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Post by hibernicus on Aug 28, 2012 21:29:38 GMT
Today's IRISH TIMES has a piece by a certain Maureen Junker-Kenny, described as "professor of theology at Trinity College Dublin" accusing the Vatican of ratting on Vatican II. One of Richard Dawkins' many campaigns is to have theology removed from universities on the grounds that it is an utterly vacuous subject, and I must say this is the sort of stuff that makes me see his point. www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0828/1224323094754.htmlSome lowlights: EXTRACT The central cause of division is the Vatican II Declaration on Religious Freedom. It epitomises the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the modern history of freedom in contrast to the position taken by Popes Pius IX and X in the anti-modernist struggle which held that “error has no right”. Vatican II moved from this objectivist view to the insight that truth, especially in religion, can only be the truth of the person called by God to respond on the basis of their own free will... END OF EXTRACT Prof. Junker-Kenny goes on to complain that by letting back the SSPX, who object to the Declaration of Religious Liberty, the Pope is going back on this. To begin with, the SSPX have not been let back in as yet, and one reason is precisely the dispute between them and the Vatican over the degree of acceptance required for the Vatican II decrees, including the Declaration on Religious Liberty. To read this article you would think that Bishop Fellay has just been made Cardinal Secretary of State and Bishop Tissier de Mallerais put in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Secondly, the extract from Dr Junker-Kenny's article above shows that she is mixing up two things: the issue of whether/how far a confessional state is desirable (this is what the expression "error has no rights" was about), and the question of how far dissent/heresy is to be tolerated within the Church. These two concepts are not identical - indeed one argument for separating church and state is precisely that it frees the Church to enforce adherence to its own teaching (because in a confessional state the state often demands a significant degree of control over the internal workings of the Church, and because there will/should be more hesitation in excommunicating someone if the consequences are that he will be handed over to the civil power for punishment or deprived of his citizenship rights). It is also the case that the right to free association involves the right to form associations of the like-minded, and as a necessary consequence to exclude from membership those who disagree with the association's basic principles. She is asserting that the declaration on Religious Liberty, which in fact applies to the relations between state and church, implies the right to believe anything or nothing while still retaining membership of the Church. This is a complete distortion. Furthermore, as we shall shortly see, she doesn't believe it herself. EXTRACT One core point is the acceptance signed by Marcel Lefebvre after negotiations with Cardinal Ratzinger in 1988 of one passage in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, No. 25, concerning acceptance of the magisterium. Of the entirety of the council’s documents, and all the breakthroughs contained in them, one specific passage is selected. It asserts the centralist pole, and has to be read in conjunction with its counterbalance, the collegiality of the bishops who stand for the local churches. At issue is whether a pope has the authority to suspend what the church’s highest level, a council, has agreed on. How can the claim to speak for the whole church be legitimated by an administration that makes these documents optional? END OF EXTRACT First of all; the Vatican was not "making these documents optional"; it was laying down their correct interpretation (the fact that there is a dispute over their meaning shows that an interpreter was needed). Dr Junker-Kenny does not even bother to give an argument for her interpretation of the decree - she just assumes it is transparent and no interpreter/teacher is needed. Second; the theory that a General Council is supreme over the Pope has been repudiated repeatedly since the sixteenth century (including by general councils) and Vatican II made no such claim. Professor Junker-Kenny should study history; it might restrain her over-active imagination. EXTRACT The priority given by the Vatican to reconciliation with anti-modern, breakaway factions implies an unstated ranking regarding the new forms of parish life, celebration of sacraments, and shared initiatives with civil society. These developed as a result of the Second Vatican Council’s move away from a post-Reformation and post- revolution self-enclosure towards a critical support of modernity.[TRANSLATED; THE OLD AND THE NEW ARE INCOMPATIBLE ACCORDING TO HER, SO TOLERATING THE OLD WAYS IMPLIES THE NEW ARE INFERIOR. WHAT PRICE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY NOW?] The effort spent on traditionalists treats ordinary church life with contempt, and regiments its expressions of faith. [THIS IS AN INTERESTING CONTRAST WITH HER VIEW THAT EVERYONE SHOULD BE ACCEPTED INTO THE CHURCH UNCONDITIONALLY IF THEY DO WHAT THEIR CONSCIENCE SAYS IS GOD'S WILL. APPARENTLY TRADITIONALISTS HAVE NO CONSCIENCES, SO SEZ THE PROFESSOR.] The new literal translation of the missal imposed by Rome, with a prayer over the Eucharistic gifts that puts in doubt the universal scope of God’s salvific will for all humanity, alienates the faithful who understand God’s truth as unrestricted. [WHAT A PITY NO-ONE TOLD JESUS, SINCE HE USED THE WORDS "FOR MANY" AT THE LAST SUPPER. BUT PROFESSOR JUNKER-KENNY PLACES HER OWN AUTHORITY MUCH HIGHER THAN JESUS. AND DOES SHE MEAN THAT EVERYONE WILL BE SAVED NO MATTER WHAT - THAT EVEN IF HITLER AND MYRA HINDLEY DIED UNREPENTANT, THEY ARE WELCOME INTO THE KINGDOM? IF SHE DOES NOT MEAN THAT, WHAT DOES SHE MEAN?] As recipients of a recent encyclical entitled Caritas in Veritate, they would like to see how both charity and truth can be safeguarded, instead of merely invoked. [INDEED THEY WOULD, BUT YOU ARE THE ONE WHO INVOKES THEM WITHOUT SAFEGUARDING THEM] END OF EXTRACT EXTRACT Surveys over the last 10 years on the sensus fidelium (faithful) show 75 per cent of Irish Roman Catholics disagree with Rome’s refusal to ordain women and to lift the celibacy rule, and with the minority position it espoused in 1968 in its document on contraception. A church that values learning as a two-way activity would stop to consider, not prohibit, such reflections. Authority cannot be claimed – it has to be earned, both by leaders of the state and of churches... END First of all, the sensus fidelium (as a means of interpreting the teaching of the Church) does not mean only those members of the Church currently alive; it means the members of the Church throughout history. Secondly, here is Someone else to whom the Professor's complaint applies - in spades: When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. (Matthew 7:28-29) On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you?What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before!The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.Yet there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him.He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. (John 6: 60-66)
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 29, 2012 13:23:17 GMT
Yes, I read the piece by Prof Junker-Kenny and I have to say I rarely read such an illiterate piece anywhere. I see what Hibernicus means about Richard Dawkins advancing the view theology is vacuous. This piece is vacuous.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 15, 2012 21:27:37 GMT
Here is an interesting post from Rod Dreher quoting a couple of commentators on how reducing religion to moralism leads to the rejection of religion altogether. Reducing religion to moralism is of course precisely what the new methods of religious education/catechetics have done, and the result produces ignorance in two senses: (a) Basic factual ignorance about the specific content of Catholic belief, as distinct from "let's be nice to everybody" (b) A deeper ignorance, which is ignorance of how belief is supposed to be lived out in practice. The theory behind the old-style concept of entrusting Catholic education to religious orders was that they would provide living witness to the apostolic life for their students, and from their own experience train them in Christian living. The practice, as we know all too well and are reminded all too often, frequently fell short of this objective; but has abandoning the attempt altogether been such an improvement? www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-problem-of-moralism/#post-commentsEXTRACT [THESE WORDS ARE NOT BY DREHER HIMSELF BUT QUOTE A PROTESTANT THEOLOGIAN] Parents who raise their children with nothing more than Christian values should not be surprised when their children abandon those values. If the child or young person does not have a firm commitment to Christ and to the truth of the Christian faith, values will have no binding authority, and we should not expect that they would. Most of our neighbors have some commitment to Christian values, but what they desperately need is salvation from their sins. This does not come by Christian values, no matter how fervently held. Salvation comes only by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Human beings are natural-born moralists, and moralism is the most potent of all the false gospels. The language of “values” is the language of moralism and cultural Protestantism — what the Germans called Kulturprotestantismus. This is the religion that produces cultural Christians, and cultural Christianity soon dissipates into atheism, agnosticism, and other forms of non-belief. Cultural Christianity is the great denomination of moralism, and far too many church folk fail to recognize that their own religion is only cultural Christianity — not the genuine Christian faith. END OF EXTRACT
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 5, 2012 22:38:32 GMT
Here is an egregious piece of twaddle from Jennifer O'Connell, who having tormented the readers of the SUNDAY BUSINESS POST with her pro-abortion columns, has jumped the sinking ship for the more slowly-sinking IRISH TIMES, now so zealously living up to its unofficial title as MOLOCH'S HERALD. m.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2012/1205/1224327498619.html?via=mostread Here are some rare and precious gems of bigoted ignorance: EXTRACT ...At the same time, though, when it comes to making the church look ridiculous, you could argue that the hierarchy itself is doing a better job than any comedian. Being a Catholic these days is a bit like finding yourself trapped in a neverending episode of Father Ted, without the funny bits. Imagine, for a moment, that you are the pope and you’re about to write the book which – as you head into your 86th year – could even be your last. What issue would you feel compelled to tackle? Would you plump for declining Mass attendance? Would you tackle the issues of reproductive choice, or of women priests? Or maybe you would opt to explore gay marriage, or the child sex abuse crisis currently rocking Australia? No, of course you wouldn’t; not when there are urgent theological issues to be determined. Pope Benedict XVI latest book has prompted a rash of “Pope bans Christmas”-type headlines. Although Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives is a proper theological study and the third in the pope’s series on the life of Christ, certain media have seized on a handful of statements within the book: that there is no evidence to state that there were any cattle, donkeys or other livestock present on the night of Jesus’s birth; and that he may not have been born on December 25th, 0000, but several years earlier. The Vatican has pointed out that these are minor points in an otherwise serious work that attempts to put the life of Christ into a historical context and to remind Catholics of his message. But worthwhile as this may be, I’d question whether theological discussion is really the best use of the pope’s time. END In other words, she can't see the point of all this Jesus stuff. The Pope should spend all his time talking about gay marriage, abortion, etc. This makes an interesting change from the more usual liberal complaint that the Pope should stick to talking about Jesus and not talk about abortion, gay marriage etc as these are irrelevant. It will incidentally be noted that Ms O'Connell has a bad dose of clericalism - that is, she cares nothing for Jesus and is only interested in the Church. It transpires, however, that Ms O'Connell's view is that the Church should tell its members whatever they feel like doing is OK - even though they already have the IRISH TIMES, RTE, etc to do that for them. When Ms O'Connell complains that the Church does not speak out on this issues, she really means that it has spoken out but she doesn't agree with it: EXTRACT The handling of the various child sex abuse scandals has rocked it to its foundations. The issue of reproductive choice has left many women feeling uncertain about their place in an organisation that wants to deny them control over what happens to their own bodies. [WHAT A GROTESQUE JUXTAPOSITION OF THOSE TWO ITEMS - KING HEROD COMPLAINS NOT ENOUGH ATTENTION IS PAID TO CHILD ABUSE] Gay people say they feel disenfranchised by its teachings on sexuality.["THIS IS A HARD SAYING - WHO CAN BEAR IT"?] ... Instead of addressing the factors within the church that have led to this drift [I.E. DROPPING THE MORE INCONVENIENT COMMANDMENTS], the hierarchy seems to have turned inwards, opting to blame its members for a lack of moral fortitude. Its overriding preoccupation seems to be with what it refers to as the “secularisation and spiritual desertification” of its own flock. BUT WHAT IF IT'S TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT THIS, AND YOU ARE THE WILLING SLAVE SO DEGRADED YOU NO LONGER KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE FREE? And yet when it has the opportunity to reach out to a group that may be feeling disenfranchised, it bypasses women, and gay people, and those in families that fall outside the church-approved norm – and invites a bunch of circus performers to the Vatican instead. (I didn’t just make that up – that’s what it did last weekend. Meanwhile, Irish survivors of institutional abuse are still waiting for their invitation.) End of EXTRACT THE INVITATION TO CIRCUS PERFORMERS - WHO HAVE SOULS LIKE ANYONE ELSE - IS AN ANNUAL EVENT. I HAVE SEEN SOME PO-FACED AMERICAN CATHOLIC TRAD BLOGGERS COMPLAINING THAT IT'S A BAD IDEA BECAUSE IT'S NOT DIGNIFIED ENOUGH - HOW LIKE MS O'CONNELL. BETTER ORDINARY EVERYDAY CLOWNS THAN THE SPIRITUAL EQUIVALENT OF JOHN WAYNE GACY, ONLY WHERE HE KILLED THE BODY THEY KILL THE SOUL. (BTW this does not refer to the abuse survivors, and I was under the impression that the Pope has met abuse survivors regularly.) Am I correct in thinking that Jennifer O'Connell also has some connection with RTE?
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 2, 2013 21:54:04 GMT
I have been aware for some time that the Kerry-born New Age philosopher John Moriarty is admired by some liberal Irish Catholics. I am currently for the first time reading some of his writings and I must say I am horrified - they are even worse than I had expected. Classic bog-standard Jungian gnosticism. I am currently half-way through an eructation entitled TURTLE WAS GONE A LONG TIME - VOLUME ONE, CROSSING THE KEDRON and so far I have found among much else a declaration that the God invoked in the Book of Job is not Yahweh, because although he describes Leviathan he is not represented as killing it; Moriarty is very hostile to religions in which a god is represented as killing a serpent/dragon because he believes this leads to repression and alienation - at one point he has a sort of litany in which Jesus is represented as summoning back the malevolent serpent-gods described in various cultures (including both Judaism and early Christianity) in order to reconcile the human psyche with them. We also find straightforward MArcionism - Yahweh and Greek rationalism are blamed for genocide, with the usual references to the Old Testament massacres, and Moriarty specifically declares that Jesus was sacrificed to appease the malevolent Yahweh. Aristotle and the Bible are blamed for the Holocaust (I wouldn't be so complacent if I were Moriarty - I happen to have read MEIN KAMPF, and Hitler's Kantian pretensions and desire to overcome alienation by reconciling the Aryan race with their repressed nature as predatory animals and to overcome vapid analytic rationalism, and his use of Kant as a licence for unlimited subjectivism and self-deification, are actually quite akin to Moriarty's assumptions). Moriarty seems to be basically advocating a form of Hinduism with Jesus as one of many avatars and a great deal of sexual mysticism about reconciling the wound and the spear. At one point, after describing the destruction of a phallic Hindu idol by Islamic conquerors who built its fragments into a doorstep to be trodden underfoot, he proclaims "The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone". Richard Dawkins is a million miles closer to Christianity than this stuff. How can anyone with two brain cells to rub together, or any knowledge of patristics, think this is reconcilable with Christianity in any form? I may post a more detailed analysis when I have read more of this guff. I firmly expect to find at some point in Moriarty's writings a denunciation of a certain legend about St Patrick - if I do I will call the piece BRING BACK THE SNAKES. A minor clarification BTW - I am NOT saying that Mr Moriarty was himself a NAzi, but that his claim that Nazism was the product of instrumental rationalism is an oversimplification - instrumental rationalism was certainly involved in the implementation of their crimes, but nazi ideology drew on vitalist and irrationalist strains in German Idealism and romanticism which are very similar to aspects of Moriarty's own views, and any account of Nazism which fails to take account of this aspect is seriously incomplete. This article has some relevance to the topic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger_and_Nazism
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Post by veritas on Jan 3, 2013 14:45:29 GMT
On one of the few occasions I listen to RTE's Liveline, I heard him being lionised by Joe Duffy. Like you, I could'nt believe the new age/hippyish waffle he was coming out with. Was the late Fr. John O'Donoghue a little like this ; or am I being extremely unfair on the latter ?. As far as I am aware he sought to imply that Irish monastics were akin to 1960's hippies ; whereas in reality they were very ascetic. Just curious.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 3, 2013 18:21:43 GMT
I am not really familiar with the writings of John O'Donoghue, so I can't say how far they are comparable. (I suspect the common thread may be a view of religion as a form of self-administered therapy, but there is scope for a great deal of divergence within such a view.) The trouble with Moriarty is not that his writing is pure waffle but that there is indeed a formed philosophy at the heart of it - a modern variant of gnosticism (which is one of the earliest heresies, and which is specifically denounced in the Gospels of St John and St Jude). Where ancient gnosticism saw the material world as evil and looked to an utterly transcendent God, this form of gnosticism sees the "fall" in terms of alienation from the natural world and preaches the worship of nature as Gaia. One of Moriarty's pet themes is that it is an outrage to say that the world is created, and he also objects to the concept of history in general and sacred history in particular because it implies that time has a beginning and an end and is unrepeatable, whereas he thinks we should live in an eternal mythic Now. (He sees this as entirely reconcilable with Darwinism because that also assumes history does not have a teleological end but simply adjusts to circumstances.) Moriarty rejects the Bible pretty much wholesale because it sees the world as made for us, rather than making us simply part of nature, and because it presents history as having a beginning and an end. His idea of reviving Christianity is to reinvent the story of Jesus's passion, death and resurrection as a shamanic initiation as practised by the American Indians (he speaks of Jesus "following Bright Angel Trail to the very bottom of the Grand Canyon"). The fact that Genghis Khan was a follower of Tengrist shamanism rather calls into question Moriarty's claim that the Abrahamic religions (with the Aztecs and a few others mentioned in passing) are uniquely genocidal (Genghis used to systematically massacre the entire populations of cities which resisted them in order to terrify others into submitting to his rule) but of course the advantage of abolishing history is that you need never confront this sort of awkward detail, nor what sort of sacrifice was offered to Baal, Moloch and Ashtoreth whose displacement by the God of the Jews he appears to regret. Moriarty's philosophy logically appears to imply either that suffering and death do not really exist, which is absurd, or that we should accept them without complaint as part of Gaia and that the extinction of the smallpox virus was a crime. I have still not worked out whether he is an ignoramus or a monstrous hypocrite, but he must be one or the other. Then again, he explicitly rejects the Aristotelean principle of non-contradiction, so perhaps he is both.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 3, 2013 19:32:04 GMT
It's hilarious-- I only know about this fellow because I saw his book "What the Curlew Said" on the religion shelves in Eason's. I noticed the book because of its poetic title and because the photo of the author on the cover showed he was something of a "character".
But what I find hilarious is that, simply from the title and the cover, I guessed that his philosophy was along the lines that Hibernicus has described.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jan 4, 2013 12:18:40 GMT
Perhaps he simultaneously accepts and rejects the principle of non-contradiction.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 7, 2013 23:23:40 GMT
A few weeks ago Fr Ronald Rolheiser had a syndicated column in the IRISH CATHOLIC and the CATHOLIC HERALD which argued that helping the poor was not a virtue but a moral obligation. This led to some argument, in the CATHOLIC HERALD, anyway, with a correspondent who complained that people would be more reluctant to help the poor if it was seen as an obligation and not a virtue. Something struck me as being rather odd about Fr Rolheiser's statement of the position, but not being a trained philosopher and only having a smattering of philosophical knowledge, it took me a couple of weeks to realise what it was. Fr Rolheiser is saying that something cannot be at once virtuous and obligatory - he seems to take for granted the Kantian idea that an action can only be moral if it is undertaken purely from a sense of duty and for no other reason, and that moral actions must be derived from conscious free choice. (Actually it seems a bit more incoherent than that, because Kant's appeal to duty implies an obligation.) He seems to hold a view that is both quasi-Protestant (belief in total depravity) and Pelagian (since it assumes we can nonetheless choose to act virtuously). Catholic teaching is based on a different set of assumptions altogether - basically Aristotelean - that we have a particular nature whose final end is union with God, and that certain actions and dispositions conduce towards the fulfilment of that nature. (We would get a sense of this in the older sense of virtue which included such qualities as strength, accomplishment etc - i.e. those qualities by which we fulfil the potential of our nature - as distinct from Rolheiser's reduction of it to a set of external commands.) His view is like saying that an athlete's training cannot be virtuous if it is undertaken with the self-seeking aim of making the athlete stronger and winning contests, whereas the training and strengthening are part of a single process, and the athletic victory is a legitimate end rather than something irrelevant. (Of course there are circumstances in which it would not be a legitimate end, but we will assume the athlete is strictly honourable in his pursuit of victory.) I never saw so clearly how much moral confusion derives from half-digested philosophical assumptions. If any trained philosophers read this I would be grateful for advice on how to express this more clearly.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 9, 2013 21:54:36 GMT
Fr Zuhlsdorf picks up on an article in which the now-excommunicated Australian priest Fr Greg Reynolds describes the mindset in which he undertook seminary training: wdtprs.com/blog/2013/11/we-also-had-the-church-indifferent/#commentsEXTRACTS: After completing an economics degree at Monash University, Reynolds started questioning whether there was more to life. A friend of his mother’s suggested he enter the seminary, where others were surely grappling with such questions. “I went into the seminary not even sure that God existed,” he says. “I didn’t put a time frame on it, but it was certainly just going to be a temporary arrangement, ’til I got a few answers and then I’d get out.” He enjoyed it and began to think that he could be a priest. “But it’s a bit awkward if you don’t believe in God,” he says laughing. “So I gave God, if She’s [sic] out there, a bit of time, saying, ‘You’re going to have to sort this out because I can’t go on here indefinitely.’?” You will by now be asking: “How the hell did this guy even get into the seminary in the first place?” This sort of thing, the Greg Reynolds types, don’t just “happen”. We have the Church Suffering, the Church Militant, and the Church Triumphant. We also had the Church Indifferent. ********************************************************* mamajen says: 9 November 2013 at 10:06 am Men being sent to seminary to “find themselves”…oh, that’s just wonderful. Reminds me of the parents who send problem students to Catholic schools to get straightened out. Incidentally, my five-year-old insists on referring to the devil as “she”. I’ve tried correcting him, to no avail. ************************************************************* robtbrown says: 9 November 2013 at 10:42 am Regardless of whether he should have been admitted, cases like his can resolved by good education (or formation). The problem is that during his time in seminary it didn’t exist **************************************************************** wmeyer says: 9 November 2013 at 11:23 am I wish I could agree with the past tense on the Church indifferent, but in my area, it seems very much to be still with us. When I have commented on liturgical abuses, I have been challenged as to why I think that’s important. “Does that really interfere with your own salvation?” Well, yes, I think that it does, if I remain silent in the face of violations of doctrine and Canons. We either believe that the Church is essential or we do not. And if we believe, then it’s a package, not a menu. And if we truly embrace the understanding that we are the “body of Christ”, then each of us is responsible to defend what is right. Indifferentism is not a Christian virtue. [THIS IS WHY THE PASSAGE IN FR FLANNERY'S BOOK WHERE HE DENOUNCES AS TROUBLEMAKERS SOME CONGREGATION MEMBERS WHO PROTESTED WHEN A LAYWOMAN READ THE GOSPEL AT MASS - AN ACTION RESERVED FOR THE PRIEST - IS SO OFFBEAM - HIB] ******************************************************************************* Nordic Breed says: 9 November 2013 at 12:07 pm God will judge the vocations directors and bishops who recruited and ordained these men. In our diocese the previous bishop not only screened out the orthodox men who also did not accept the idea that women could be priests, he actively recruited “progressives” and got himself the scandal of now defrocked Marek Bozek [WHO LEFT TO LEAD A BREAKAWAY CONGREGATION IN ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI - HIB], about whom much that was detrimental could have been known long before letting him set foot in the diocese if the bishop had only cared. May God have mercy on all of them and bring them to repentance before they die! boko fittleworth says: 9 November 2013 at 12:12 pm I agree with pannw. If they were indifferent, they would have accepted arch-conservatives as well as lefties. They’re also not incompetent. They’ve done a great job of bring the Church low. This guy didn’t get in because of indifference, he got in because of pas d’ennemi à gauche. END OF EXTRACTS
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 11, 2013 9:29:42 GMT
When I read the profile of the former Father Reynolds, I came out with a lot more sympathy for him than I started with. Not that I agree with him one iota, just that I am sorry that it has all come to this. I have contacts in the Australian Church, and although there have been a lot of solid bishops appointed in the past couple of decades, it was pretty wild territory up until then and the sort of theology taught in seminaries and other Catholic institutions in Australia was pretty wild. This was the type of situation that George Pell found himself in in Melbourne when he became Archbishop and he had the poker-like stand off with his seminary authorities. When they offered their resignations en masse, they had no idea he was prepared to call their bluff and accept them; but if they hadn't done so, he couldn't have done much about it.
I have friends (one of them now a PP in Queensland) who studied in Sydney/Melbourne in the 1980s (though the guy I'm principally talking about went to Rome later after a year in Ireland), and the stuff I heard was being taught in Australia made the sort of stuff one heard about in the US at the time very tame and the stuff I saw here in Ireland quite conservative (I must remark, I also knew a few German clerical students who did a year in Maynooth at the same time to improve their already excellent English and given they were way ahead of their Irish contemporaries in academic theology, this amounted to a doss year - these guys, who were no trads, criticised both Maynooth and Miltown for underselling Catholicism). Anyway, this is a longwinded comparison to say, I can understand how someone like Greg Reynolds could end up as he did. His initial theology was probably extremely wishy-washy (to say the least); his obvious spiritual orientation was probably not nurtured as it should have been through proper spiritual direction (seems to me the man probably had a vocation to the religious priesthood rather than diocesan priesthood) and he may not have gotten the sort of support he needed when he was a hermit. It is a very difficult way of life.
Having said all that, I wonder if laicisation and excommunication is the best solution, but suspension was obviously no use. Greg Reynolds could only operate among a small group of people anyway - I don't think he's playing on the same sort of stage as the likes of Fr Flannery here. I'm a bit afraid this is an example of the Curia taking on small fry to make an example in the hope that it will be a deterrant. But if there is a problem, it is due to the way that seminaries and religious houses went crazy over the decades immediately after the Second Vatican Council. In that sense, Mr Reynolds could well be more sinned against than sinning. So we should pray for him.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 19, 2014 22:01:05 GMT
A young journalist called Paddy Duffy has just published a book called DID THAT ACTUALLY HAPPEN? A JOURNEY THROUGH RIDICULOUS MOMENTS IN IRISH POLITICS. I happened to browse it in a bookshop recently, and I was surprised to discover that one of the "ridiculous moments" is the building of Knock Airport by Mgr Horan. Although Mr Duffy states at the end that Knock Airport has actually been highly successful, he nevertheless includes it as "ridiculous" simply because it strikes him as bizarre to have a priest involved in such a scheme, rather than just saying Mass. To judge from the photo on the profile linked below, Mr Duffy is quite young (in his 20s) but it is still very striking that he seems so utterly unaware of the long tradition of priests acting as community leaders and local power-brokers (not always in a good way) which survived until the late C20, especially in the West. He is from Donegal - has he never heard of Fr McDyer of Glencolumbkille, for example? Truly the past seems to be a foreign country, and we should not underestimate the historical ignorance of the younger generation. donegalnews.com/2013/10/irish-politics-is-new-challenge-for-paddy-duffy/
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 19, 2014 22:12:06 GMT
GArry O'Connor the theatre historian has just published an instant biography of BEnedict XVI. So instant is it that he gets the first names of Archbishop Lefebvre and JEan Marie Le Pen (whom he calls Philippe) wrong, and when talking about BEnedict's parents subscribing to the religious magazine DER GERADE WEG as exemplifying a "compartmentalised" mindset of pietism insulated from reality, he fails to realise that DER GERADE WEG was vehemently anti-Nazi and the Ratzingers' readership marks them as opponents of Nazism. (He does note the editor was shot by the Nazis, but he doesn't say why.) Doesn't look impressive. Couldn't he afford an editor?
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 21, 2014 20:24:15 GMT
The other day I was walking down Upper Dominick Street in Dublin (near St Saviour's - the Dominican priory) towards Parnell Street. Near the junction I saw what is a very unusual sight nowadays - three young Dominicans in their habits walking towards me. As they walked past me I heard a male voice just behind me ask "Are they Hare Krishnas"? A woman's voice replied that they were Franciscans. A minute or so later the speakers overtook me - they were a middle-aged couple. The fact that a middle-aged couple would not recognise Catholic friars in their habits when they saw them is an indication of how times have changed...
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