Catching up with the news
After being in Turkey for two weeks and in recovery mode for one week, I am finally catching up with the news. I have ploughed my way through about 150 pages of news and commentary, including the print outs of all your blogs (dear readers) which you have posted over the last three weeks. A rather monumental job.
From all this, I have gathered that
a) the Motu has not been released;
b) the Lineamenta for next years Synod has;
c) the world has not blown up.
Hopefully, therefore, before my readership metre descends to 20000 leagues under the sea, Sentire Cum Ecclesia will once again be in operative mode and you will be able to return here for the most insightful and humourous commentary on all sorts of ecclesiastical trivia.
Bottom line: Don't stop visiting this page!
posted by Schütz @ 8:14 am
3 Comments
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3 Comments:
I haven't stopped visiting this page, Bruder Schuetz! Actually I rather enjoyed your accounts of the trip to Turkey. Apart from all the religious stuff too, it brought to mind, recalling your saying it was your first time outside of your own country, what a great experience it was for me to see things outside of mine. That was in 1969, and included a lot of what then was called Western Europe -- Ireland, Mother England, the Netherlands, West Germany, Austria, Italy (yes, including Rome, the Revolution, er, Vatican II, had just concluded its formal sessions and the figurative blood of the faithful was still fresh but the full viciousness of the hounds of hell was yet to be released by Montini) and Spain.
These days, being a widower with young children does not allow for such travel. But we have two things: the Internet and languages. Something of the same thing -- something of but admittedly not the same thing -- can be had on the Internet. I visit a number of sites from outside the US with a different point of view and world view than one encounters here. I began this during Bosnia, which was an enitrely different thing depending on whom you read.
As to languages, I guess I have assumed from your background that you also speak German. Did you have the opportunity to learn a little of the local languages where you went? Personally, I think learning some other language should be a normal part of education, and I don't mean a couple of years worth. It is of great value to learn along with the language of things not directly or exactly expressed in one's own.
I'm sure the experience was a transforming one. Speaking more personally than professionally. On the religious stuff, "dialogue" between Christian heterodoxy and non Christian religion really ought to be fruitful since they are more alike than not in that neither confesses the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I wonder if Peter, in that first "urbi et orbi" on Pentecost, worried about being "intemperate". But, before I draw an accusation of being hysterical (which I literally cannot be, and given the literal meaning of the word I wonder why it has escaped the attention of the politically correct thought and language police) I'll say again I'm speaking more person to person of the value of seeing things be it through travel, Internet or language from other than one's usual vantage point.
Reminds me of a comment of Saint-Exupery, in Wind, Sand and Stars (I think, may be wrong) that having flown for his country he can understand another man flying for his. We can still have tea, even if we wear different uniforms. Apart from the uniform and what it represents, there's usually a person inside with everyday concerns not much different than mine.
You also reminded me of one of the most interesting people I ever knew, a Turk from an area where most are ethnically Iranian. To the Iranians he was a Turk, and to the Turks he was an Iranian, or at least so it felt to him. I have no idea what his religion was; it never came up. What a great guy!
Anyway, glad you're back and glad you went. I came to the site to-day to decompress, having just linkd to the site of another convert to "Catholicism", this one an American from what is called Evangelical Christianity here, but with apparently different rules of engagement than yours and an immersion in the "the church is the church so this has to be the church" Catch-22 that reminded me of what we used to call "invincible ignorance", apparently from discovering what he doesn't understand are the signs that what he converted to isn't Catholicism at all. You don't either, but ain't gonna be no tea with that guy! Maybe that's where the reasonable and sane part comes in. You're real as a person to me, apart from the matters on which we clearly disagree. So I came to enjoy and decompress from an all too familiar experience.
Fact is, if you can get your Papa Benny to join us, I'd even dust off my Minnesota descended Bavarian dialect (still somewhat understandable in Bavaria, at least as of 1969, and I'm English descended for crying out loud!), cook the sausages and look forward to a hell of a good time!
Glad you're still there, Past Elder. Things had gone quiet for a bit.
Not only Christian Heterodoxy but also Christian Orthodoxy also has something to say to other faiths and philosophical ideas. In fact, it probably has even more to say. To quote Jesus on this, "Were it not so, would I have told you?"
Well indeed Christian Orthodoxy (not as a denominational reference!) has a lot to say to other faiths and ideas. It's called L2aw and Gospel. It's exemplified in Acts 2:14-41 by Peter and Acts 17:22-34 by Paul. It's summed up in Acts 4:12 -- And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
Anyone claiming to be apostolic with a message other than the Apostles' is an impostor and a false teacher. Anyone claiming to represent Christ with another message is anti-Christ, at least with a small a.
So, do you speak German? Did you pick up a little Turkish? I always made it a resolve to use English as a last resort. But in my case I had a head start. None of the countries I have visited speak a language outside of at least a language family I know! Midwestern English may not be the Queen's English but you'll do just fine in Mother England, Minnesota Deutsch may get you some looks in Germany but you won't miss any meals, Puerto Rican Spanish works just fine in Spain, Italian is kind of like incredibly bad Spanish, and French is, well, French and I think they preferred to switch to English rather than mutilate French. Which I do twice over, since I had French in childhood from a Russian who spoke it at court before the Revolution (the Russian one, not Vatican II!) so I probably speak a little Russian accented French with an American accent. Oh well, at least my Latin is with a pure eccelesiastical accent! And, should we ever have that tea, my Aussie idioms are pretty good too having roomed with Crocodile Dundee, so to speak, for some years, but you'll get them with a Midwestern American accent!
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