I thought it’s interesting to note how pathetically weak the letter from Benedict XVI to seminarians on October 18, 2010, really is. One can sense a demoralized pleading attitude from a Modernist directive toward Christianity, a generic outlook for communion among individuals and the general moral leniency toward the candidacy and those of differing views on the priesthood. No Catholic outlook, plain and simple.
Here’s how we rate the orthodoxy of Benedict XVI words of wisdom: C+ for more rehash of Modernist talks. A+ for an ecumenical and inclusive tone in spirit of mutual tolerance, openness and respect.
Fr. Z (N.O. conservative commentator), see here.
We will point out the obvious, in spite of the Novus Ordo commentators overlooking some unusual ideas and terminology used by Benedict XVI.
“Today the situation is completely changed. In different ways, though, many people nowadays also think that the Catholic priesthood is not a “job” for the future, but one that belongs more to the past. You, dear friends, have decided to enter the seminary and to prepare for priestly ministry in the Catholic Church in spite of such opinions and objections.”
Who cares about what the world thinks– why speak in reference to them? Instead say something uniquely Catholic for once.
“You have done a good thing. Because people will always have need of God, even in an age marked by technical mastery of the world and globalization: they will always need the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, the God who gathers us together in the universal Church in order to learn with him and through him life’s true meaning and in order to uphold and apply the standards of true humanity.”
More ambiguity, what’s “standards of true humanity”? What is life’s true meaning if you are not going to say it in Catholic terminology? Instead leave it to the seminarians to fill in the blank, so to speak.
“Anyone who wishes to become a priest must be first and foremost a “man of God”, to use the expression of Saint Paul (1 Tim 6:11).”
Whatever happened to “offer Sacrifice and forgive sins”? “man of God” in a nebulous term. It can be ascribed to just about anybody who is of goodwill.
“For us God is not some abstract hypothesis; he is not some stranger who left the scene after the “big bang”.”
The “big bang” is a scientific idea. It cannot be proven. In fact, Catholicism teaches just the oppostive, that God created the universe out of nothing, and here is where faith comes in. To believe in the “big bang” ultimately contradicts this de fide truth and leads to evolutionism.
to be continued