From the Wall Street Journal's March 31, 2012 interview with Timothy Cardinal Dolan,
When the Archbishop Met the President [via
Rorate Caeli, April 4, 2012):
What about the argument that vast numbers of Catholics ignore the church's teachings about sexuality? Doesn't the church have a problem conveying its moral principles to its own flock? "Do we ever!" the archbishop replies with a hearty laugh. "I'm not afraid to admit that we have an internal catechetical challenge—a towering one—in convincing our own people of the moral beauty and coherence of what we teach. That's a biggie."
For this he faults the church leadership. "We have gotten gun-shy . . . in speaking with any amount of cogency on chastity and sexual morality." He dates this diffidence to "the mid- and late '60s, when the whole world seemed to be caving in, and where Catholics in general got the impression that what the Second Vatican Council taught, first and foremost, is that we should be chums with the world, and that the best thing the church can do is become more and more like everybody else." (emphasis from R.C.)
"the impression that what the Second Vatican Council taught, first and foremost, is that we should be chums with the world, and that the best thing the church can do is become more and more like everybody else."
ReplyDeleteOh come now, your excellency.
Catholics didn't find that "impression" at the bottom of a rabbit hole. They got it because the people who taught it to them were precisely those people who overthrew the counciliar agenda that John XXIII had sanctioned (and later abandoned with a "What, Me Worry?" nonchalance); who replaced the counciliar agenda with their own; who controlled access to microphones in all sessions; who controlled the writing and revising of counciliar documents; and who planted their nuggets of tactical modernism with their favorite journalists, ensuring that only one version of events made it into the papers. They are the same people, in short, who controlled the progress and output of the council, and then spent the remainder of their careers spinning that near-incoherent output in their own liberal and modernist directions.
THAT is the real "biggie."
You cannot teach what is ambiguous and full of "diplomatic" contradictions. You have to go back to the foundation, where it all makes sense, and teach that, consistently and relentlessly, and with no concern for "feelings." Otherwise you will not be taken seriously, and will in fact be laughed at, regarded as a comical anachronism, even by your own people.
And treated by politicians such as Black Jesus as a rotund and ineffectual dolt.