"Catholic" commentator Garry Wills, who has clearly transcended Catholicism ..and even orthodox Protestantism..("There is one God and Jesus is one of his prophets.") whines about the Catholicity of the Pope...and the Catholicity of Catholicism, which he now finds, as a "Catholic," one big huge mistake.
Based on his reading of the Bible (except for the parts, like Hebrews, he doesn't like.)
I am reminded of HL Mencken's wise words in his wonderful 1923 essay Holy Writ:
Whoever it was who translated the Bible into excellent French prose is chiefly responsible for the collapse of Christianity in France. Contrariwise, the men who put the Bible into archaic, sonorous and often unintelligible English gave Christianity a new lease of life wherever English is spoken. They did their work at a time of great theological blather and turmoil, when men of all sorts, even the least intelligent, were beginning to take a vast and unhealthy interest in exegetics and apologetics.The whole thing --whose last line accurately predicted the shape of Vatican II's liturgical reforms--can be read here.
This cavalier and narcissistic* Garry Wills kind of stuff, where you read a few books and write a few books and then decide that when you eviscerate a 2000 year old religion, that you're actually finding its True Self, rather than your own reflection, really leaves me speechless.
*PS Santayana compared Catholicism with Protestantism by way of the contrasting images of a complex Baroque Roman fountain and a deep rural well. Not difficult to guess which one he preferred. His sincere and anguished Protestant sought to find the truth all by himself, his own moralizing and guilty ego, and in the end drew up a pail of muddy water in which he only saw his own reflection.
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'via Blog this'
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