Tag: Oak+Park+IL

Schism healed: Pius X Catholics on way back to church

Very hot news in Catholic circles: the Society of St. Pius X, broken away from the Vatican since the 2nd  Vatican Council, is “on the verge” of reconciliation with the church.

It’s remotely comparable to the resolution and dissolution of The Great Schism of the 14th  century, the three-pope period when disarray was the order of the day. 

Benedict XVI is making it happen.  Standing objections by the SPX people to Vatican 2’s “rupture” or disruptive aspects will remain. 

Trust me, folks, it’s like The Episcopal Church U.S.A. making room for Evangelical Christians.  Somewhat like?  Am working on that.

In Oak Park it means that the Pius X Latin mass church at Ridgeland and Washington, kitty-corner from Julian Middle School, is no longer out of bounds for venturesome Catholics. 

More to come.  more more more

Married priests vs. female priests

I, Bowman in Wed. Journal today.  Married priesthood first, women’s second, for strategic reasons if nothing else:

The married priest is more likely to see the woman’s viewpoint, and a married priesthood is a much more realistic goal.

Respondeth one John Butch Murtagh from Oak Park to the first part:

Nice try Jim, but if marriage is the key to understand[ing] the other sex, why are there so many divorces?

To which I, Bowman:

Nice try, John, but if divorce demonstrates misogynism and/or misandry, why for so many does remarriage signal the triumph of hope over experience, as The Great Cham said long ago?

Who’s in charge church-wise? Anyone?

In a letter to the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park & River Forest, The Mass belongs to the Church, not the priest, I take exception to the publisher’s taking vigorous exception to a bishop’s enforcing liturgical rules.

[Bishop Edward] Braxton [of Belleville IL] had no choice. Once apprised of the situation, he nixed the practice. What was he supposed to do, poll the congregation?  . . . .

[A] priest wants to remake the Mass, the center of Catholic worship? Braxton is supposed to say go ahead, suit yourself? If he has authority in any area, it’s in worship.

Unless you don’t like authority in the first place, or at least not in the church.

Fascism revisited

Wish I’d said it in just this way . . . . :

“I wouldn’t call it fascism exactly,
but a political system nominally controlled
by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate
who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media
that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment
can hardly be described as democracy either.”

. . . . Having said it differently back when Big O. was not quite elected president, noting that Oak Parkers were going all-out for him:

The “man of action” business is particularly foreboding. It’s a staple of fascism, of course. Mussolini, Hitler, and FDR were a mutual admiration society before the stuff hit the fan in the matter of Jewish people being rounded up and beaten up and eventually much worse-the German contribution to fascism. The political appeal was based on admiration for the strong man who brooked no opposition.


Mussolini was crafty about it and inspired admiration in “progressive” circles in this country, as he had admired American pragmatism in Woodrow Wilson, the college professor-become-president with a yen for power that puts even today’s tenured radicals to shame. Then came FDR, the roaring pragmatist, and then Hitler. Progressives, later called liberals, yet later progressives again-the name changes keep them ahead of the awareness curve-love the man of action.

Now they have one. He’s The One, our smooth-talking Democrat presidential candidate with a yen for deciding how much you should earn before being hit with a tax hike-to “spread the wealth around,” as he unfortunately told that plumber in

Ohio.

Forget about the plumber.  It was the thought that counted — then and now.