03 March 2007

What the Pope's Lenten preacher actually said

Fr Ray Blake copies part of the CWNews report on Cardinal Biffi's Lenten Retreat. It is fascinating, not least because in publicising Biffi's meditation CWNews seems to have been a bit coy about repeating one part of what he said. According to Zenit he said:

' Quoting the work "Three Dialogues on War, Progress and the End of History," Cardinal Biffi told his listeners that "the Antichrist presents himself as pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist."

"He will convoke an ecumenical council and will seek the consensus of all the Christian confessions, granting something to each one. The masses will follow him, with the exception of small groups of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants," he said.

The cardinal added that Solovyov says in that work: "Days will come in Christianity in which they will try to reduce the salvific event to a mere series of values." '

CWNews must be worried that people will be daft enough to believe that Cardinal Biffi thinks that Bl Pope John XXIII was the Antichrist. That would be to misunderstand both Biffi and Solovyov (and John XXIII come to that). But things have come to a pretty pass when a major Catholic news agency thinks that a Lenten meditation preached before the Pope has to be censored in case less astute Catholics get the wrong end of the stick.

What next? Church leaders telling us that the faithful aren't clever enough to cope with two different rites being available at the same time in the Western Church?

2 comments:

Fr Ray Blake said...

Many thanks for the rest. I didn't look at the Zenit version

Anagnostis said...

Solovyov says in that work: "Days will come in Christianity in which they will try to reduce the salvific event to a mere series of values."

In this, Soloviev follows Dostoyevsky; we must ask ourselves what it is these two Easterners saw in Western Christianity that renders us especially susceptible to this particular delusion.