‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith?’
Credit to Author: RICARDO SALUDO| Date: Sat, 01 Jun 2019 16:28:21 +0000
Jesus said to his disciples: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.” … So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.
— The Gospel of Mark, 16:15-16, 19
Today’s Ascension Sunday mass readings provide a fitting backdrop for the topic left over from last week’s conclusion to the two-part column on heresy accusations against Pope Francis. The unanswered question: How is this controversy advancing God’s plan of salvation?
For the answer, let’s go to Paragraph 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 675), the compendium of doctrines the faithful must profess. Subtitled “The Church’s ultimate trial”, the section predicts:
“Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”
So, before the last judgment and salvation when Jesus returns, the Catechism warns of a final apostasy or turning away from the faith.
Not just heresy or the open and persistent denial of doctrines, but apostasy, the rejection of Catholicism or Christianity: the belief that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God who became man, died for our salvation, rose again, and will return in glory.
Which might just be why our Lord himself asked his Apostles in the Gospel of Luke, 18:8, speaking of his return from heaven: “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” This after promising God’s vindication of the righteous, “his elect, who cry to him day and night.”
There’s the drill then, spelled out in official doctrine and intimated in Holy Scripture: Christ will return from heaven to bring final judgment and salvation to all creation after a widespread falling away from the faith.
From controversy to apostasy?
Now, will the controversy over alleged heresy by Pope Francis lead to this prophesied apostasy? The row hit a new high point last month in an open letter, now signed by more than 80 theologians and clergy, urging all bishops to investigate and admonish the Holy Father for statements and actions allegedly propagating heresy and undermining Church doctrine (https://www.manilatimes.net/heretical-pope-all-in-satans-and-gods-plan/559954/).
To be clear, there is no proven heresy or denial of Church teachings, let alone apostasy against the faith. But heresy or no heresy, there is already confusion and doubt, even at the very highest levels of the hierarchy. Consider Germany and Poland.
In interpreting the controversial Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia (AL, Joy of Love), Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation on the family, German bishops now allow divorced Catholics who remarry without their Church weddings being annulled, to receive communion. But Polish bishops right across the border still don’t.
There’s more. In mid-2017, months after the dissenting theologians and clergy first wrote to bishops questioning Francis’s pronouncements and actions, four leading Cardinals wrote him asking clarification about five “dubia” or doubts regarding the same AL Chapter 8 (http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/full-text-and-explanatory-notes-of-cardinals-questions-on-amoris-laetitia).
The four red hats wanted to know if Amoris Laetitia superseded past papal and Church teachings through the centuries, including the ban on communion for divorced but remarried Catholics, reiterated by St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
In the Jesuit journal La Stampa, theologian Robert Fastiggi asserted that Francis did not countermand existing doctrines, as other supporters argued (https://www.lastampa.it/2018/03/09/vaticaninsider/responding-to-the-five-dubia-from-amoris-laetitia-itself-0wrtch9RSgo5NGM9pyTm1L/pagina.html).
Francis himself never addressed the dubia, at least not directly. Instead, in 2016 he affirmed guidelines on AL Chapter 8 given to clergy by his fellow Argentine bishops, which did allow in certain cases communion for divorced, but remarried Catholics.
The Pope’s letter became part of official teaching or Magisterium when it was published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (Acts of the Apostolic See), the compilation of formal Vatican decisions and decrees, along with the Argentine bishops’ guidelines (http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-popes-endorsement-of-argentinas-amoris-guidelines-what-it-means).
You’re on your own
That’s just one doctrinal issue among many detailed in the open letter to bishops (<https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5983408/Open-Letter-to-the-Bishops-of-the-Catholic.pdf>). And if readers, even devout ones, find themselves turning the page amid doctrinal overload, that’s exactly how most of the faithful probably respond to these controversies over fundamental doctrines of the Church.
Many just follow what local bishops say, like most Poles and Germans, differentiating practices in the Eucharist, the holiest of Sacraments. Others decide on their own which teachings to heed, like divorced and remarried Polish Catholics crossing the German border to receive communion.
Plainly, if bishops disagree on major doctrines, leading to varied teachings and practices, or the faithful just figuring out what to follow, the door opens to heretical ideas and ways spreading, led by bishops and priests — or one’s self-serving mind.
For in choosing which tenets to uphold, many if not most people often adopt what justifies their preferred behavior. Thus, what then wins out are teachings and practices catering for popular lifestyles, whether Christian or not. Jesus himself lamented this, saying that Moses allowed divorce because the Israelites resisted God’s law on indissoluble marriage (Mark 10:4-9).
Now, if Catholicism morphs into a religion heeding man’s wishes, not God’s, then that sounds like apostasy from the faith Christ founded. Indeed, it would fulfill the Catechism’s warning about “the Anti-Christ, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorified himself in place of God and of his Messiah” (CCC 675). This deception “already begins to take shape” when it’s claimed that humanity can attain in this world “the messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history” (CCC 767).
In such a disoriented time, God Himself must come and set things right. Amen.
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