Thursday, December 31, 2015

Endings

A conservative Catholic blog I read has been responding to the recent Vatican document --even though it came from way down the food chain-- which basically tells Catholics to give up any efforts to convert Jews. The functional result of this in the real world is to complete the capitulation of the Church of Rome to yet one more group with a victimist grievance to wave at the West. I await the eventual announcement that since Vatican II said Muslims and Christians worship the same God, they, too, should be declared off limits.

In real life, of course, I have about zero interest in converting Muslims or Jews to Catholicism, but I have a lot of interest in one more Western backbone institution cutting its own throat to please people who hate it.

Thus contextualized, a comment I left at that blog:

Although I have not practiced Catholicism for several decades, it dominated --I used the word factually and without any animus-- my life for my first forty years on earth. Despite my departure from the fold, I realize that, unsurprisingly, I retain some very highly Catholic attitudes, especially since this old altar boy was in his teens before VaticanII erupted. I remember in my bones when it was The One True Church, something I believe that few Catholics now living have any sense of . Anyway, despite whatever bad behavior Catholics have engaged in over two very human millennia, to me The Church has remained functionally eternal. As I said to a Lutheran friend, I may be an apostate Roman but at least I am no Protestant.
 What has shaken my assumption is reviewing the last 50 years in light of what I can only call the antics of the incumbent Pope, whose gift for confusion is unparalleled.
I am not ignorant of Church history, but I cannot recall a previous period in which the Church seemed so willing, eager even, to divest itself of its identifying marks in order to please a surrounding culture that defines itself by its loathing of Christianity.  The cultured despisers that Schliermacher knew were polite by comparison to our contemporaries.
And one of those hostile elements is the Jews. Rome seems to forget that in the real world, the vast majority of Jews (the dominant Ashkenazim anyway) have abandoned their ancient religion in favor of various forms of this-worldly leftist utopianism. If you can find an organization or movement committed to unraveling the Western world’s traditional cultures that is not over-represented with secular Jews, please let me know.
So the placating attitude of the formerly One True Church toward a people whose identity is now based upon an alienated sense of outrage and an almost genetic hatred of Christianity makes me wonder if in fact the Church of Rome really is just one more religious empire that will eventually fade away into history. 
And lest anyone have a fainting spell about the phantom sin of “anti-Semitism,” I use the RC-Jewish dance as just one example. The bizarre desire of a dying German church to please the divorced-remarried by altering the structure of marriage is another…and of the Church’s treasonous support for filling Europe with alien Muslims and Africans I will not speak, lest I dig myself deeper into perdition. 
It is deeply saddening even to an old reprobate like me, that the West’s collapse of self-confidence should have now infected the institution that for 1500 years was our backbone and soul.

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3 comments:

-A said...

Stellar comment. Of course, because it is so erudite and because it is so true, you have hundreds of condemnations a platitudes to look forward to before it is removed and you are banned for life from the forum. They will then all agree with each other all day how fantastic Vatican II is and believe whole heartedly that just showing a little bit of Catholic love to the Muslims and Jews will make everything as it should be. Crusades are for evil men of the past.

-A

Anonymous said...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this technically heresy? The command handed down from Jesus was for the Apostles to preach to "all the nations"- which, as the New Testament clearly shows, included the Jews. The New Testament also shows that Jewish hostility towards Christians is old as Christianity itself- 'twas the Jews who called for the execution of Jesus and accepted the blame for all time, after all.

Now this document declares that Jews are off limits to attempts at evangelization. Whether the Vatican realizes it- or wishes to admit it- this could be construed that the Vatican has decided to disobey the command of Jesus for political gain. What was it about gaining the world at the cost of one's soul? Alternatively, it could be taken that the Vatican now considers Jews to not be in need of salvation, which is rankest heresy.

P.S. I know it's a tad hypocritical of me of all people to accuse the Vatican of heresy, but hey, I'm not charged with upholding the doctrine of the Church and leading the flock. I can at least recognize when they aren't doing their damn job.

P.P.S. It's a bad day when I start to wonder if the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are right about the whole "Catholic Church= Whore of Babylon" thing.

-Sean

-A said...

Happy New Year Sean and ExC.

-A

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