Have you read this? His comment especially about conservatives coming up with an answer to Noonan's book... He essentially silences an easy decade of conservative Catholic apologetics, and rightly so. Very few voices have even begun to attempt an honest answer to the scandal of Vatican II ... and of course this is observed by a journalist while dutifully ignored by a generation of seminarians.Ever known for his subtle British understatement (or was that French nuance???), Noir nevertheless makes a sharp point (Disclaimer: Rules 7-9).
I would recommend Douthat's columns as a better introduction to the state of modern Catholicism than I would anything printed by a religious publishing house!
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Revisiting Douthat's insight: "A Crisis of Conservative Catholicism"
You may remember that we linked to this article, as well as the video of Ross Douthat's Erasmus Lecture, on November 3rd of last year. But here it is again in the January 2016 issue of First Things, and deservedly so. Why? I think the words of Guy Noir - Private Eye are answer enough, when he says:
Dear Doc. If you want to know why Bernie Sanders is so popular, spend a few minutes reading the first six or seven paragraphs of Rerum Novarum for Bernie is the natural reaction to soulless capitalism with its state-sponsored usury and its theft of labor but one can not find one - not one- Catholic politician saying those truths.
ReplyDeleteGlenn Beck is tearing his hair out stumping for Ted Cruz (married to a woman who works for Goldman Sachs, the looters described by Matt Taibbi in the hysterically funny and informative, "Griftopia," as a vampire squid) and his wife works for career criminals, psychotic sharks, who exploited the poor and low information people and later, when those poor bastids went broke, called them losers and after the bastids had ripped-off American, they went around PUBLICLY claiming that whenJesus told us to love one another he was really speaking abut self-interest.
No, not kidding...That is the grifter class of Wall Street Capitalism which did not build one G. D. thing in the last 100 years.
PFFT, we are supposed to vote for another Bought-and-paid-for Bush or a career criminal like Hilary?
Wadda joke...
Face it. We're all Philip Nolans now, men without a country. At least this side of the kingdom. Still there are better and worse forms of godless governments. Julius was better than Nero. Sad state.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism is a soulless system promoted by soulless men. Not exactly front page news ABS, but still true enough.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if you are hinting toward the proposition that Bernie Sanders and Pope Romano would be socialist soul mates, perhaps you ought to think about whether B Hussein Obama would be the third stooge in their mutual admiration society. Tell me how Obama's socialism conforms to ecclesial integrity, much less to Catholic teaching.
(On still another hand, the radio commercial from the local diocese hawking Catholic burial plots to fallen away Catholics does indeed sound like one of Obama's campaign commercials. Money is money, amen)
Bernie Sanders and Francis, now THERE is a relationship swollen with bridge-building possibilities.
Bottom line is, Catholicism is not about governance in this world. It does not have an economic system to peddle, or at least it didn't used to. Catholicism is all about LUMPING it in this world, hoping for better in the next. Drop your bar charts, Poindexter, and pick up your cross. Its a FALLEN world after all, and that isn't going to change, no matter how many female dogs get a wash 'n' wax on Holy Thursday. Even Rerum Novarum is a journey into mystery, objectionable in its own way, though certainly not on the level of the malodorous honeywagon of verbiage cranked out by the post V2popes.
Dang, Doc. Philip Nolan. That mention took ABS right back to his Grandmothers house and the night (early 60s) he found that lil' book on a bed stand in the room where he slept that night.
ReplyDeleteThat short story so profoundly impacted ABS that, to this day, like when hearing an old love song, it takes ABS back in time to a particular moment.
ABS,
ReplyDeleteGlad you caught the reference. Impacted me thusly as well -- especially being born in China, and raised in Japan, and immigrating to the US at college age, then converting to the RC Church, then grasping that I can't embrace the pervasive ebullient affirmation of the "spirit of Vatican II"!