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The church has regained her orthodoxy - and none too soon
By Michael Coren
March 12, 2010
Michael Coren
It’s a wonderful time to be Catholic. The culture may often be crass, materialistic and amoral but the church has regained its stability. Serious Catholic lay-people are more informed than ever, there is a renaissance in Catholic journalism and scholarship and the new generation of young priests is arguably more committed and courageous than at any period since the Counter-Reformation.
Whether we like to admit it or not, there was a time when the priesthood attracted some men, albeit a minority, who wanted a comfortable life and instant respect, who were sexually confused, who simply saw no alternative. They sometimes did terrible damage. Thankfully that is mostly history.
Whether we like to admit it or not, there was a time when the priesthood attracted some men, albeit a minority, who wanted a comfortable life and instant respect, who were sexually confused, who simply saw no alternative. They sometimes did terrible damage. Thankfully that is mostly history.
Today we see young, orthodox and gifted men embracing a calling that was injected with new life by Pope John Paul II. These pioneers of hope tend to act as a torch that illuminates and exposes not only the bad clerics of the past but also that supreme paradoxical creature mistakenly known as the “progressive” priest.
We’ve all had the encounter with the man who refuses to wear his collar, insists on being called Mike or Jim rather than Father but simultaneously expects — nay, assumes — that he will be heard and obeyed when he announces the latest wisdom from some church-scolding theologian whom he read last week. It’s colossal arrogance of course. The notion that the person is more important than the office. We respect not the individual as such but the sacramental position he has been given by the bishop, who in turn is given that authority by the Holy Father, the direct descendant of St. Peter, who was given papal supremacy by Christ. So what, in effect, the Mike/Jim priest is saying is that he matters more than God and God’s plan.
All this hubris leads to another hilarious if horrible inconsistency in that people who think themselves egalitarian tend to be some of the most elitist characters around. One good example of this occurred after Vatican II, which gave priests the right to say Mass in the vernacular where there was sufficient demand. This was a moderate gesture but within just a few years it was virtually impossible to hear a Latin Mass anywhere. We could naively believe that the entire Catholic world rose up as one and demanded the Mass in English, French and German but that would obviously be silly. The people, the congregations, were not asked. Men who preached change, reform and democracy imposed their will on those in the pews. “We’re all equal now and you better listen!”
This led in time, inevitably, to liturgical dances, clown Masses, puppet shows on the altar and abuses by the dozen. The gates were opened and all sorts of people and causes galloped through. Men and women left the church not because of orthodoxy but because of its absence.
One of the reasons for the phenomenal growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America is that good, ordinary people who wanted the Gospel were instead being given Dialectical Materialism by their clergy. They left for somewhere God was being praised. By the way, the notion that before liberation theology the church ignored the suffering of Latin Americans is utter nonsense. The difference is that some Catholic radicals preferred armed revolution to pastoral care. There are even cases of traditional Catholic clergy who had worked with the poor being denounced by so-called liberation priests — leading to their persecution and sometimes murder.
There is nothing peculiarly Catholic about all this. Trendy 1960s teachers telling children that exams and homework didn’t matter, parents pleading with their kids not to call them mum or dad. All part of the moral and sexual revolution that has led to an old Gaza Strip rather than a New Jerusalem. Rules and order have a place, not as a substitute for life but as a way to give it meaning and borders — without which we have anarchy.
What these people, and in particular the priests, got wrong was that they thought it was about them and that somehow they were the first in their trade or vocation to understand. No, you were the first to underestimate the wisdom of the past. Bless you Father for you have sinned.
We’ve all had the encounter with the man who refuses to wear his collar, insists on being called Mike or Jim rather than Father but simultaneously expects — nay, assumes — that he will be heard and obeyed when he announces the latest wisdom from some church-scolding theologian whom he read last week. It’s colossal arrogance of course. The notion that the person is more important than the office. We respect not the individual as such but the sacramental position he has been given by the bishop, who in turn is given that authority by the Holy Father, the direct descendant of St. Peter, who was given papal supremacy by Christ. So what, in effect, the Mike/Jim priest is saying is that he matters more than God and God’s plan.
All this hubris leads to another hilarious if horrible inconsistency in that people who think themselves egalitarian tend to be some of the most elitist characters around. One good example of this occurred after Vatican II, which gave priests the right to say Mass in the vernacular where there was sufficient demand. This was a moderate gesture but within just a few years it was virtually impossible to hear a Latin Mass anywhere. We could naively believe that the entire Catholic world rose up as one and demanded the Mass in English, French and German but that would obviously be silly. The people, the congregations, were not asked. Men who preached change, reform and democracy imposed their will on those in the pews. “We’re all equal now and you better listen!”
This led in time, inevitably, to liturgical dances, clown Masses, puppet shows on the altar and abuses by the dozen. The gates were opened and all sorts of people and causes galloped through. Men and women left the church not because of orthodoxy but because of its absence.
One of the reasons for the phenomenal growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America is that good, ordinary people who wanted the Gospel were instead being given Dialectical Materialism by their clergy. They left for somewhere God was being praised. By the way, the notion that before liberation theology the church ignored the suffering of Latin Americans is utter nonsense. The difference is that some Catholic radicals preferred armed revolution to pastoral care. There are even cases of traditional Catholic clergy who had worked with the poor being denounced by so-called liberation priests — leading to their persecution and sometimes murder.
There is nothing peculiarly Catholic about all this. Trendy 1960s teachers telling children that exams and homework didn’t matter, parents pleading with their kids not to call them mum or dad. All part of the moral and sexual revolution that has led to an old Gaza Strip rather than a New Jerusalem. Rules and order have a place, not as a substitute for life but as a way to give it meaning and borders — without which we have anarchy.
What these people, and in particular the priests, got wrong was that they thought it was about them and that somehow they were the first in their trade or vocation to understand. No, you were the first to underestimate the wisdom of the past. Bless you Father for you have sinned.
Michael Coren