A critique of Pope John Paul II Institutes! New JPII Institute Professors Question Church Orthodoxy on Homosexuality,Contraception
Cover image: Fathers Maurizio Chiodi (L) and Pier Davide Guenzi (R) (photo: YouTube) Edward Pentin Blogs September 13, 2019
Both Fathers currently teach moral theology at the University of Northern Italy in Milan, and both are well known for their questioning of moral absolutes
Seen above are wellknown moral theologians Maurizio Chiodi(L) and Pier Davide Guenzi(R) who are very critical of “moral absolutes” in Catholic Church like Homosexuality and Contraception.
Recall what Pope Francis said at the very outset of his pontificate when someone complained to him about Homosexuality among the highest echelons of the hierarcy in the Vatican: “Who am I to judge if some one with guilt pray to God for light?” That explains his attitude toward Homosexuality.
Cardinal Newman on Perfection
We leave that for the moment! Here we are focused on a more basic, central issue: CHANGE about which Cardinal Newman spoke beautifully and convincingly. We wrote about it elaborately many times: “To be perfect here below is to change most often.”
Of late the Catholic Church, especially after Vatican II, has started affirming, church should change ‘Constantly’, “Ecclesia semper reformanda est,” a rightabout turn from Cardinal Ottoviani’s motto: “Eclesia simper Idem!” (Church stays same always!). Newman said just the opposite! He said, “To be perfect change most often!”
Yes, “CHANGE and Change alone – is the Only Permanent Reality!” (Recedant vetera, Nova sint omnia!). This is the one truth this ‘Know-nothing’ has learned, though very reluctantly, from my honest and earnest study and search – nay Serious Research I should say — of 86 years of life! Still I could be wrong! Since I am not ALL-KNOWING for sure!
So I want to learn more from you better enlightened than me. Speak up therefore that I may hear! What do you say?
Reason & Logic compels me!
The logical conclusions of what I am forced to believe NOW through fact and reason simply frightens me; they boggle my mind, at once destroys or cancels OUT all my earlier beliefs and certainties at one stroke! What are they?
They are the following for me: First there is no such thing called ‘Infallibility’ for the Pope or anyone alive among humans; 2. Let no human alive Male/Female dare to claim he/she is better enlightened than any other; 3. A Spark of Truth which you and I do not have glows bright in many like myriards of stars in the sky; 4. Every one else is superior to you and me,in some areas, like our GURUS to revere and learn from; 5. Every one possesses a commanding conscience where they have that exceptional truth over us.
Allied views on Popes!
Allied Conclusions – all opinions rather — I have come to are about Popes I have lived with from Pope Pius Xll to present Francis Pappa, who is 2 years younger to me, according to his ‘Fratelli tutti’, a younger brother. A dead man never speaks. I may be gone today or tomorrow like a coconut perched on a fence. So these few lines.
Francis happens to be my ideal Pope, presenting himself first as “I am a Sinner!” Because one thing my heart always revolted against was the sanctified appellation “Your Holiness” which I wrote was the perfect example of a ‘sacrilegeous statement’ during Pope Paul VI’s Humane Vitae time when I took over as editor of New Leader. This was not because of any animosity towards him or to any Pope for that matter.
Photo with Paul Vl
My fond hope is that Francis would dump all these honorific titles for good before he resigns.(?) I was fortunate to study in Rome to witness the burial of “Good Pope John xxiii” and the crowning of Paul VI and a photo taken with him on leaving St.Peter’s college.
Equally, good and most admirable is ‘Good Pope John’, called ‘Good’ precisely for that reason by the public. It was he who said “I am infallible only when I speak the truth” which people mistakenly identify with ex-cathedra pronouncements to avid which “I don’t sit on any Cathedra.” That much for ‘infallibility.’
Longest Heartache!
My longest felt heartache and headache was John Paul ll whose creations is topic also of this article below. The present Pope is demolishing them one after another. When he was made a Saint I lost the last trace of belief I had In the Church’s “Saint-making-business” to say the least. Today I believe more easily in “Saint Abhaya” whom the “Syro-church” in Kerala still considers a ‘Sinner’ and goes for an appeal to ‘canonize’ those whom courts have condemned as criminals. Go ahead to demolish me, please!
Facts are Sacred, but opinions are free, though they may change with every puff of wind! So give only that much of importance to my views! But there is no harm, only good, in expressing them honestly and respectfully to all concerned according to the champion of all Free Speech, the French Philosopher VOLTAIRE!
So please go ahead to demolish my thinking, nay make me a laughing stock, if wrong! And I shall be eternally grateful to you! My thanks in advance! james kottoor, editor ccv.
Please read below Frs. Chiodi (L)
& Guenz(R) on John Paul II Institutes
VATICAN CITY — The latest development in what is becoming increasingly viewed as both a purge and a revolution of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute is the hiring of two moral theologians whose views on homosexuality and contraception contradict the magisterium.
The new professors, Father Maurizio Chiodi and Father Pier Davide Guenzi, both moral theologians at the University of Northern Italy in Milan, will begin teaching at the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences as part of its 2019-2020 curriculum announced this week.
Father Chiodi, whom Archbishop Paglia appointed as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2017, is to teach “Theological Ethics of Life” at the institute.
Father Guenzi is to lecture on the “Anthropology and Ethics of Birth.” Both professors, whose appointments follow highly contentious removals of long-serving lecturers in July, are well known for their questioning of moral absolutes.
In 2017, Father Chiodi gave a controversial Rome lecture on Humanae Vitae in which he used Chapter 8 of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia, to justify contraceptive use in some cases.
More recently, he gave an interview to the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire in which he asserted that, while each homosexual person is called to chastity, “under certain conditions” and depending on circumstances, homosexual relationships can be “the most fruitful way” for same-sex attracted persons “to enjoy good relations.”
The interview appeared to suggest that Father Chiodi was open to considering homosexual acts as “objectively good,” according to bioethicist Tommaso Scandroglio, writing in the Italian Catholic daily La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.
Father Guenzi expressed similar views to Father Chiodi in another recent interview with Avvenire. On the subject of whether homosexual acts could ever be licit, Father Guenzi equivocated, saying it depended on the “relationship, between the intention of the individual and the sense of their actions.” In this regard, he added, “they may be deemed ‘imperfect’ as other sexual behaviors are, even within the life of a stable heterosexual couple.”
With respect to homosexual relations generally, he drew on Amoris Laetitia, Chapter 8, to assert that every situation has to be discerned differently. In recent years “we have learned that the natural law must be continually rethought,” he said. “There are deep dynamics inherent to each human person which ask to be respected as inherent to the structure of anthropology.”
Fathers Chiodi and Guenzi are two of eight new lecturers to be hired by the institute this forthcoming academic year, all of them Italian, while other incumbent professors including Polish philosophy Prof. Stanislaw Grygiel, a close friend of Pope St. John Paul II, have been sidelined or given their marching orders.
Grygiel has said he believes the institute is being “destroyed” and that John Paul II’s anthropological teaching replaced by “sociological and psychological meanderings.”
Both Professors Chiodi and Guenzi are understood to be close associates of the institute’s grand chancellor, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, and effectively replace Msgr. Livio Melina, a former president of the institute who held the institute’s now-obsolete chair of fundamental moral theology, and moral theologian, Father José Noriega.
The removals in July of Msgr. Melina and Father Noriega, and the way they were dismissed, led to over 200 scholars worldwide, including well-known U.S. academics such as professor Robert George and professor Scott Hahn, signing an open letter to Archbishop Paglia, and the institute’s president, Msgr. Pierangelo Sequeri, asking they be reinstated.
The personnel changes come two years after Pope Francis issued a decree refounding the institute and giving it a new name.
The Register asked Archbishop Paglia whether he could give reasons for employing Fathers Chiodi and Guenzi to teach at the institute in light of their views on homosexuality and contraception. He has yet to reply.
