Monday, January 26, 2009
Catholics
Obama, our imminent abject poverty and the final collapse of Brown over the weekend aside, this is the biggest story of the moment. Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic, makes the case against Pope Benedict's actions here and here. 'Bishop' Williamson denies the Holocaust on the basis of the evidence of Fred Leuchter. I saw Leuchter on television a while back. He seems to be a bit Jeff if you know what I mean. Williamson also thinks 9/11 was a Jewish plot and women should not wear trousers. This is a big story because of the issue of Benedict's motives. Why bring this shower back into the fold just now? Is it because Israel's global image is at an all time low? Anti-semitism has tended to move to the left lately but Williamson and his friends seem such a toxic package that one can imagine all sorts of leftish priests, in, for example, Latin America, finding this intolerable. I'm speculating, partly in ignorance, but this is just to say that such tensions in the mightiest institution on the planet are worth noting.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
further evidence there is (probably) no god...
ReplyDeleteThere is, Bryan, in all churches/religions those who sit at the walls of the Nave. And I do not know if it is the coldness of the position or just natural inclination that gives them the feeling they are the rightful deposit for the True.
ReplyDeleteSince the Election of John-Paul the CC has move from a America centric to a eastern one. This gave it a massive shift to the right. And where those you referred, who were so outside to the right were now not so far outside. But the shift dropped a huge chunk of the left well outside the walls.
And due to the length of the Reign of J-P, he managed to pack each and every Diocese with men who held his views regardless of their ability.
Personally, I think Benedict is a bit more inclusive for it is not what he does with this type of thing, but his appointments, his legacy. Also, He is merrily pulling the industrial strength Bishops to Rome, it seems any of them who begin Excommunication proceedings are shifted to the Curia soon enough employed sawing sawdust.
ian, in this area more than most it's important to take into account Sturgeon’s Revelation
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the weft and warp of politics the religious johnnies can still show their secular opposite numbers how to do it. Trouble down t'works again, anyone really care?
ReplyDeletecatholic collectivism will keep the flock together.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it useful to ask the first question we put when diagramming a sentence: What or whom are we talkings about? The excommunication that was lifted did not address Williamson's goofy views in the first and lifting has no bearing on same; it had to do principally with the matters of liturgy, and Benedict is trying to revive the traditional Mass, a spectacular example of which I attended yesterday. That is what is important about the story.
ReplyDeleteThis also shoots Williamson's fox, as he has absolutely no intention of taking instructions from Rome. His position is essentially sede vacantist ( to be a tad esoteric) and,if anything, he believes he is the Pope more than Benedict. He converted straight from Anglicanism to the schismatic crew that is the SSPX, without troubling to touch down in the Catholic church as it is understood in Rome. The SSPX are Jansenists (being a mainly French outfit, that has more meaning to them than it would to us) but most of them would like to be considered Catholic. Williamson has only one place to go and that is to set up his own little schism of a schism.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, I think Benny has been quite smart. He reinforces his liturgical 'reform of the reform', while at the same time forcing the SSPX to put up or shut up.
Maybe the pope is simply reflecting his nazi days. Perhaps this catholic bishop only reflects the pope's own thinking on these issues. Antisemitism is quite common in the catholic hierarchy in the US so none of this particularly surprising.
ReplyDeleteAnd the next day was of Holocaust Memorial, 65 years from the liberation of Auschwitz. On hearing the Chief Rabbi on Thought for the Day I remembered an exciting escape story from four years ago. You could say it touched on the ambiguities of the Catholic position. It should be more widely known. Particularly by those whose experience leads them to say (possibly with dark rage) that there is no god.
ReplyDelete