Fluid Atheism and a Liquid Magisterium

The two authors presented their work as follows: “Times are hard, ideas are soft… Soft ideology is business and human rights…, the stock market and tolerance, individualism and charity-rock...

“Cobbled together with the intellectual remains of previous decades, soft ideology mixes conservative management and [19] sixty-eighter dreams, confused ideas and vague moralism, odes to modernity and a return to the ideals of the 18th century. It ensures an apathetic consensus on the essentials. It advocates resignation to the force of things and exalts small joys.”

Is there a soft theology? One might believe it reading the episcopal documents published on the eve of the next European elections. Everything goes: respect and promotion of the dignity of each human person, solidarity, equality, family and the sacred nature of life, democracy, freedom, subsidiarity, the safeguarding of our Common Home.

We find all the “cliches,” as some ironic and disillusioned Vaticanists say.

With more seriousness, Cardinal Robert Sarah prefers to speak of a “fluid and practical atheism.” It is a fluid atheism which “flows in the veins of contemporary culture,” but which “never speaks its name but infiltrates everywhere even in ecclesiastical discourses,” of which the “first effect is a form of lethargy of the faith: it anesthetizes our ability to react, to recognize error, and danger. It has spread throughout the Church.”

Cardinal Sarah concludes that it is a practical atheism which is essentially based on “the fear of being in contradiction with the world.” However, we know that Jesus Christ is “a sign of contradiction” (Lk. 2:34).

Needless to say, in the face of this “fluid atheism,” a “liquid magisterium” is not only powerless but, worse still, complicit.

However, at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, if we look up at the frieze of the transom of the dome, we can read in large blue letters on a gold background: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram ædificabo Ecclesiam meam et tibi dabo claves Regni cælorum, “Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build My Church . . . And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt .16:18-19).

The Church is not built on the swamp of post-modernity, but on stone. It is built on Peter who is the Vicar of Christ.

Fr. Alain Lorans, SSPX