The Salt and Light TV Crisis: Why Loyalty to the Church is Loyalty to Christ - and dissent is Betrayal

Pope Benedict XVI

Reflecting on dissent in the Church, following my review of the very disconcerting interview of the arch-heretic Gregory Baum, by Salt and Light CEO, Fr. Thomas Rosica, I offer these words for reflection by our Holy Father Pope Benedict from his Homily for the 2012 Chrism Mass. I ask, How can Salt and Light advocate a path of renewal for the Church, when Fr. Rosica praises a dissident who has done so much to destroy the Church in Canada? We are not talking about some obscure individual, but a man who was a leading light in the dissenting Winnipeg Statement, a document that caused, and is still causing incalculable damage to the local Church. In his "Tragedy at Winnipeg", Msgr. Vincent Foy wrote: 

Typical was a book published in 1964 by Herder and Herder called Contraception and Holiness. It was presented as "a balanced and perceptive declaration of Christian dissent." Among the contributors were three professors of St. Michael's College in Toronto: Gregory Baum, O.S.A., Stanley Kutz, C.S.B., and Leslie Dewart. Gregory Baum was a catalyst of dissent in Canada and elsewhere. 

He [Baum] described his technique: "The Catholic theologian ... will engage in common research and conversation with others until a certain agreement arises as to whether a position of the magisterium that seems binding at present is losing, for such and such reasons, its normative function for the future" (Christian Century, April 6, 1966, p.429). Gregory Baum had been an "Expert" to Archbishop Pocock of Toronto at Vatican II and was in continuing favour. He focused his attention on the Church's teaching on papal authority and contraception. To destroy either was to destroy the Catholic Church. To destroy both at once was to hasten ecclesial annihilation.

From the Holy Father's 2012 Chrism Mass Homily: 

Recently a group of priests from a European country issued a summons to disobedience, and at the same time gave concrete examples of the forms this disobedience might take, even to the point of disregarding definitive decisions of the Church’s Magisterium, such as the question of women’s ordination, for which Blessed Pope John Paul II stated irrevocably that the Church has received no authority from the Lord. Is disobedience a path of renewal for the Church? We would like to believe that the authors of this summons are motivated by concern for the Church, that they are convinced that the slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order to open up new paths and to bring the Church up to date. But is disobedience really a way to do this? Do we sense here anything of that configuration to Christ which is the precondition for all true renewal, or do we merely sense a desperate push to do something to change the Church in accordance with one’s own preferences and ideas?

But let us not oversimplify matters. Surely Christ himself corrected human traditions which threatened to stifle the word and the will of God? Indeed he did, so as to rekindle obedience to the true will of God, to his ever enduring word. His concern was for true obedience, as opposed to human caprice. ...Anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took unexpected forms in living movements and made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of holy Church, the presence and effectiveness of the Holy Spirit. And if we look at the people from whom these fresh currents of life burst forth and continue to burst forth, then we see that this new fruitfulness requires being filled with the joy of faith, the radicalism of obedience, the dynamic of hope and the power of love.

Dear friends, it is clear that configuration to Christ is the precondition and the basis for all renewal.... The saints show us how renewal works and how we can place ourselves at its service. And they help us realize that God is not concerned so much with great numbers and with outward successes, but achieves his victories under the humble sign of the mustard seed.

...This help we find first of all in the words of the teaching Church: the texts of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church are essential tools which serve as an authentic guide to what the Church believes on the basis of God’s word....

All our preaching must measure itself against the saying of Jesus Christ: “My teaching is not mine” (Jn 7:16). We preach not private theories and opinions, but the faith of the Church, whose servants we are.

Update: Pope Paul VI on the Second Vatican Council