Liberal Catholics Lose it!

The Reasonable rage against the dying of the light!

Tom at Disputations notes an emotional release by jcecil3, a liberal catholic blogger whom he has read. It's quite a ride.

It deserves a true fisk. jcecil's will be in red, and mine in black.

All day yesterday into my prayer this morning, I am reminding myself that the Holy Spirit is ultimately running the Church.

Yes. Isn't that reassuring? You talk to yourself while in prayer with God. I'm sure that must do wonders for your relationship.

I am reminding myself that whatever I have felt about Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Prefect for the Sacred Congregation for the Faith, the man is intelligent and may surprise all of us with some necessary changes I will love.

So he may be a successful Pope, if you love the changes he will make. Well, it's great to know that you've been incorporated into the Trinity already. Does this make us all Quadrinians now? How should we address you?


I never expected women's ordination even if a liberal Cardinal made it to Peter's chair, and there is no particular reason to get upset if Pope Benedict XVI does not make this particular change, since it wasn't going to happen anyway.

Yes, how terribly unreasonable that, right? Just because Jesus is a man, and the ordained offer him in sacrifice in persona Christi, why shouldn't women get a shot. It's not as if our genders actually mean anything.

I am actively struggling to keep reminding myself of similar thoughts - trying to remain optimistic and see the hand of God in the election of our new Pope. This is a moral duty of any faithful Roman Catholic.

Well, practicing the virtue of hope, instead of the attitude of mere optimism, might help fulfill your duty. Of course, that might require Faith, as opposed to deconstructive textual analysis.

But these types of thought are the voice of reason as I try to submit the will to the intellect, the intellect to God and my passions to the will. Yet, I need to express my emotions as they are as part of the process of doing this. I have to get my feelings off my chest.

The election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI while George W. Bush is in the White House feels like the world is collapsing.

Oh, no! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Mama hen! Mama hen!

It feels as though Adolf Hitler is in the White House in control of the world's sole superpower, and Benito Mussolini is in the Papal Palace in charge of the largest religious institution on earth.

Yawn. The Bush=Hitler trope is so pre-election. Apparently Iraqis, defying the decapitating "liberators" the media calls "insurgents" in order to vote in the first true election in 30 years, suffer the same fate as 6 million Jews railed to Auschwitz and the like. Ratzinger as Mussolini? Sure. The Prefect that praises the American model of religious and political coexistance over European Altar-and-throne schems would elevate the state above all. The Defender of orthodoxy that believed roman catholics could vote for pro-choice candidates to political office--as long as they weren't supporting their abortion views--for proportionate reasons is calling for an Roman Catholic totalitarian theocracy. Ladies, warm your ovaries. Gentlemen, if you like men, get in the closet immediately. Next stop, 760. Can I laugh any harder?

It feels as though a dark cloud has settled over the whole earth as we prepare for the final confrontation between good and evil.

Hear any hoofbeats lately? Maybe the Four Horseman will stop by your place first.

In stating these feelings, I need to make it very clear that I am open to Pope Benedict surprising me and being far more pastoral, sensitive, intelligent, loving, holy and compassionate than I ever dreamed possible.

Because it's not pastoral to make sure the faithful aren't misled by agenda axe-wielders clothed as theologians and Chauncery staff. It's not sensitive to dialogue with dissenting theologians for nearly a decade. It's not intelligent to discern the philosophical malaise that chokes civilization. It's not loving, holy and compassionate to help solidify agreements with Lutherans, promote Jewish-Christian relations and help make sure the Faithful have a deposit to pass on to their children.

I also need to be clear that I cannot point to some specific act or word of his that makes him comparable to Mussolini, and I do not mean in any way to imply that Pope Benedict XVI is literally a Fascist. To the best of my knowledge, he is not a Fascist, and has done nothing to earn a reaction quite this strong.

Well, Good for you. The erstwhile new Person of our Quadrinity acknowledges that the emotion outweighs the fact. Can he tell us why?

Nor can I judge the heart of George W. Bush to say that he has the heart of Adolf Hitler - though in the case of Bush, I do believe that we can point to specific policies and actions of his Administration and point out a direct parallel to a specific action or policy of the Hitler Administration in Nazi Germany.

If we're dealing in facts, now, and not just opinions, then let's have them, please.
Did the President parallel Hitler when he rushed back to Washington, D.C. to sign legislation that authorized the Federal Courts to review Terry Schiavo's case? Outside of my mentally handicapped brother's supported apartment residence is a fountain. It's dedicated to the 200,000--those mentally disabled people that the Nazi's eliminated.

Or is this just the war again? Perhaps letting a civil war rip apart a society that we upended would be just the sort of unhitleresque policy Bush should adopt.

Evidence, please.

While the correlations between the actions Bush and Hitler may be somewhat stronger than any action of Pope Benedict XVI would correlate to Mussolini, there is a question of "tone" - a feeling evoked by style rather than substance.

Oh, here we go again. I can just here that geko warm up the kareoke machine. "feelings, nothing more than feelings..."

This post is not rational. I confess my own irrationality in saying what I am saying. This post is an expression of feeling - feelings that may have nothing to do with reality as it is in the eyes of God.

Dear I see a sign of hope that he glimps reality?

Yet, I feel a strong need to get this feeling off my chest, perhaps as part of the process of opening my heart to accepting Pope Benedict XVI with a more open mind.

Ah, yes. Process. Mustn't forget process. Where would our society be without everlast process? It's become our own theraputic version of the Stations. Only there's a lot more than 14. And often, the priests of this sacramental charge a wee more than Parishes expect.

The most critical question running through my mind over the last day is whether the Cardinals of the Church realized that in electing Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope, that he would evoke such a reaction in many of us Catholic faithful?

Did the Cardinals intend to piss off millions of lay Catholics, and if so, why?

Of course! It's not like they had to consider the exortion of Jesus to follow him. It's not as though the growing menace of libertarian lifestyling across the West, hostile Islamofacism from the Muslim world, and deep divisions within the body of Christ stood foremost in their minds. No, they just got together so that they could piss jcecil3 and his ilk off. Exactly.

It would not surprise me in the least if the number of pissed off Catholics is in the range of 500,000,000 (literally half the Church).

Can we be any more west-o-centric if we tried? 65 million catholics in the US make up 6% of Catholics throughout the world. If recent ridiculous polls have even some validity, then only half of the US catholics desire the changes Pope Benedict XVI is least likely to implement. That's generously placing the number of pissed off catholics at 32 million. In one country. Compared to 1.2 billion Catholics throughout the world! Even if all of Europe, Canada and Australia agreed with jcecil and were "pissed off", would still count for less than 10% of the world's catholics.

On the other hand, if the number is smaller, I am convinced this is largely because many people are not paying enough attention to the Church to know who Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is. And I am equally convinced that even if literally half the Church is not angry, the number of angry people is still in the millions.

That's right. If you're not outraged, your not paying attention. The "you stupid/me smart, so hulk smash" defense is so eighties. Really, you need a new routine.


To Pope Benedict, though I doubt very much he will be reading my blog, I still want to say that you have your work cut out for you. Whether you ever intended it or not, your actions as Prefect for the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have stirred very strong feelings in many of us - perhaps millions of us - perhaps even half the Church.

Because...how dare you tell us how to be catholic. Who appointed you, God? Oh, really? Well, yeah, I know I said the Holy Spirit ultimately runs the Church, but...well, that's semantics, right? I mean, how could Jesus not simply be about "cawing and shawing"?

Your election to the papacy does not automatically vindicate everything you have ever said or done in our minds. We will not be persuaded to your way of thinking simply because you hold the keys. You must earn our trust by making it clear how your way of thinking and acting is consonant with the founder of the Roman Catholic Church: Jesus Christ.

And don't bother us with Christ's "I am the gate" and all that. Jesus was an inclusive guy, you know. He welcomed everyone. So there. See?

Having got this off my chest, I already feel a little more open to allowing you a chance to earn our trust. Please look to Christ and imitate him!

Well, I'm so glad that jcecil3 feels better and can actually allow the Holy Father the chance to earn his trust! Does this mean that Benedict will actually get to make the pitch to jcecil? Does he have to make an appointment with him or something? Perhaps jcecil would accept an all-expenses trip to Vatican City for a private sit-down or something.

Or perhaps he should reconsider all this "process of feeling", really pray to the Lord in the Spirit, then read: the gospals, the early Church fathers, the catechism, then all of Cardinal Ratzinger's work. Then, he might not have to fear the imminent arrival of the apocolypse. And waste bandwith warning us all that the sky is falling.