THE MAGISTERIUM

THE MAGISTERIUM
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Saturday, October 31, 2009

And if prudence renders service, who in the world is a better craftsman than she?
Or if one loves justice, the fruits of her works are virtues: For she teaches moderation and prudence, justice and fortitude, and nothing in life is more useful to men than these. Book of Wisdom, 8: 1-21b

“The Magisterium of the Church protects the faith of the simple, of those who cannot write books or speak on television or compose lead articles for the newspaper – that is her democratic mandate.

SHE MUST GIVE VOICE TO THOSE WHO ARE WITHOUT VOICE:

But something else must be said here. It is not just the people of a certain place, of a certain bishopric, of a certain country, who belong to Church but the faithful of the whole world. That is why the Church must always be on her guard against a private development of the Faith held by the whole. In his current bishopric, a bishop represents the whole Church; that is his mandate as representative.

But that is not all. Those also belong to the Church who have lived before us, the whole communion of saints. It would be false to say that they were the Church; they are the Church.

That is why the whole community of believers must always be represented in the Church. If priests and bishops, at their ordination, consecrate themselves solemnly to the Tradition of the Church, and if this consecration is the real content of the sacrament, this means that they are thereby bound to present this whole Church, to be the voices of the dead, who are truly the living.

But we must still to consider the most crucial point. As a living organism, the Church, as Saint Paul expressed it, is composed of both Head and body. The body without the Head is no longer a body but a corpse. But the Head of the Church is Christ.

That is the most powerful substance of the sacrament, its most profound nature, that over and above all opinion polls there must be represented the One without whom the Church and humanity would be just a corpse.

His word was by no means so trite, so meek, so unambiguous as a false Jesus-Romanticism would have us believe. It had the cutting sharpness of a true love that does not let itself be separated from the truth, and, in consequence, it brought him to the Cross.

It was too much exposed to the public opinion of all ages. And this has not changed. In the Church there must be represented over and over again as the commonly accepted opinion that the claim of Jesus Christ himself must be represented, and that can occur only through union with the sacrament, through union with the common form of the Faith as it is given us in the sacrament.”

All of above from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Co-Workers of the Truth – Oct. 29:
George H. Kubeck