When
conciliar teaching precluded such deviant “reforms,” an appeal to “the spirit
of Vatican II” was made by the defectors. Religious themselves were sent to
seminars, conferences, and think-tanks which pressured them to abandon
hierarchical structures in favor of the “democratic,” to question traditional
doctrinal certainties, and to demand reasons for those things formerly regarded
as sacred, the most important of which was the basis for their vocation to the
religious life. They became exposed to new anthropologies under the influence
of psychology, sociology, and other social sciences, acceptance of which many
sisters were naturally compliant under obedience — all this in spite of the
obviousness that such changes were not approved by Rome and threatened the
existence of their communities. In other words, the desired ressourcement of the council Fathers, rather than providing the guiding
atmosphere in which aggiornamento was
to occur, was ignored in favor of “updating.”
“ F ive years ago, I would have been afraid of saying anything like what the pope said in his [recent] interview,” the Rev. Tom Reese told Sally Quin . “I’m ecstatic. I haven’t been this hopeful about the church in decades....” “It’s fun to be a religion reporter again. For a while it felt like being on the crime beat. It’s fun to be Catholic again.” George Weigel has raised the question of whether or not Fr. Tom has been paying attention throughout the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. Among his findings on the legacies of Pope Francis' predecessors: Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J. millions of adults have been baptized as or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. new forms of campus ministry in the mold of JPII's "New Evangelization" have developed across the United States. Catholic-studies programs have bloomed on genuinely Catholic campuses across the U.S. the Church has produced the most c...
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