Dale Price has been blogging his "Dyspeptic Mutterings" for some time, and has an intelligent and respectable following (I flatter myself).
Recently he has been muttering dyspeptically about the papal "cult" of Pope Francis's "conservative" defenders -- a fact that occasioned one reader, Michael Liccione, to remark thusly: "I think Dale fails to take account of another possibility. Some of us see the Pope's verbal missteps as an opportunity for confirmation of the papacy's divine origin. The Rock known as Peter stands as much in spite of as because of those tasked, for a time, with embodying it."
Fair enough. Just like Boccaccio's story in his Decameron of the Jewish merchant, Abraham, who converts after a visit to Rome and witnessing unbelievable corruption, because, he says, so corrupt a Church couldn't possibly have survived all these centuries if it didn't have God behind it.
Still, Dale Price's Dyspeptic Mutterings are worth a visit, if only for more fodder for the debate about the state of the Church. For his latest, see "Taking a break from all your worries, Part III" (October 26, 2013), where he reflects on (1) the Bishop, (2) the Pope, and (3) Escaping The Papal Personality Cult.
That was excellent. He was describing the ecclesiastical equivalent of what Joe Sobran called, The Hive.
ReplyDeleteIt is good to see more Traditional Catholic men waking-up to the reality that the Pope can't stand them and that our Pope is a man who was profoundly and deeply struck by the modernist-new theology revolution and now that he has been struck, the sheep will be scattered; that is, he is a scatterer not a uniter.
The well-reed Baron of the Brick By Brick Bund used to describe he who abdicated as "The Pope of Unity:" well, we now have the Pope of Division and one can watch him easily run the ecclesiastical table sinking ideological ball after ball set-up in front of the political pockets; rich ball in the corner pocket; lover of the Real Mass in the side pocket; Raccolta owner in the side pocket; and the Thomist Ball (8 ball) in the corner; Rack them Teilhard.
"Some of us see the Pope's verbal missteps as an opportunity for confirmation of the papacy's divine origin."
ReplyDeleteOthers of us see them only as confirmation of the mystery of why God allows so many things that simply don't seem to make a shred of sense.
Meanwhile, Pell and Weigel jump on the bandwagon because...? Oh, right, we all know that right now the one group in the Church that certainly needs explicit censure is Traditionalists, the only ones who will faithfully toe the moral lines spelled out by a Pope. As usual, it makes no sense. But we must be sure everyone gets it: BAD BAD Tradition! And they wonder why they are increasingly consigned to the status of an anachronism. They are feeding their own roots rat poison.
Give me three Fellays for any one of these guys' ridiculous post-Modern equivocations explaining away uncomfortable aspects of revelation.
"Give me three Fellays for any one of these guys ..."
ReplyDeleteYou go, JFM!
I used to read Dale Price regularly. At one point I stopped, through no fault of his own. But I remember his remarks about Kenneth Untener, whose reign as bishop must have been an onerous cross to bear for genuine Catholics trapped within the diocese of Saginaw. When he died, a number of obit articles popped up on the internet. I'm sure that Untener's own pastoral argle-bargle is floating around too: progressive rhetoric on the internet is like kudzu in Georgia. Thinking back to my reading of Unterner's verbiage brings to mind more than one "Bergoliism": the well publicized "humiliy" of the man (Untener spurned the traditional bishops living quarters, washed his own clothes, etc); the mealy-mouthed duplicity of his "compassion," one minute oozing sugary love for all God's people great and small, the next minute dumping on the pelagian rosary rattlers, etc.
ReplyDeleteWhat struck me most at the time, however, was not the usual progressive clap-trap, but an admission, late in his life, that maybe all of his progressivism, all of this well-meaning slush had failed, had somehow missed the mark. I have no idea of the extent to which his "admission" was heartfelt, and the extent to which it was a rhetorical device. I don't remember the details any more, and don't have the energy to sort through the generous Untener links Price provides. Bp Untener died in 2004.
This is a good essay. Price is an excellent writer. I think that the cult of papal personality is a dangerous thing, whether the object of adoration is one of the Piuses, or one of the post V2 rock star evangelists (knee-jerk objects of canonization every one). Popemania is a flight from the hard work of reason to sloth. For the Grub Street crowd of lay Catholic busybodies, it is a flight from the hard luck of poverty to a paycheck and a measure of unearned prestige. Neocath deliverance!
Having just read Price, he nails it."conservative catholic" now means " MyPope, Right or Wrong." Which is both right and wrong... You only have to read of Wilfrid Ward's heartburn over 'Pascendi' to realize that it was never in the past thought you had to swoon over every papal word and program like an Obama-enrapt Chris Mathews at election time. But seems to be so now.
ReplyDeleteI think the key is maintaining a balance of "respectful deference" together with honest, direct criticism. Same as the old biblical injunction about "speaking the truth in love."
ReplyDeleteThe last thing the pope or anyone in the curia or chancery or parish needs is a bunch of sycophants.