Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Truth to Power: Cdl. Biffi

A few excerpts from a book by Cardinal Biffi (retired) which will stir up a few of the usual suspects...

Sometimes, in some areas of the Catholic world, people even come to the point of thinking that divine Revelation must adapt itself to the current mentality in order to be credible, instead of the current mentality converting in the light that comes to us from on high. And yet one must reflect on the fact that it is ‘conversion’, and not ‘adaptation’, that is the evangelical term.

As to whether Christ might have been disciplined by his mother here on earth:

...As paradoxical as this statement may seem, the Arian question is always the order of the day in ecclesial life. The pretexts can be many: from the desire to feel that Christ is closer and is more one of us, to the proposal of making it easier to understand him by exalting almost exclusively his social and humanitarian aspects. In the end, the result is always that of stripping the Redeemer of man of his radical uniqueness, and classifying him as someone who can be managed and domesticated. In this regard, it could be said that the Council of Nicaea is much more relevant today than Vatican Council II.

And as to homosexual "marriage," and the proponents of normalization of homosex:

Regarding today’s emerging problem of homosexuality, according to the Christian conception there must be a distinction between the respect that is always due to persons, which involves the rejection of any social and political marginalization (with the exception of the unalterable nature of marriage and the family), and the necessary repudiation of any exalted ideology of homosexuality.The word of God – as we know it in a page of the letter to the Romans by the apostle Paul – even offers us a theological interpretation of the phenomenon of the rampant ideological and cultural aberration in this area: this aberration, it is affirmed, is at the same time the proof and the result of the exclusion of God from collective attention and social life, and of the refusal to give him due praise.

The exclusion of the Creator leads to the complete derailment of reason

...In fact, Saint Paul is careful to observe that extreme abjection occurs when “they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32).

Reading through the lengthy post, one also discovers that Biffi loved John XXIII, but looked askance at his teaching abilities, too.

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