So it turns out the once vaunted 'Fortnight of Freedom' will be reduced to 'Serving Other in God's Love.' 'Fortnight of Freedom' apparently has too much of a 'culture war' vibe about it.
I've found that, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, when not embracing the dictates of the Left, just talk about God and Love and Love and God and stuff. Use 'Love' a lot. Of course when walking with the Left, feel free to use the Left's harshest rhetoric and condemnations. But if the point somehow runs afoul of modernity? Just say 'Love' over and over. It worked for the Beatles when they weren't singing about those seventeen year old girls.
BTW, by 'culture wars', we now usually mean siding with issues opposed to the Left. I notice that those who say 'I'm done with the culture wars!' often have no problem parroting the Left's side of the culture wars. They just don't call those 'culture wars.' Like the word 'Religion' usually means wrong in the mouth of a liberal, so 'Culture Wars' now means wrong for the postmodern, non-conservative pundit.
Anyway, the Fortnight of Freedom was for the American Catholic Church perhaps the last gasp of resistance before capitulation became the norm. A reaction to the Obama administration's naked assault on religious liberty, it was already a little past its time. At our parish, the priest apologized for having to read the proclamation, explained the bishops were making him do it, breezily read it, and then almost ceremoniously tucked it away never to mention it again. Some Catholics, along with Evangelicals and other conservatives, came to the protests. But on the whole, the Church was starting to buckle and surrender.
Today the space between the Catholic Church and the post-Christian Left is growing exceedingly thin. Increasingly it's difficult to find too many points of departure. Oh there's still the whole Trinity thing and the nature of Christ and all and the Immaculate Conception as good as always, but the Left doesn't care about those silly things anyway. Where the Faith hits the road of life, however, there is becoming little where one can distinguish between the Left and the Church.
I do believe we are living at the cusp of the Great Apostasy of the Christian Era.
Some Observations:
ReplyDeleteGlenn Reynolds of Instapundit: "Well, they’ve proven themselves unable to maintain a community of faith in the U.S., so I guess they need to import a bunch of Catholic immigrants from Mexico and Central America to make up the difference."
While I don't agree with the overall sentiment, I do agree with one thing is that the bishops in the US have failed in their leadership in the US and I don't understand that, more of the same "social justice gospel" isn't going to start working when it has failed, low these 50 years, to invigorate the church. The Church's social teaching that starts with Leo XIII and onward, condemns socialism and IMHO should be taught as part of the Church's moral theology, not in place of it. This sad attempt to not be confrontational, what?, when did Jesus ever backdown from a confrontation? Jordan Peterson, and may it please the Good Lord that Bishop Robert Barron isn't the only one paying attention, points out that sending out young people to protest who haven't accomplished anything, is just wrong. That to expect the world to pay attention to you when you don't have your act together, is silly, is a lesson that the USCCB could do well to learn. While there are a few fine ones, taken as group, it's well. When the general portfolio, of a typical diocese, is closing parishes, 25% attendance, 3 quarters empty seminaries, and yet another sex scandal, don't be surprised when the world shrugs. The shepherds have allowed the wolves to scatter the sheep.
What I can't figure out with the Catholic leadership is why they would follow in the footsteps of what has destroyed so many Protestant denominations. Ross Douthat said it best when he pointed out that every time a Western monotheistic tradition compromises with the Left, the monotheistic tradition dies.
DeleteI think there is a fundamental problem with priestly formation, in that it tends to produce priest who are introverts. The kind of work that needs to be done in regards to getting butts in pews, doesn't seem amenable to that kind of personality.
DeleteSpeaking of Ross Douthat "During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”