Revisionist "Orthodoxy"

There goes that George Pell, flipping the bird to the Magisterium again... John Allen writes from the Synod

In the open session Wednesday night, Cardinal George Pell of Australia voiced concern that talk about “various presences” of Christ, such as in the community, in scripture, and in the individual believer can blur the centrality of the real presence in the Eucharist.

“We are not pantheists,” he warned the synod.

This is a reiteration of something Pell went on about in June, a story covered exclusively here....

Some weeks ago, I'm told, His Eminence was present at a symposium in Sydney on the Eucharist. Much was made of the following exposition from Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraph 7:

[Christ] is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, "the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross," but especially under the eucharistic species. By His power He is present in the sacraments, so that when a man baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes. He is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for He promised: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20) .

[A]t the end of the conference, Pell got up, thanked the presenters, etc. He then launched into an assault on the paragraph quoted above, working from a belief that the Central Commission of the Council was hijacked by moderates, that many of the threads of the Council as promulgated were not the intent of the Fathers of Vatican II, and basically that the four-fold presence was hogwash.

He closed with the favored distinction, "This is just my personal opinion, I'm not speaking as archbishop of Sydney or for the Church."

As it's an academic symposium, the distinction can be respected. And the charade would've held if the good Cardinal, on a following Sunday, decided not to give a homily at one of the Sydney mega-parishes at Fairfield basically reiterating the exclusive presence of Christ in the Eucharist alone, using his teaching authority to discount the Magisterium.

Somebody tell His Eminence that the cafeteria is closed.

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