"Any attempt to make the ‘Church learning’ (discens) and the ‘Church teaching’ (docens) collaborate in such a way that it only remains for the Church docens to sanction the opinions of the Church discens is categorically reprobated and condemned." …Pope St. Pius X
Near the end of his pontificate Pope John Paul II famously decried the massive “silent apostasy on the part of people who live as if God does not exist." It was one of the late Pontiff’s more prescient observations, coupled as it was with poignant warnings against what he called "widespread and growing religious agnosticism" and the "profound moral and legal relativism" of the "culture of death". But apostasy does not exist in a vacuum. People, not things, are apostates. More specifically, Catholics are apostates for only they can renounce the Catholic Faith. Only they can abandon the Catholic religion and thus become, by definition, apostates. John Paul was thus lamenting the horrific reality that millions of Catholics have become apostates.
Ironically, it is those same ubiquitous apostates that the Vatican now reverentially refers to as the “People of God” to whom the Church must listen carefully if she is ever to convey the “Gospel message” in a “meaningful way”. Personally, I’ve grown weary of the “People of God” posing as Catholics and thus perverting the very meaning of the word. I long for the day when Mother Church will tell the “People of God” to either grow up or go the hell, presumably still the ultimate destination for apostates. Perhaps then the Church could get back to doing what Christ founded her to do: Inform the peoples of the world what we must do to save our immortal souls, convert all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Holy Trinity. But, alas, this is evidently too much to expect from a “progressive” Catholic Church.
For “progressives” the “People of God”, not God Himself, have the answers. The “People of God” are coddled, praised and asked for input via Vatican surveys so that they might inform the witless Catholic Church what she must do in order to become relevant to the apostates. (Is there anything left in this brave new world of ours that is NOT demonically inverted, reversed and upside-down?)
