Saturday, November 28, 2015

Maureen Mullarkey on Bishop Barron on Paris

First, here's Bishop Barron, sounding more like a Mennonite pacifist than a Catholic moralist:


Next, here's Maureen Mullarkey on "Bishop Barron on Paris" (Studio Matters, November 27, 2015). Mullarkey's piece is more a response to responses to her earlier piece, "The Incredible Shrinking Bishop Barron" (One Peter Five, November 23, 2015), in which she had written:
The massacre aroused no outrage, not even a wince of distaste. . . . [Bp Barron] found the atrocity “especially poignant” because he had studied in Paris for three years. And because he remembered some of the locations involved, the attacks were “moving and poignant.”
Mullarkey comments: "Moving. Poignant. Had the bishop been watching a film version of the death of Little Nell? The sentiment, and the genial detachment it signified, seemed a bizarre reaction to the slaughter and maiming of scores of innocent Parisians." Then, quoting from the earlier article, she writes: "The syrup thickened":
He glided on to a serene tutorial on mercy, on the obligation to “respond to violence with love,” and “to fight hatred with love.” He enjoined Catholics to mercy and “a non-violent stance.” . . . This time on camera, he confused Paris in 2015 with Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
Mullarkey concludes her latest piece with these words: "Bishop Barron has an influential platform. If he uses it to promote confusion between Christian love—caritas—and dispassion in the face of the murderous ambitions of Christianity’s oldest enemy, then he will be evangelizing for evil. No matter the Christ talk."

Was Bp Barron imprudent in his remarks? Was Mullarkey overly harsh? You decide. Guy Noir's only words were: "... the syrup gets thicker. But as I said, certainly the Bishop's lines are the Church's now standard lines!"

Related:  Steve Skojec, "The Perils of Popularity: Critiquing Bishop Barron" (1P5, November 30, 2015).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A snake sheds its skin and moves on. This Church is in the act of shedding its muscles, blood, and vital organs, and clinging to the dessicated shell as its true and authentic self. There is no telling what sort of grotesquerie will move on from the current self-disembowelment, but one thing is certain: it will no longer be the Roman Catholic Church.

Anonymous said...

The more I ponder it, the more I wonder whey we need comments at ll on Paris from the Pope or Bishops. Other than pray for the families. Let the state do its job, and let the Church try for a while to do its job instead of prelates chatting and jetting from here to Africa.

Anonymous said...

More here: http://www.onepeterfive.com/the-perils-of-popularity-critiquing-bishop-barron/

Anonymous said...

Thank goodness these fellas aren't validily ordained/consecrated priest's/bishop's.