This is that. Maybe people retreat to numbers, and drums, and feelings because they don't have anything else left. "Church" is what you make it if she doesn't have you. I can appreciate the confessionalists, and their zealous quest for the truth, but if the individual retains final interpretive authority over what the Scriptures say, then every ecclesial mechanism of authority imposed externally is only provisional, insofar as that community agrees its authority is not finally binding. In other words, if they embrace Sola Scriptura, they're finished. Done. Down a pit of irrecoverable subjectivism. More than that, divine truth and your ecclesiology collapse down the same hole. On the other hand, merely claiming your community has a charism of infallibility is much different than having it. But let's just say for sure we can rule out the Reformation-produced communities. I only know two left, (not having fundamentally changed the way truth is discerned or found without an historically compelling reason, or a workable method) and having both suitably destroyed the rival claimants with the same argument--the lack of a physical, sacramental succession of ordination from the Apostles--the discussion turns to the dispute between them. A visible Church with no visible principium unitatis is not one, obviously. And if one had been granted to be him previously, no amount of malfeasance on his part would change that. To put it in the common tongue, Papa is still Papa, even if he leaves the toilet seat up. If father and son have a quibble about how he is father, fair enough. But Papa is still Papa.
Update: I read the whole thing. I’m sorry, but what a weirdo. I thought you [Tom Darrow, of Denver, CO] made a trenchant case for why lockdowns are bad, and I definitely appreciated it. But a graduation speech is *not* the place for that. Secondly, this is an august event. It always is. I would never address the President of the United States in this manner. Never. Even the previous president, though he deserves it, if anyone does. Thirdly, the affirmations of Catholic identity should be more general. He has no authority to propound with specificity on all matters of great consequence. It has all the hallmarks of a culture war broadside, and again, a layman shouldn’t speak like this. The respect and reverence due the clergy is *always due,* even if they are weak, and outright wrong. We just don’t brush them aside like corrupt Mafia dons, to make a point. Fourthly, I don’t know where anyone gets the idea that the TLM is how God demands to be worshipped. The Church doesn’t teach that. ...
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