Out of Ireland "New Vatican campaign to clamp down on 'liberal opinion'

[hedgehog]

The nine-member team led by two cardinals will be instructed by the Vatican to restore a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics for their priests, the Irish Independent has learned.

Priests will be told not to question in public official church teaching on controversial issues such as the papal ban on birth control or the admission of divorced Catholics living with new partners to the sacraments -- especially Holy Communion.

Theologians will be expected to teach traditional doctrine by constantly preaching to lay Catholics of attendance at Mass and to return to the practice of regular confession, which has been largely abandoned by adults since the 1960s.

An emphasis will be placed on an evangelisation campaign to overcome the alienation of young people scandalised by the spate of sexual abuse of children and by later cover-ups of paedophile clerics by leaders of the institutional church. "

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/new-vatican-campaign-to-clamp-down-on-liberal-opinion-2210401.html

[Matilda]

1. It shows how much the hierarchy still have to learn.

You can't impose respect; it has to be earned.

And once people have learned to start thinking for themsleves, it's pretty hard to get them to stop.

[hedgehog]

2. I think the only Hell Catholics left are in the hierarchy.

"Hell Catholic": Someone who follows the rules of the Catholic Church in order to avoid going to Hell.


The rest of us are Catholics because we love God.

[Angry Dragon]

3. As an outsider

I often wonder why the people(who really are the church) do not force the issue and raise their voices and demand change.

Or is it possible that the Vatican does not want to hear you and then you might be forced to have another Reformation??

My position would be that ones' belief in God is a very personal thing and yet it seems that the church wants to control every aspect of your lives. When I think of Jesus Christ I think of a man that wandered around to different cities and told people what he had on his mind. He told them he had a better way of thinking and believing. He was a liberal, yet your church is so tied to tradition, pomp, and a great deal of show.

There are a great many Catholics that care about others, concern for nature, yet it seems these things get lost for the other things happening within the church.

[hedgehog]

4. I think some sort of reformation is indeed underway.

The phrase that is now current in some circles is "reforming the reform, i.e. the push from many (most?) in the priesthood to return to the pre-Vatican II Church. ("Priesthood" includes priests, bishops and the Pope). The question is what will most of the laity do, go along, walk away or find a third option?

It all boils down to the question, Do you need a hierarchy to be a Catholic? When I think "Catholic", I think of a belief in an immanent, personal God who (if I may steal a phrase) is still talking, in a special unity with God and each other engendered by the Eucharist, in the goodness of all Creation.

When others think "Catholic", they think of strict obedience to the Pope and his appointees and representatives.

[Matilda]

5. Do most priests want a return to pre-Vatican II days?

It's certainly not true in my parish, but our priests are Jesuits, who have always had their own way of thinking, and have long been a thorn in the side of the Vatican. So I'm not often exposed to the views of priests in other orders.


In Australia, and particularly in Sydney, the progressive views generally rule. That's why Cardinal Pell was sent up from Melbourne – to keep the unruly Sydney crowd in order. I don't think he's really succeeded.

I suspect though that most priests probably prefer not to play politics. Those who stick their necks out are apt to have their heads chopped off by the Vatican hierarchy. That's where the rot is. They have the power, and they want to keep it.

[hedgehog]

6. Isn't Pell headed to the Vatican so he can share his views

with the rest of us?

:-(


I think you're right about a lot of Jesuits -the ones I know are pretty cool. Right after Benedict became Pope, he forced them to replace the editor of their magazine "America" which is influential in Church circles here. Lately, "America" has been wandering away from the Vatican.

[Matilda]

7. Fortunately for Catholics everywhere, Pell's appointment has been blocked.

He was rumoured to be about to be offered the job of Prefect for the Congregation for Bishops, which would no doubt have resulted in the appointment of more conservative bishops all over the world.

Insiders think it's down to Vatican politics – they want an Italian in the job. Very interesting, considering that Pell worked closely with Benedict in the Holy Office, and supposedly he was Benedict's choice for the job.

Edited to add: Yes, generally our priests are cool, and very progressive. And certainly intellectually stimulating. I do wonder how I'd cope in a conservative parish after nearly thirty years in a Jesuit parish. They do encourage us to think outside the square.

[hedgehog]

8. What can I say about Pell but:

:fistbump:

Here's a comment on the quality of bishops here in the States in recent years:

The death of Williams Borders, retired archbishop of Baltimore, this past April at age 96 has dramatized the acute change in the composition of the U.S. hierarchy over the past 30 years, that is, since the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978 and the departure of Archbishop Jean Jadot, Apostolic Delegate to the United States, in 1980.

So marked and long-lasting has the change been that many Catholics today, clergy, religious, and laity alike, tend to view many, if not most, bishops as ciphers at best, hopeless reactionaries at worst. To such Catholics, bishops are irrelevant to the life and mission of the church, and to their own lives as well.

This week's column offers a reminder that this was not always the case.

Taking the various U.S. dioceses in alphabetical order, here is a representative sample of retired or deceased bishops, many of whom have served the church in America with uncommon pastoral zeal and who are fondly and gratefully remembered by many in their dioceses.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/essays-theology/us-bishops-better-time

[Matilda]

9. Interesting article, hedgehog.

I also read the comments from people - what a shock the Vatican would get if they ever bothered to really pay attention to pages like this. I'm sure they do have people who comb through websites to pick up what's being said, but it would only be with an eye to calling the writers to order.

I so agree with those posters who made negative comments about John Paul II. Although he gave an impression at the beginning of being modern and progressive, I don't forget that in his youth he was an actor, and he obviously learned a lot of useful techniques for communicating. I don't believe it was real though, and in his later years the veneer dropped. He did so much damage to the Church with his appointments of numerous conservative Cardinals, ensuring that they in turn would make like-minded apppointments and so continue the process of reaction that he had started.

As one writer pointed out, JPII appointed bishops solely on their willingness to actively promote such doctrines as birth control, and not for any outstanding abilities they might possess. Had he appointed more bishops on merit, we might have more who are able to energise their parishes, and we wouldn't have the same problems of non-attendance that we have today.

[hedgehog]

10. JPII had a really strange family life since his mother died when he

was very young. I can imagine him growing up thinking she was a saint. Then, he became friends with a female doctor who'd survived the death camps. She has some very strange ideas on married life, and he took her advice as Gospel.

Of course, the real problem was/is that too many bishops think that by banning birth control, they keep control over the flocks!

[Matilda]

11. I do think that Paul VI was a good man

who had the best intentions, and wasn't nearly as hardline as JPII
or Benedict, but he got it so wrong with birth control. He went
against the majority of his bishops with that decision, and it was
a huge mistake. Most western Catholics ignore it, the sky didn't fall,
and the power of the papacy was weakened. They'd have to
excommunicate two-thirds of Catholics if they wanted to enforce the rules.

[hedgehog]

12. It wasn't so much that the Papacy was weakened because people didn't obey.

People didn't obey because the Pope was wrong. It was the motives behind the decision that undermined the Papacy when it became more and more clear it was an attempt to move power back to Rome away from the bishops.

[Matilda]

13. Mmm - I think Paul made his decision from what he considered

to be a genuine upholding of scriptural teaching. He apparently wrestled with this issue for some time, weighing his own feelings on the subject against the path his bishops were, in the main, advising. From what I've read of the man, he was truly trying to do what he believed was right in the sight of God, but it was inevitably coloured by his own emotions.

That he made the wrong decision in the eyes of most of the world's Catholics was, I think, less a result of Vatican scheming than the emotional viewpoint of the incumbent – that of a privileged and celibate man who had no idea at all of the agonies of decision that many of the faithful poor had to go through when faced with the prospect of too many children.

For Catholics to largely ignore a decision that had been long-awaited and discussed in public forums throughout the world could only be damaging to the authority of that particular Pope, and to the papacy in general. I think it was a major turning-point in the Church, when a major decision was treated with contempt by the laity, and there was nothing the Vatican could do about it.

[47of74]

15. It sure has gone down hill

We used to have guys like Fulton Sheen and Joseph Bernadin. We now have the likes of Raymond Burke and Fabian Bruskewitz.

[Angry Dragon]

14. From this post it seems the church is only interested

in the things that they added to the religion of Jesus

They say nothing about the teachings of Christ, only man made things
Jesus was a liberal, the church forgets this and I think a lot of the
church going population also.

Jesus said he was going to show a new way of thinking, nothing conservative about this.
So anytime the church says we have to hold the line they are going against Jesus