Ooo, Ooo, I Know! I Know!

Fr. Zuhlsdorf writes the following:

I direct the readership’s attention to a good piece by my friend Samuel Gregg in which he takes a close look at Walter Card. Kasper’s newest book about mercy.

Kasper’s book is not, apparently, what one might assume it is.

However, Kasper is sending contradictory messages out through the mainstream media, in interviews, talks, etc.

How to reconcile these two, seemingly disparate Kaspers? Gregg has some ideas. I think he is on to something.

Here's an idea:

But since the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) employ a very clever artifice, namely, to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty, while they are in reality firm and steadfast, it will be of advantage, Venerable Brethren, to bring their teachings together here into one group, and to point out the connexion between them, and thus to pass to an examination of the sources of the errors, and to prescribe remedies for averting the evil...

Further, none is more skilful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious arts; for they double the parts of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and since audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance. To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for the strictest morality. Finally, and this almost destroys all hope of cure, their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.

Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Domenici Gregis

Which, let's face it, is pretty much what Gregg says, he just doesn't want to use the M-word. As he correctly points out, it's difficult to classify the claims of Cardinal Kasper et al as all that forthright in light of things like historical fact and actual Church teaching. Professor Rist's article has moved us past that.

So what are we left with? Not much, I'm afraid, except the need to call things what they are.