Cardinal Mueller’s Manifesto continues to create quite the stir, opening up what seems be a deep division within the Vatican. What that division signifies has itself yet to be clarified, but it has something to do with those who seek clarity and precision – two hallmarks of theology, as I will never tire of repeating – against those who, for whatever reason, prefer some level of ambiguity and fluidity. What we can hope most surely is that the truth will win out in the end; it always does, and always will. Hold fast to it, or, rather, to Him, His Church, His teaching.
The divide is widening between who of us may be revealed at the end as the sheep and the goats, and certain issues, such as abortion, reveal where one’s treasure really resides. Yet even at a practical, intellectual level we see those who support policies which works, and those who support what can only be termed insane policies. The Democractic ‘Green New Deal’ being a case in point, with the plan to ban air travel, fossil fuels, and more or less the much of the modern world. ‘Unhinged’ is too modest a word. In some ways, it is getting ever-easier to choose the right side.
On that note, yet another scurrilous book is being issued, claiming a majority of the higher-up clergy in Rome are ‘gay’, which I hoped meant happy, joyful, as in ‘don we now our gay apparel’, but I digress from the topic and the season. The author is himself ‘active homosexual’, with a metaphysical chip in his shoulder to prove what he likely already believes, who spent ‘months’ in Rome ‘interviewing’ various people. I am reminded of that quip of Mark Twain’s, that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Caveat lector.
On a more hopeful note, the Holy Father has signed a decree approving Cardinal John Henry Newman’s second miracle – the cure of a pregnant woman – which means he will likely be canonized this year. Newman had his faults and foibles – upon much of which he wrote in his own inimitable way – all of them properly British and Victorian, but ones of which he was aware, and which he strove to overcome. Saints are sinners who realize they are sinners, and try to change that fact, however, gradually and incrementally. So long as we die moving the right way, as did Blessed John Henry Newman.