On Friday, August 31, former archbishop of Milan and one-time candidate for the papacy, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, passed away at the age of 85.<\/p>\n
Cardinal Martini was hailed as a \u201cprogressive.\u201d\u00a0 Upon listening to the last interview that he gave before his death\u2014and that was released this past Saturday\u2014it becomes immediately obvious that his reputation was well deserved.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In reference to\u2014what else?\u2014its millennia-old injunctions against divorce and contraception, as well as its equally old rituals, Martini stated that the Catholic Church is \u201c200 years behind the times.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 He also contended that its much publicized pedophilia scandal should provoke the Church to \u201cadmit its mistakes\u201d and embark upon a path of \u201cradical change [.]\u201d\u00a0 The Church must now take \u201ca journey of transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n
One very good thing is to be gotten from America\u2019s experience with its 44th<\/sup> president: if we didn\u2019t realize it before, more of us (though, sadly, not nearly enough of us), now know that from such words as \u201cradical change\u201d and \u201ctransformation,\u201d nothing very good is likely to come.<\/p>\n Self-styled \u201cprogressives\u201d\u2014leftists\u2014can\u2019t resist speaking along these lines.\u00a0 The residents of contemporary Western societies generally, and historically young America specifically, have long since fallen in love with the concept of change.\u00a0 Change signifies aversion to the old <\/em>and desire for what\u2019s new and novel.\u00a0 <\/em>Knowing this, leftists exploit these vague, often inchoate associations in their quest to, not reform <\/em>their civilization, but remake <\/em>it into something bearing little to no continuity with its current self.<\/p>\n When Martini calls for the Church to engage in \u201cradical change;\u201d when he beckons it to undergo a \u201ctransformation,\u201d he is in effect calling for it to extinguish itself.<\/p>\n He calls for its death. <\/em><\/p>\n Leftists, like Obama, who want to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d the United States, want to end the country of their forbearers and substitute for it a new country made in the image of their own ideology.\u00a0 And as goes America under leftists like Obama, so goes the Catholic Church under leftists like Martini.<\/p>\n Change that is radical and\/or fundamentally transformative undercuts identity.<\/p>\n Of course, as for change itself, there is nothing in the least objectionable about it.\u00a0 In fact, it is frequently desirable and, at any rate, unavoidable. But for gradual, incremental change, the Martinis and Obamas of the world have no use.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church is a history of changes\u2014a not inconsiderable number of which have been reasonably dramatic.\u00a0 The second Vatican Council is the most recent of such wide reaching reforms that the Church has enacted.<\/p>\n However, change, even dramatic change, is not what Cardinal Martini wanted.\u00a0 Reformative change is not what he had in mind.<\/p>\n Martini wanted radical <\/em>change. He wanted transformation. <\/em>The Cardinal wanted the same thing that all leftists want: creative destruction.\u00a0 He wanted to destroy one institution and replace it with something that he could build\u2014or at least seem to be able to build\u2014from scratch. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Martini can now join the ranks of the Church\u2019s critics from over the centuries who, in so many words, have expressed his conviction that it is \u201cbehind the times.\u201d\u00a0 Yet when we consider the fate of her critics who did indeed keep up with the times by following them to the place to which all times pass, it can only be judged a good thing by her children that the Church refused to accept her detractors\u2019 advice.<\/p>\n It has been quite some time since anyone with even a shadow of wisdom has come to recognize this counsel for the folly that it is. An institution that has managed to not only endure, but to grow, over the span of 2,000 years and within a staggering variety of cultures the planet over doesn\u2019t need a lecture from this or that generation on self-preservation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Such an institution is indeed in a sense behind<\/em> the times.\u00a0 Yet it is also ahead <\/em>of and among <\/em>the times.\u00a0 This is the secret to its longevity.<\/p>\n Anyone who doesn\u2019t know this\u2014even if he is a Cardinal\u2014doesn\u2019t know the Church.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Friday, August 31, former archbishop of Milan and one-time candidate for the papacy, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, passed away at the age of 85. Cardinal Martini was hailed as a \u201cprogressive.\u201d\u00a0 Upon listening to the last interview that he gave before his death\u2014and that was released this past Saturday\u2014it becomes immediately obvious that his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n