There is no 'easier way' for the follower of Christ
It is good to see that, among others, Edward Pentin has taken up Cardinal Vincent Nichols' disconcerting media response to the 'letter of the 500 priests' stating their - shock horror! - unwavering support for the Church's teaching. I - among many - don't think that His Eminence's media statement is very prudent. Bizarrely, it pits a Cardinal - one Cardinal - for he claims to speak for nobody else in the Bishops' Conference - against 500 faithful priests in England and Wales, among whom are priests in his own Archdiocese.
Nevertheless, the Cardinal's comments suggest we seem to be moving very quickly from a 'free and open' atmosphere of debate over the Synod's proposals to 'criticism of the Synod on the Family is gossip and gossip is evil so stop it'. The Pope's comments concerning 'gossip' over the Synod are worrying but they are nicely general and vague. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who I had thought was 'good with the media', has been overtly specific in his statement. It's not just anyone he has directed his opposition towards - its 500 clergy in particular, 500 clergy who did not address their letter to the Cardinal. Clearly, the English Hierarchy are feeling somewhat 'on edge'.
I personally agree with Cardinal Burke that these incendiary ideas should never have been put up for debate in the first place because they so obviously sow confusion, give rise to the promotion of error, sow division and even rancour. It places the Church in a state of war. It makes very open the wound of disunity with the Church that has existed for a long time. Pope Francis's predecessor made it well known that he considered it wrong to confuse error and dissent from the Magisterium with contributions to an fruitful debate or 'dialogue'. That served to irritate liberals but maintain the Petrine ministry as the primary source of unity in the Church, grounded in the Magisterium, rather than make that same ministry a source of disunity reflecting human opinion based on a modern anthropological discourse that fails to take seriously the actual teachings of Jesus Christ and His Church.
Here we are, however, in 2015, being coerced into that very debate which was settled by Our Lord, whose message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins has successfully - at times more successfully than at others - been transmitted by His Apostles to their Successors down the ages. The entire Gospel, whole and undiluted has been handed down faithfully, through thick and thin, weathering the storms even of the greatest crises in the Church's history. Is that time coming to an end? Faithful Catholics can never say it is. The truth, even if judged a lie, even if crucified, will rise again.
