I can't resist it...
I have to say something about Brian Coyne's letter to the Papal Nuncio in Catholica. I have no news whatsoever about the rumours to which he refers (I'm not THAT well connected--and if I knew something like that it wouldn't be worth my job to open my mouth about it!), but I was interested in his rhetoric. Try this on for size:
My own journal is principally not a news journal but a journal of opinion and an initiative from a group of like-minded lay people who are endeavouring to reach out to the educated sections of the 85% who have become highly disillusioned with the institutional Church.I take it he means the 85% who put themselves down as Catholics on the Census but don't go to mass. Is he saying that all of these 85% are the educated ones and the rest of us are the dolts? No, I don't think so. But he is aiming only at the "educated sections" of these 85%. That's good. Leaves the other 84% for us remaining 15% as we go about the program of re-evangelising the Church.
Archbishop Chaput — the extremist and fundamentalist Capuchin Bishop from DenverI get it. Faithful, obedient, dutiful, evangelicalistic, magisterial = "extremist and fundamentalist". Go Your Grace! Whoo, whoo!
I suggest to you, Your Excellency, that there are an increasing body of educated Catholics in this country who are no longer prepared to be treated as "little children" and idiots.Well, there are days when I feel like an idiot, but in general, I will always be happy to be considered one of the "little children" for the likes of whom the Kingdom of Heaven is prepared.
posted by Schütz @ 2:20 pm
10 Comments
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10 Comments:
David, I couldn't agree more. At the last day I pray my heart will still be molded into the likes of the "little ones" whom Christ held so dear.
Archbishop Chaput? I eagerly await and read his meditations every week in his Diocesan publication. May his tribe increase, he is a faithful servant of the Lord and the Lord's people.
Well, in other news, the director of a local Jesuit university's Center for Marriage and Family, and a professor emeritus in Catholic theology at the same university, in conjunction with an instructor in ethics at the same university, published an article in US Catholic stating that Catholics should have the ability to live to-gether before marriage, a right of betrothal should be brought about and this would be more faithful to Catholic tradition which only changed about the 14th century. The bishop (archbishop, actually) said the position flatly contradicts Catholic teaching, disassociated the archdiocese from the Center, the archdiocesan chancellor said whatever the 14th century the last 500 years is clear (apparently his moral position is a result of Newmanian doctrinal development I guess), and the university said it respects both the "academic freedom of its faculty to dialogue on societal issues" and the archbishop as the final say in his jurisdiction on moral theology.
Gotta love it. Post conciliar Catholicism rides again, and everybody goes on a "good Catholic". For the record, an LCMS pastor and school director said couples who live to-gether can either get married or separate until they are.
It's so great to read this stuff and not be involved except as another guy reading the local paper instead of trying to play head games that it's OK because offically it's one way but actually it's another.
Dear me, Brian has a funny way of quashing rumours, doesn't he?
Yeah, an open letter to the nuncio should do it!
Diogenes over at Catholic World News has a name for this. It's called "the olive branch in the eye", when an act of aggression or demand masquerades as an act of honesty or unity.
Tell me, Your Holiness, have you stopped beating your bishops yet?
I like that expression "olive branch in the eye". I will have to remember it...
Past Elder, has it ever occured to you that the type of thing you criticise may indeed have been going on for centuries, but that with our communication technology today, it is easier to collect examples of it? Are you justified in saying "This never happened before Vatican II"?
And at least the Bishop, who as your story points out "has the final say", has had his say quite clearly, I reckon. The act of denouncing the false teaching and disocciating the Centre from the Archdiocese seems to be a reasonable response. What more do you expect? The Jesuits to denounce one of their own?
Jumping Judas Priest! Had I said "This never happened before Vatican II" I would not be justified, except I did not say that. Look at many of Luther's teachers -- foaming Occamists, retching nominalists a lot of them.
Of course false teachings has been around for centuries. What is different is that councils used to be called to refute and condemn them, not promulgate them.
Great, the Archbishop has had his say along with his chancellor. So the "faith of the apostles" is safe within the halls of the chancery, the Centre will continue as it has, most Catholic couples will live to-gether before marriage, the Jesuit university will have it both ways with "academic freedom" to teach non Catholic morality as Catholic and to uphold the ruddy bishop, and at the end of the day it all means nothing and everybody gets to go home a "good Catholic".
From this, O Lord, deliver me!
And bring back the Church Police, I say!
Brian Coyne continues to confirm his status as a comic sideshow at the shallow end of the aging left.
PS: I don't think "Your Grace" is correct usage for an American archbishop.
Maybe I need to visit the optometrist, but I think Mr Coyne's term of address was "Your Excellency", which is appropriate for bishops and archbishops. "Your Grace" is more typically an Anglican custom.
Mr Coyne may be a comic sideshow at the shallow end of the ageing left. I suppose if I were still RC I would like to tell myself that.
His thoughts on the matter strike me, regardless of that, as different than those of the vast majority of Catholics I have known over 57 years only in that he spends the time to articulate and publish them.
Bring back the Church Police? Bring back Sister Kane!
RE terms of address for bishops.
The explanation is simple. In English lands, the term "Your Grace" is used for an Archbishop, and "My Lord" for a Bishop, on the analogy of the ancient House of Lords in the English Parliament. The two Archbishops (Canterbury and York) were seated with the Dukes, who were addressed as "Your Grace". The rest of the bishops had the status of ordinary "lords". This custom is not "Anglican" as opposed to "Catholic" but "English" as opposed to "Continental". The term "Your Excellency" is no less a secular term on analogy to nobility on the continent than the term "Your Grace" is in England and her colonies.
Will wonders never cease. Now I agree with Peter on something!
Of course Anglican usage follows English custom. If memory serves, Anglican is an adjective for the Church of England.
In this former colony (or rather these former colonies), the Catholic Church had a bit of a rough go here and there vis a vis the emerging American transplant of the state church from Mother England (as did other English denominations) and so the American Catholic Church follows the Continental, as you call it, usage, since the great majority of Catholic immigrants in the early years came from there, not England.
I don't think any American bishops or archbishops would really get too upset about it, nonetheless, "Excellency" is the usual reference at least here. I don't know about the Catholic custom in Mother England herself or other parts of the Commonwealth.
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