On Wednesday, January 21st, Leo continued his so-called “conciliar catechesis” on the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum.
In this Audience, Leo was hyper-focused on the humanity of Jesus Christ, almost as if a new version of the Monophysite heresy had recently exploded on the scene whereby the humanity of Our Lord is being denied.
Of course, it’s more the case that the exact opposite is true. So why is Leo so fixated on the humanity of Jesus? We’ll discuss this and much more in this episode of Conciliar Catechesis Watch.
TRANSCRIPT
On Wednesday, January 21st, Leo continued his so-called “catechesis” on the council documents, picking up where he left off last week, once again turning his attention to the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum.
Let me repeat that. The document under review is about divine revelation.
And yet the primary focus of this week’s General Audience was humanity, specifically the humanity of Jesus.
In fact, Leo very directly pointed to, and you might even say hammered home, Our Lord’s human nature no less than five times during the roughly 800-word presentation.
Zero. That is the number of times that Leo directly called his listeners’ attention to the Divine nature of Jesus Christ.
To be fair, he did quote DV 2 as stating that, “Christ is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.”
We’ll just have to wait and see if he brings this up again when he gets to Gaudium et Spes, which says that Jesus “reveals man to man himself,” as if Our Lord is the fullness of human revelation.
In any case, am I missing something here? Has a new version of the Monophysite heresy recently exploded on the scene, whereby the human nature of Jesus is being denied?
Seems to me the exact opposite is true, with the leaders of the conciliar church being far more comfortable speaking about Jesus as Suffering Servant than as King of kings and Lord of lords.
Overall, this catechesis is filled with any number of pretentious buzz phrases that the naive are likely to mistake for theological concepts that are too deep for non-scholars to comprehend, but the truth of the matter is they’re shallow, ambiguous, and ultimately meaningless.
For example, Leo speaks of revelation as “a dialogue of covenant.” He says that it’s a “relational knowledge” that calls for “communion in reciprocity,” whatever any of that means.
If you didn’t know any better, you might think that Oprah Winfrey is speaking here as opposed to the man posing as the Holy Roman Pontiff.
Leo goes on to say:
Jesus reveals the Father to us by involving us in his own relationship with him.
So one might wonder what exactly is the nature of the relationship between Jesus and his Father?
Well, it’s a relationship between two Divine Persons. That’s the nature of that relationship.
So, then, we might be moved to ask how then is it that man is involved in this relationship?
Well, we all know the answer. It’s through Baptism!
But as mentioned last week, both Dei Verbum and Leo failed to mention the sacrament of Baptism at the most inopportune times.
Leo continues by saying this:
In the Son sent by God the Father, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature.
Once again, this so-called catechesis is just crying out for a treatment of Baptism, what it is, its effects, and so on.
So why won’t Leo mention it, not even casually? Well, we’re about to find out rather soon, so stick with me here.
Leo went on to say this:
We therefore reach full knowledge of God by entering into the Son’s relationship with His Father by virtue of the action of the Spirit.
Again, not a peep about how it’s in Baptism that this action of the Spirit takes place, not a peep.
But that aside, it’s simply not true that we reach “full knowledge of God” by this action of the Spirit. Not in this life. To be clear, Leo even went on to say this:
Thanks to Jesus, we know God as we are known by him, end quote.
What? Jesus said that we are so intimately known by God that he can number the hairs on our head. And yet here we have Leo saying that thanks to Jesus, we know God as he knows us?
And just for the record, this is an accurate translation of the Italian in which Leo spoke.
Now, in the written text of this Audience, this particular statement is followed by 1 Corinthians 13:13 in parentheses. Evidently, that’s a typo. One assumes that it should have pointed to 1 Corinthians 13:12, which reads as follows:
We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known.
So, did you get what St. Paul is saying there? Now I know in part.
This makes it even more strange that Leo would say that we know God as we are known by Him. What on earth does he have in mind? It’s anybody’s guess.
Leo then gives us an unmistakable clue as to why Baptism isn’t mentioned when he states this:
Indeed, in Christ, God has communicated Himself to us, and at the same time, He has manifested to us our true identity as His children, created in the image of the Word.
Pay close attention here to the word that’s being used here, “manifested,” in Italian, manifestato.
Indeed, we can say that Jesus manifested, or revealed, the Father to us. But He did not manifest that we are God’s children, as if we received the Spirit of adoption simply by virtue of Our Lord’s incarnation.
But this, however, is what the conciliar text suggests, most notably in Gaudium et Spes, which states in Article 22:
For by his incarnation, the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man.
Every man. Look, to be united with Christ in any fashion at all, this entails unity with his Divine nature, which is ever inseparable from his human nature. And this is what makes one a child of God.
And it happens where? In Baptism alone. It does not happen simply by virtue of the incarnation.
So now we know why Prevost, just like the Council itself, fails to mention baptism at the most inopportune of times. The truth is they don’t really believe that it’s necessary. They don’t believe it.
Leo goes on to make yet another inexplicably bizarre statement. He says:
Jesus Christ is the place where we recognize the truth of God the Father, while we discover ourselves known by Him as sons in the Son.
He even goes on to quote St. Paul as saying this:
“When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son … so that we might receive adoption as children.”
And yet, once again, we find mention of sonship apart from the Spirit of adoption imparted at Baptism. Now, in addition to that, though, did you notice that he refers to Jesus as the place, not the Person, not the One, not the Source, but the placewhere we recognize the truth of God?
The place. I have no comment other than to say that one would do better to contemplate the barroom wisdom of the neighborhood drunk than to spend a great amount of time contemplating and reflecting on what Leo might have in mind here.
Jesus Christ is the place? Whatever he might be thinking, I have no idea.
As mentioned, throughout this Audience, Leo focused very heavily on Jesus’s humanity. For example, he states this:
Jesus reveals God to us with His own true and integral humanity.
Okay, fine, fair enough, but that’s only true insofar as Jesus reveals God to us in his sacred Divinity, which is ever united to his sacred humanity. Of course, Leo doesn’t say this. He also states the following:
In order to know God in Christ, we must welcome His integral humanity. God’s truth is not fully revealed where it takes something away from the human, just as the integrity of Jesus’ humanity does not diminish the fullness of the divine gift.
Now we discussed already the reason why Leo dances all around the Baptism subject, but we’re still left to wonder why he just can’t seem to bring himself to speak of the Divine nature of Jesus Christ.
The best that he can do is to speak of Jesus as a “divine gift” of God, right?
Now that moves me to wonder: Is this an act of deference to the Board of Directors of the conciliar church? Those who utterly, and steadfastly, and completely reject the reality that Jesus Christ is true God?
Maybe we’ll find out when Leo gets to Nostra Aetate. Stay tuned.
