COR ORANS: Another Evil Spirit of Vatican II

Written by Hillary White

Pope to Purge What’s Left of Catholic Nuns

More evidence keeps pouring into my email inbox that the current administration of the Congregation for Religious[1] is planning on using the provisions of Cor orans to totally rewrite the nature of contemplative women’s religious life, particularly the “conservative” and traditional communities, in the name of the “New Paradigm” of VaticanTwoism. [Editor’s Note:”Cor Orans” (“Praying Heart”) is the title of an April 1, 2018 document that Implements instructions on how to apply Pope Francis’ 2016 Apostolic Constitution – “Vultum Dei Quaerere” (“Seek the Face of God”) addressed to Catholic women religious in contemplative communities. MJM]

As I have written many times elsewhere, the one uniform characteristic of the current pontificate is the purge. It is clear now that Jorge Bergoglio was elected by a group of 1960s progressives to bring about the final removal of the last elements within Catholicism that have resisted the Vatican II revolution. After 50 years of ambiguity, of the two implacably opposed “paradigms” living in an uneasy truce within the same institution, those few recalcitrants left who refused to accept the new liturgical forms, new theological “formulations,” the new disciplines are being forced either to conform or leave.

In all Catholic institutions the so-called “conservative” middle ground, the safe and reasonable compromise position that was allowed to exist under the last two pontificates has evaporated. As Amoris Laetitia will have the effect of forcing out priests and seminarians who refuse to desecrate the Holy Eucharist by giving it to unrepentant adulterers, so Cor orans will be used to remove “conservative” contemplative nuns who have refused to adopt the full Vatican II programme of “renewal” of religious life.

We must never forget the appeasement of LCWR by the Congregation for Religious after Pope Francis’ election. The new prefect[2], Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, effectively apologised to the world’s most notoriously heretical organisation of modernist religious, soothing feathers that had been ruffled by his predecessor’s abortive attempt at bringing them back to Catholicity. Contrast this with the ruthless suppression by that office of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Immaculate at the same time, and the programme becomes obvious.

This week I received another a document that included extensive quotes from a 2015 speech given by the Congregation’s Secretary, Jose Rodrigues Carballo, in which he darkly implied that traditional forms of Catholic religious life had “served their purpose” and must be allowed to die out so that something as yet undefined, but assuredly new and wonderful, could replace them.

At a meeting of religious formators in April 2015 in Rome, Carballo said quite clearly that it is Vatican II that must take precedence over the classical charisms of religious life.

“With this explicit reference to the Second Vatican Council, we point to our profound conviction that the council is the point of reference, non-negotiable, in the formation to the consecrated life.”

In his speech in Avila[3], Spain a month later, Carballo spoke even more plainly, denouncing the “many fundamentalist groups” in the religious life, saying, “This is not of the Spirit.” “Vatican II is our compass” he said, adding that the pope “takes his lead from Vatican II.”

Carballo said that with the collapse of vocations over the last 50 years, it is clear that the forms of religious life that have been known through the last 20 centuries have “done their task in the Church.” This, he said is a time of “purification” for the religious life. He called “some forms” of religious life “antiquated” and claimed that they “say hardly anything to people today.” These, he said “will not remain even though they have [had] a certain success.” [emphasis added.]

“As with the Gospel,” Carballo said, the charisms of religious life “are on-going,” they “develop” and “continue to grow over time.” He said, “Some forms are dying out. But new forms are rising.”

With regard to the living of their charism, “The church asks us not only for fidelity but for creative fidelity,” he said.

He asked the assembled Carmelites, friars and nuns, “What does Teresa want now?” and “we don’t want to walk as we did 500 years ago.” The charism “goes forward.” He denounced those who respond “We have always done it this way,” saying that “even good people need changes,” and being “faithful does not mean staying the same.”

As is usual with Catholic progressives, he went on to spin the total collapse of religious life since Vatican II as a positive, comparing the current “chaos” in religious life with the conditions before Creation, urging those present to “think of Genesis” and to imagine “a new creation” that is coming soon.

Speeches and documents from the Congregation for Religious often employ the phrase “creative fidelity” or “dynamic fidelity” when speaking of the ancient orders or charisms. At this meeting, Carballo clarified this, saying it means that being “faithful does not mean staying the same.”

This “updating”, he said, will be brought about through formation. “Only formation transforms the heart and mind.”

Given these hints, what Cor orans tells us is that with regard to the female contemplative life, the progressives, who expected the “chaos” of the post-conciliar upheaval they engineered to bring to birth a “new church,” are tired of waiting.

With this pope they have been given a mandate to crush the remaining hold-outs and, instead of “singing,” to bluntly force “the new church into being.” Cor orans’ language, put together with Carballo’s clear messages in his various speeches, has made it unmistakable; this is a purge.

And the document is equally clear about its status as a piece of legislation. It isn’t a suggestion; superiors are already reporting receiving messages from Rome, and the existing federations and associations, that they are to implement it “immediately”. It mandates membership in a federation, with that body’s president and council having unprecedented powers over finances, new foundations, formation and, crucially, decisions about the suppression of monasteries.

They know not what they do

And the religious orders themselves are already on board. A document from the same meeting, the 2015 General Chapter of the Discalced Carmelites, blamed the imminent collapse of the order on the failure of the religious to get with the Vatican II programme.

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[COMMENT: So the General Chapter of the Discalced Carmelites blames the religious’ failure to attract vocations on not getting with Vatican 2… whereas the greatest failure of all time was that selfsame Vatican 2 Council ? This just gets crazier and crazier every minute. Read the rest of this pope purge article at The Remnant, HERE.]