Gretchen Garrity and Susan Miller have written an article over at savingourparish.com entitled: “Where Have All the Catholic Churches Gone?”. It’s a chilling portrait of the priorities of our diocese. This brought to mind 2 passages that I’ve quoted before.
The following passage is from the novel “The Death of a Pope”. What’s really scary about this character’s rant is that he sounds eerily similar to something you’d read in many of the mainstream “Catholic” circulars.
‘That is the tragedy of the Catholic Church. It could be – it could be – the most powerful, the most effective agency for bringing justice to the world, but always the charism of thousands is thwarted by the diktat of one or two old men.’… ‘the infallible interpreter of God’s will on matters as abstruse as the Immaculate Conception and as banal as condoms’
‘But we cannot escape the fact – those of us raised in the Catholic faith – that our Church has a huge influence in the world, for good or for evil, and that influence depends on the mentality of one old man who puts another old man in charge of the Holy Office and appoints other like-minded old men as cardinals who in turn will choose another old man who thinks like them to be the next pope! It is an unending cycle of senility and reaction that brings misery to the world!”
The character in the novel says what many who wish to change the Church according to their own agendas will not. Many do not believe the fundamentals of Christianity. They merely wish to use the Church as a tool to accomplish their own personal agendas. Let us fight for Christ and not allow His Church to be perverted in this way. May our Church be a beacon of light not in a merely worldly way, but in a supernatural way; a way that puts Christ on display to the world.
To refute that mentality, Pope Benedict in best seller Jesus of Nazareth expounds upon the temptation of Christ to turn stones into bread:
Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil — no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism: What’s real is what is right there in front of us — power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs. [pp 28-29]
Which of the above theologies would you say our diocese adheres to?
Also of note, the second volume of Jesus of Nazarath is coming out shortly. You can pre-order it on amazon.
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Those two ladies have put together an excellent analysis of what’s been happening in DOR for far too long.
Ah yes, misery to the world wrought by one senile old man, just because he won’t let us have our condoms! If only we could have condoms, we’d have peace, love and joy.
There was a time when age was associated with wisdom. Perhaps the next Pope should be a younger person, and maybe we should try a woman, or maybe someone gay. THAT would fix everything. Look how well it’s going for the Anglicans.
Any nominations?