"A roll call of Catholic stars" (Rorate Caeli, May 19, 2011):The Bollettino of the Holy See Press Office publishes today the names of the consultants named for the new Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization - the crème de la crème of the who's who of the upper crust of the Church of our days: they include the Vicar General of the Personal Prelature of the Opus Dei, Mons. Fernando Ocáriz, Kiko Argüello, the famous founder of the Neocatechumenate, Fr. Julián Carrión, President of Communion and Liberation, and stars of the Catholic sisterhood, such as Sister Sara Butler, Professor of Dogmatic Theology at Mundelein (known as a great defender of the Church's doctrine on female ordination, that should be recognized), and Sister Mary Lou Wirtz (right), President of the International Union of Superiors General.Who's minding the store? Nothing against Mons. Fernando Ocáriz and a couple others here, but what's up with the rest? At best this looks like a list of consultants put together by some bureaucrat fashionably concerned with a politically correct and undiscriminating across-the-board representation of incommensurable factions nearly certain to guarantee the balkanization of the Church's mission to evangelize.
Can't you just feel the new "New Springtime" arriving?
Related: "Sister Sara Butler now against womens' ordination" (A Catholic Life, March 9, 2007).
I suppose the real question is, what precisely is this council going to do. Interesting that you say "balkanization"... part of the intent may be something more like de-balkanization. Renewal movements and other pockets of vibrancy in the Church could I suppose be viewed (perhaps somewhat unfairly) as tending toward mutual ignorance at best, useless rivalry and suspicion at worst.
ReplyDelete"De-balkanization"? "Pockets of vibrancy?" Well, I suppose if a hermeneutic of "rupture" stands well with you, this might look like "de-balkanization", and any groups from Marxists to Charismatics might also be viewed as "pockets of vibrancy".
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ReplyDelete"Pockets of vibrancy." I have these occasionally when my sheathed blackberry alerts me that I have received an urgent email from a coworker who needs help tying his shoe.
ReplyDeleteDo I violate the beatitudinal spirit if I throw the blackberry into my backpack and get on with my day?