Reading the Pray Tell blog, which dishonestly promises "Worship, Wit and Wisdom", I sometimes feel like King Herod, who had no intention of following what the Baptist said, but liked listening to him while he condemned him.
I long ago concluded that the RC Church was not going to have female priests, married priests, or say it was ok to be gay or be on the pill. I adjusted my life accordingly. Nothing in the intervening years –evanescent blips notwithstanding—has made me change my mind. These things seem as unlikely to me as corporate reunion with the more-than-ever-fragmented Anglican “Communion”. Which has become a kind of cautionary tale of what can happen when you do embrace the above items.
The populist egalitarian obsessions of the post-Marxist liberal West will not, IMHO, be welcomed into the bimillennial Catholic/Orthodox Churches. For that you have to go to cobwebbed and dotty Canterbury or the other restless and groovy progeny of the Reformation. So I am both fascinated and incredulous to observe people who keep hoping that the Camelot interpretation of Vatican II is waiting just around the corner. Or for the next pope. Etc. Hence, my kinship with King Herod.
The blog editor monk must agree with me, since my last two comments have been removed.
Since I am visiting family in NY, the Sunday Times has arrived. I never read it unless I am here in its native turf. Its provincial world view remains startlingly unaltered. The Book Review front page features a history of the Papacy by "an agnostic Protestant non-scholar", reviewed by a self-described "collapsed Catholic." (Can you imagine them featuring a similar work on Islam with similar writers and reviewers? Of course you can't.) No surprises. The few great popes "were outnumbered by the corrupt, inept, venal, lecherous and mediocre." But a closing paragraph is apt:
It is now well over a half a century since progressive Catholics have longed to see their church bring itself into the modern age. With the accession of every succeeding pontiff they have raised their hopes that some progress might be made on the leading issues of the day -- on homosexuality, on contraception, on the ordination of women priests. And each time they have been disappointed.
So when women there on PT dismiss the settled teaching of Rome on female ordination with a wave of the hand reference to Emily Litella, or the unserious fantasy that "Godde" is female, or some wholly unappealing remark that “someday the Pope(s) will have to answer to the pain these women must feel*, because a call is a call”…or when their male allies compare the Vatican with the Kremlin, I just shake my head. And am glad I made my choice all those years ago.
What I really want to say to them is, “Grow up.”
*Men having to "answer" for women's pain: feminism-as-revenge, in a nutshell.
_________________
3 comments:
Dear King Herod,
Don't you think, ultimately, the same writers and reviewers *do* provide the Western educated-class's interpretation of true Islam, namely a social-justice spirituality indistinguishable from social-justice Christianity.
Just as Teresa of Avila is a forerunner of today's Catholic feminism, so are Muhammad's wives forerunners of today's Islamic feminism (which flourishes wherever Western bigotry and foreign policy doesn't compel Muslims to turn to 'radical' Islam).
er
P.S. Doesn't this indicate a considerable valuation shift:
»The few great popes "were outnumbered by the corrupt, inept, venal, lecherous and mediocre."«
1. "Greatness" in (non-Prot?) Christian religious institution-building is a permitted goal according to 'collapsed Catholics' and the 'agnostic Protestant'
2. The papacy isn't faulted for homophobic, misogynist patriarchal oppressiveness etc but only corruption, ineptness, venality, lechery and mediocrity. And this even though obviously competent patriarchalists are the worst nightmare for anti-patriarchalists, who should prefer their cultural enemies incompetent, corrupt, mediocre etc.
er
I wonder, will neo-Islam face a day of reckoning similar to that of Western Christianity for foundationally claiming to be social-justice egalitarianism with a religious add on, liberational socialism at prayer?
When one examines the documents of V2 and certainly the new catechism, one doesn't find an endorsement of socialism, but somehow the message during V2 times is that Catholic Christianity is an anti-authoritarian or even protest spirituality (cf e.g. the priest in "On the Waterfront" -- apparently during the post-war years American Catholics had a lobby at Hollywood to promote such presentations of the RC priesthood).
Will Muslims in the West internalize the message that Islam is basically valid because it promotes egalitarianism?
Cf Mullah Mulcahey on M*A*S*H.
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