@Prof Leonard Wessell:
Happy mistake of poor eyesight. I would not take you to task on spelling, as I know my great shortcomings in that field. I am much more interested in the message!
I have read it, agree with it, and enjoyed it.

I hope many more read the entire article, and your comment{s}

A Catholic mind is a terrible thing to waste!

@rhemes1582: Hey, I see bellow that my mysteriously disappeared post, long and long, is seemingly there. A miracle or poor eyesight earlier? Well, that is a puzzle. I did not see it. Oh well. The long posting, though long, is only touching upon the problem, is hopefully clear and explanatory. Weigel is a respectable thinker and I take him seriously. He is no liar. His integralism is no lie, just an error of theorizing. Please forgive the misspellings, one of the punishments of original schooling. Seriously, the print should be larger. Sorry!

@Prof Leonard Wessell

Sorry to read your extended post, disappeared.

If you find time, please consider writing it again.

{What is the lesson to be drawn? Any development with "new" aspects that contradict, alter, relegate away or, and above all, do NOT preserve the previous is a false development.}

I wish you and your loved ones a Blessed Christmas

Everyone at Gloria.tv also Merry Christmas

Weigel deserves consideration, more than what a Christmas eve will allow. Weigel has created sort of a Cartesian dualism and like that dualism, the component parts never meet. He also totally overlooks Cardinal Newman's Essay on the Development of Doctrine (if my memory is correct), indeed, Weigel makes development impossible. Starting with the "data" of info from the biblical text, early Christians began reflections upon such "data" which lead to the formulation of conceptually expressed doctrines. Mary as the Mother of God could not come about until the early 4th Century because those reflecting had to first ascertain that God incarnated Himself in Jesus such that Jesus and Godt are not like two captains (human AND divine) of a ship, but only one of two natures, Jesus=God (Second Person). (Note the explicit understanding of God as 3 Persons in One divine Reality--my formulation--itself is the product of reflection leading to conceptual understanding.) Once, the challenge to the unity of Jesus/God was defeated and the doctrine formulated and pronounced formally, the meaning of Mary as MOTHER of God becomes the object of further theological reflection.

Please note what I have done here. Although Cardinal Newman offers several criteria or principles to determine a consistent and NON-changing development, one is of particular importance. The "New" arises out of the "Old" (i.e., already existing) usually as a response to certain aspects of the "Old" and leads to a further making explicit of the "Old". Here is the rub, though for Weigel: The "New" does not alter, fundamentally change or relegates to the "not-anymore", rather it PRESERVES the "Old" in fuller expression. The process of "preserving" is effectively what is meant by "tradition". No Catholicism without tradition.

What is the lesson to be drawn? Any development with "new" aspects that contradict, alter, relegate away or, and above all, do NOT preserve the previous is a false development. This rule of preservation/tradition is ignored by Weigel in an ahistorical view of doctrine. But that is not all.

I know of no linquist of would assert to thinking apart from language. (Anyone with knowledge of 2 or more languages will know that translation is, well, tricky and seldom 100% correct. -- I had a Russian colleague who said that the beauty and means of Fr. Schiller's German poetry was better in Russian.) I wlll add praying to doctrinal formulation. Les orandi << lex credendi << lex essendi. The verb "esse" is being used for the body of decided doctrine, i.e., it constitutes the conceptualizations developed and accepted over the centuries in the tradition (= older -> newer understandings preserving the older) of those who reflect upon the original "data" and the conceptual reflections that constitute the history of tradition of reflection. My point here is that there is no neat Cartesian-like dichotomy between the core "constitution" and ephemeral trappings with the conclusion that all such trappings are cultural and can be changed. This is truly a split-personality theory of Catholicism. Let us follow further this split.

God is entitatively infinite, all glory and absolute value (pardon these words as I must write something). Doctrine represents the lex essendi which has developed into lex credendi, a development not possible without tradition. This means that the total permission to change all trappings is NOT Catholic, rather a perverted version of Cartesianism and some Protestantism too. But, let us turn to the lex orandi, i.e., to the way in which we express ourselves in addressing (e.g., liturgy) God ALMIGHTY. We have traditionally in the West made use of a refined Latin with some development in the chanting (the 8th Century is not the 16th Century). The Russian Orthodox have developed a way of addressing (i.e. liturgy) God ALMIGHTY both in Old Slavonic and even in modern Russian that rivals Roman Catholic liturgy in expressive power. While teaching in Brazil with the Seminary "Redemptoris mater" I heard a liturgy in Portuguese that was fully informed in addressing God ALMIGHTY. Latin, Russian, Greek, Portuguese, etc. can, indeed, bring to differing liturgical expressions the HOLINESS of the mysterium temendum et fascinans ( see R. Otto's book "The Holy"). The common core of liturgy (i.e., address God) allows for many forms of concretization and they can evolve within one or the other culture. But, the CORE remains. And that is the complaint against the novelties of post-Vat II liturgy. Simply put, 1500 years of liturgical development in Catholicism was set aside--a cultural barbarity unequaled (even Lutheranism had a magnificent Bach). Relative to barbarity, j'accise!

The "evangelization" used by Weigel is particularly that of Pope Francis, who has been influenced by Pentecostal forms of religiosity, the "whoop-it-up" emotionality of stirred up participants (not necessarily clergy either). This form of liturgy is not in accord with the liturgy of the Holy expressed by Latin (and expressible in other tongues). So it is such that the antithetical dichotomy between a non-verbal "constituion" of truths and any and all cultural manifestations is a radical Cartesian-like schizophrenia in the heart of theology. Resistance to Pope Francis is in part rooted in the sensing (at least for me) that his free wheeling pentecostal "evangelization" advocated constitutes a NEW lex orandi that does not preserve adequately the OLD, i.e., the lex credendi, nor for that matter the lex essendi that should pervade the ecclesia Christi in the ecclesia catholica from beginng to now and beyond to the end.

If anyone has read all my comment, I apologize for the length, though in reality is is only a meager outline of the problem.