Now a Vatican mafia?

Fr. Martin to the barricades

His moment arrived.

By Rudolf Otto, 1923:

WHILE the feelings of the non-rational and numinous
constitute a vital factor in every form religion may take,
they are pre-eminently in evidence in Semitic religion and
most of all in the religion of the Bible. Here Mystery lives
and moves in all its potency.

Which I submit captures a part of the essence of the matter. And does much to explain the enduring appeal of the Latin Mass. “Mystery . . . in all its potency,” yes. It’s deep.

Saint or no saint, get your enforcement of marriage arguments out of your institute. I’m in charge now. (Overheard from important bishop muttering on his way to the office.)

Fr. Martin should be invited back, for a debate with the alleged bullies.

Open discussion, folks. It’s what a university is for.

Above all, not having a lightning rod like him alone, as if his was not a highly debatable proposition.

But higher-learning institutions in general are not big on debates of this sort.

Hoo-boy. Out with the old, in with the new.

Finally?

“Perhaps,” he said, “the old practice of moving people” from one place to another and not fully facing the problem “lulled consciences to sleep.”

Why “perhaps”?

. . . This “preferential option for the poor” that came out of liberation theology, a S. American philosophy, you might call it, means what for me as non-poor? Besides feeling guilty about it, that is. Ideas?

To which I should add “guilty about things I can do nothing about!”

Quite an important nub here, as beautifully explained by Hayek in Road to Serfdom, which I recommend to people feeling guilty about things they can do nothing about.

An excess of empathy, as the man wrote a book about, published a month or so ago, Against Empathy; The Case for Rational Compassion, is what I speak of.

I am also reminded of a movie scene many decades ago, a black-and-whiter in the ’40s, in which a lone protester standing outside the state prison where an execution is scheduled is asked if he thought his protest would change anything.

The man thought not but said he was there not to change the law but to protect himself from being changed.

Or as the Soc. of Pius X preacher said in Oak Park, also some decades back, when touched by a panhandler we give money out of charity not to change the panhandler but not to be changed: Do it seeing Christ in the beggar and you gain, whether he does or not.

 

All-bets-off boys and girls are on the job.

Also known far and wide as progressives.

​Here’s an articulate, well-written, often condescending, hard-nosed description of papal and Vatican politics by a true-blue liberal writing regularly for National Catholic Reporter.

I have no trouble believing (for the most part) this account of mutual counter-purpose in which Francis and Sarah are now positioned.

It’s good stuff, if without regard for the needless character of the conflict. My problem is with the conflict as needless. What does Francis have to lose by allowing Latin mass, ad orientem, communion on the tongue and all that?

Unless the novus ordo would be undermined and with it the social justice agenda. Or unless Francis just doesn’t like it; makes his skin crawl — a distinct possibility but something he could offer up in his Morning Offering — and become a better man for it.

Oh, another thing. Is the writer sure about his assessment of traditionalists’ numbers and overall strength? Seems sure of himself, but it’s a big claim. More later (I swear) of this fellow’s columns from Rome.

Oh. Robert Mickens is his name. Has impressive c.v., in addition to his very good writing.