Saturday, December 22, 2012

Venerable Paul VI


Well what can you say?
He looks at me and I look at him.

As one old Vatian Monsignor said, "He just had such appalling taste!"
Even so he did write some good Encyclicals.

I am told he really liked this picture which he gave to Casa del Clero Paulo VI in the Via della Scrofa.


13 comments:

Fr Ray Blake said...

no it is not a baseball cap!

Berkelybird said...

When was Pope Paul VI raised to Venerable? I hadn't heard.

parepidemos said...

Berkelbird, Paul VI's heroic virtue was officially recognised on 20 Dec. See link:

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fpress.catholica.va%2Fnews_services%2Fbulletin%2Fnews%2F30226.php%3Findex%3D30226%26lang%3Den

gemoftheocean said...

Both you guys are wearing baseball caps. Paul's is on backwards. Can't fool me. [Can't say much for JPII's ugly croziers either. The ones that look like they fell in molten lava and he was too cheap to get new ones.

Adulio said...

Paul VI's beatification is nothing more than a political stunt on the part of Vatican bureaucrats to canonise Vatican II and all that has flowed from it. If the pope, who presided over the council, is beatified/canonised eventually; then legitimate criticism of the post conciliar church becomes tantamount to "heresy". Anyone who points out the glaringly obvious is a "schismatic".

While no one would doubt that Paul VI personally was a good man, his pontificate was disastrous to say the least. Was it not Paul VI himself that complained of the "auto-demolition" of the church on the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul in 1972?

Paul VI's record as pope is well documented in Padre Luigi Villa's dossier against his beatification, when it was first proposed in 1993:

www.chiesaviva.com/paoloVI%20beatoin.pdf

www.padrepioandchiesaviva.com

Anita Moore said...

That picture of Paolo Sesto is absolutely dreadful. It looks like he is engulfed in flames.

Adulio said...While no one would doubt that Paul VI personally was a good man...

I have read the (clumsy) English translation of Paolo Sesto Beato? and I think it raises precisely that doubt -- or, at best, that the man was grossly and appallingly muddled and misled. Only God knows the whole truth.

Still, it is clear that, aside from Humanae vitae, Paul VI's reign was very tragic. Under him, the Church became almost unrecognizeable from what she had previously been; heretics and dissenters went largely unpunished; those who tried to defend Tradition were not defended; cardinals of the Church who had suffered under Communism were treated poorly; and the liturgy was all but destroyed. Paul VI did not cause the crisis in the Church, which had been many years in preparation, but he did supervise it, and I question why it is not scandalous to advance his cause for sainthood now, when we are still in the midst of this crisis.

Fr Ray Blake said...

Anita,
I agree, even the crisis following Humanae Vitae was handled badly.

The only advantage I can see in advancincing his cause is to re-examine his legacy "in the light of the hermeneutic of continuity", an important part of that legacy is the Council.
Presumable the declaration of his being "Venerable" will bring about some serious studies of his personal involvement with major Concilliar figures. Perhaps 50 years on, we are beginning to be on the edge of a time to ask serious and scholarly questions.

Anita Moore said...

Fr Ray Blake said...The only advantage I can see in advancincing his cause is to re-examine his legacy "in the light of the hermeneutic of continuity", an important part of that legacy is the Council.
Presumable the declaration of his being "Venerable" will bring about some serious studies of his personal involvement with major Concilliar figures. Perhaps 50 years on, we are beginning to be on the edge of a time to ask serious and scholarly questions.


You may be right. But I wish this could be done in some other way. I realize a declaration of heroic virtue is not infallible; still, it does put the Church's credibility on the line to a certain extent. It is puzzling to me that there should be a willingness to spend capital on Paul VI, who has so much evidence against him, at a time when there is an unwillingness to spend it on Pius XII, who has so much evidence in his favor.

Fr Ray Blake said...

Anita,
Heroic virtue; perhaps I am being very unkind but I think living with his neurosis and depression, and later the constant pain of arthritis, as well as the realisation he simply wasn't up to the job was actually was actually heroic.
It could not have been easy living in Paul VI's skin.

Pablo the Mexican said...

The one eye prominent is an occult message.

It is like the crucifix dropped into a shot of Tequila in the Freemason movie 'For Greater Glory'.

It is a message to Freemasons both were 'Our Guys'.

http://vigilantcitizen.com/about/

“Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.” -Confucius


*

Sadie Vacantist said...

1965 seems to be a watershed year where the battle was lost but I no longer believe the traditionalist narrative of Rod Pead’s Christian Order when once I did. For Paul VI was not the only individual institutional head engulfed by cultural revolution. President Johnson’s presidency was also a catastrophe which the American people rejected via the ballot box in 1968 by returning a Republican. It would take a coup stage managed by the media to terminate his successor’s second term in 1974. Nixon would leave behind him as a legacy of what constitutes our modern world: debased currencies and permanent instability (if not war) in the Middle East.

In truth, the real battle was already lost by 1945 but and you can be arrested in some countries for merely suggesting that or holding opinions which underpin that conclusion.

Rosemary Alabaster said...

Saint-making seems to have become a Vatican hobby and the currency has already become debased. There are millions of arthritis sufferers the world over and depression takes its nasty toll. Paul VI was no front runner and sadly neither was Pius XII - at least not until many difficult questions have been cleared up which I suspect will require much longer meticulous research. The Jewish question is too complex to expect an immediate resolution, though personally I tend, on examination of all the evidence, to favour the Pope, who was pastor of all Catholics, German as well, on whom Hitler could at any time have turned ferosciously. We must answer precisely, however and without mistake how personally the Pope, and also the Vatican were responsible for the transport away from Europe of top Nazis, weapons experts to the USA (think Hiroshima) and top officials of the war machine, many to Argentina.

Unknown said...

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The Lord’s descent into the underworld

At Matins/the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday the Church gives us this 'ancient homily', I find it incredibly moving, it is abou...