What is "secular society"?

[hedgehog]

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. Secular society is the society that loves religious leaders who tell them what

they want to hear.

Christ stated that the prophets were persecuted and killed for telling the truth come hell or high water, while the false prophets were always very popular. "Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets."

It is a good sign that Benedict arouses hatred as well as love and reverence. It means he's doing his job, not currying favour with the World, willy-nilly. On the other hand, despite the often warm approval of elderly Catholics who grew up as Catholics under his papacy, Pius XII represents for me the worst of the old, right-wing, Tridentine culture. In that regard, I take your point about 'blind obedience' in terms of the laity of that day.

[hedgehog]

2. But if Beneict is inspiring love and reverence from Pius XII's crowd.....

I am very irritated and disguisted by Christopher Hitchens and his ilk, but a retreat into triumphalism is the wrong way to answer them. Let the world take care of the world. Better we tend to building God's kingdom here on earth.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Agree totally. Its triumphalism has been a curse on the institutional Church.

Didn't the ancient Hebrews use to invoke Shiloh as the Lord's resting place, rather like Christ's commission of Peter has been invoked as a guarantee that the Church could do no wrong, and been used as a brazen front to cover up a multitude of sins. Of course, the Petrine commission needs to be read in the Gospels during the Mass, but it strikes me that the number of times it is read - is it three times in a year - seems to be 'protesting to much'? Just as clerical garb seems a misinterpretation of Christ's message, namely, that we must distinguish ourselves not be wearing long robes, phylacteries, etc, but by the degree of our IDENTIFICATION with our fellows and their interests. Not the externals of a cheap popularity, but, for example, what the priests, nuns and people are doing in poor countries (including the UK and US) to help the people in their struggles against tyrannies. Scripture abounds with injunctions to do just that, particularly in the Lent readings.

I don't think it's been at all helpful either to priests or people, with regard to the Church's dealings with the pedophilia scandal and seemingly endless cover-ups, nor the notion that the priest is said to become Christ at the consecration of the Sacred Host. Like lay-people, the priest can only ever be "another Christ" by adoption, never as the person of Christ in his own own right.

It seems to me the case that a Church that effectively condones despotisms, notably in South America, will express its own complicity in extreme violence in other ways; hence the reputation of the Christian Brothers and a host of other Catholic institutions under the Tridentine regime. I was particularly struck by the account of a former SAS soldier of a visit he made to his old Catholic infants' school, just gazing at it from the outside. Bizarre as it may sound, he was moved to tears at the memory of the brutality shown to them by their teachers, as wee sprogs. His father had been the bare-knuckle boxing champion of Glasgow, so his background was hardly namby-pamby. Nor was he out to settle an old score. It was simply mentioned in passing.

At the age of six, I attended a Catholic primary school for a year and have no personal, bad memories of it, but rather a good memory of a nun who taught us. Well, a young lad from an orphanage did snatch a little toy Christmas tree from me and ran off with it, and I was cut up no end about it, though looking back now, I'm glad for him. But what also sticks in my memory is a lay teacher hitting one of my little class-mates with a ruler because he couldn't answer a question. Even at the age of six, that struck me as immensely stupid, as well as cruel.

Of course, abuses of both kinds have by no means been confined to Catholic institutions, but the inordinate impression of violence
under the Tridentine regime has struck me very strongly.

But some of your positions on the Church just amaze me. Neither you nor Matilda seem to grasp that the World is represented at least as much by liberals with their own agendas, as by ruthless right-wingers. You seem to want to "go along to get along", and use the Church as a whipping boy to curry favour with them. It's chalk and cheese, and Christian scripture is quite explicit about that.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Do yu really suppose that all the Catholics in whom Pius XII inspired love

and reverence were bad Christians? If so you are very naive, indeed.

[hedgehog]

5. Christians aren't perfect. The real question is why did some people love

and revere Pius XII? It could be for a good reason, or it could be a form of idolatry.

[Matilda]

6. It was possibly the office that they revered rather than the man himself.

It's worth remembering that prior to John XXIII, Popes traditionally kept themselves aloof from the world. They
seldom left the Vatican except for the annual holiday to Castel Gandalfo. They weren't seen on television, and
there was no fostering of any personal histories. Popes likes Pius were seldom seen except as an occasional distant
figure at a window. They WERE the office more than they were an individual.

I remember reading in a biog of John XXIII that shortly after his election, he announced his intention of taking
an afternoon walk in the Vatican gardens. The officials were horrified: "But, Holy Father, people might see you!"
"Don't worry", said John. "I won't do anything to shock them".

That was the beginning of change....