Friday 27 July 2012

Failed dissenters on the back foot


Deacon Nick at Protect the Pope has twice now drawn attention to a little band of dissenting priests who are trying quite openly to foment dissent against the Holy Father and the public teachings of the Church. Here and now here. In an attempt to rouse up an Austrian style campaign they have managed to garnish seven names to their rebellion and now a meeting, in an Anglican church, of seventy citing a rejection of the Second Vatican Council by the Holy Father, the Vatican and some new bishops.  The truth is that they are ignoring the fact that the more proper interpretation of the Council in a hermeneutic of continuity with the past instead of a deliberate association with Protestant rejection of essential dogmas of the faith is now in the ascendancy - well, something had to be done for if we carried on the way we were doing, there would eventually be nothing left of the Church.  Pope Benedict is not rejecting Vatican II but mooring it in the safe harbour of Tradition. 

Those who have for so long ignored the actual teaching of the Church and ridden rough-shod over the authority of the Pope and tradition and are still trying to do so in many places, are now on the back foot.  Complaining that they no longer have a blind eye turned towards them by all the bishops when they preach dissent from the pulpit.

These priests, retired or not, have bishops and superiors who should call them to account.

What is also disgraceful is the open support given to these dissenters by "The Tablet" - a supposedly Catholic journal.  If a journal calls itself "Catholic" it seems absurd that it feels able to criticise the proclaimed teaching of the Church.  No doubt this would be claimed as "discussion" and "debate" but the slant is so angled against the Holy Father and anything deemed to be  "traditional" that it is in fact attacking the Church herself.  We can't help being traditional, God chose to effect our salvation through the incarnation and our tradition goes back to those great events.  Our Lord himself founded the Church to protect and hand on that message and thereby gave the People of God a history, a Tradition - but perhaps that's another one of those things dissenters don't believe. 


On a completely unrelated point, Fr Ray Blake also has a post "that a so called "Catholic" weekly, that has a reputation for criticising the Pope and  his works, was doing a muck-raking exercise trying to dig up dirt on Catholic clergy's private lives," apparently focusing on clergy in the Ordinariate. What more evidence do we need to know that dissenters do not really like other Christians joining the full unity of the Church - especially when the invitation comes from the Pope?  If true it's disgraceful, coming from a supposedly Catholic journal.


I do wish dissenters would stop stamping their feet like frustrated children and if they disagree so profoundly with the Church and can't come to an
 acceptance of Her teachings, to go and found one of their own that does suit their agenda.  Even Her Majesty's loyal opposition is meant to be loyal, as well as an oppposition.






3 comments:

Jacobi said...

As the Pope has said, we may have to accept a smaller Church, for a while, just as after the Protestant Reformation.

What will we call our new national Catholic weekly??

Et Expecto said...

A further scandel is that this particular periodical is still offered form sale at the back of cathedrals and churches.

If these sales outlets stopped promoting it, I doubt that the paper in question would survive six months.

GOR said...

Oh dear – yet another dissenting group that thinks it knows more than God! Don’t they ever learn? The study of history has been denigrated for some time. I think this possibly began in the 60s with the youth of the day bad-mouthing everything that went before. And of course those who haven’t learned from history are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past – and these people continue to do so.

If misery loves company, dissent revels in it. So we go from “Seven dissenting priests” to “Seventy priests and deacons”…? Wow, that was fast! Of course, like the claim of the ACP in Ireland (500 members…? 700 members…?) we don’t really know what the real numbers are - given that only the ringleaders are identified.

Regardless, this is not about numbers. A hundred people in the wrong doesn’t equate to one person in the right. Lucifer tried to get all the angels to follow his lead also, but that didn’t work out so well for him either.

The real issue here is scandal – the scandal given to the rest of the flock. And we know what Our Lord had to say about scandal givers. He also had a word about good shepherds and bad shepherds. So your excellencies, lets have some good shepherding!