrote: "I did not receive it [the Gospel] from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ....But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus."
Why does the cardinal's cousin prefer to spread doubt and error from within the Church rather than talk about something positive?
As if our Priests haven't enough 'spirit of the times' libertarian, heretical and 'new age' liturgical problems to deal with in their parishes and the wider sphere!
Sadly though a case of 'like cardinal like cousin'. Maybe the 'cousin' ought to buy a ticket and take a trip to Damascus!
As Fr Tim says, what a waste of an opportunity when so many Priests were gathered together.
'the same "accomplished and engaging speaker" would also be speaking to the laity at Westminster Cathedral with official endorsement'.
Will that 'laity' be hand-picked by official endorsement, I wonder. I can just imagine the scenes of 'verbal carnage', were the usual fine band of CATHOLIC commentators such as one finds on this blog, allowed access to be entertained at Westminster by that same 'accomplished and engaging speaker'! I have a feeling that only the likes of the 'Tableteers' would be allowed through the doors. LOL!
This really is too much. If the cardinal allowed this, shouldn't he be reported to the appropriate authorities in the Holy See? Or doesn't he care, I wonder.
Dear Lord, give our good priests the courage to stand up and preach your Word, even in opposition to their rebellious bishops.
St John Fisher, pray for our priests.
This is a serious question, father, not rhetorical and I am genuinely interested in the answer as an untutored layman.
Do Fr Murphy-O'Connor's views make him a formal heretic?
Post a Comment