B
beckers
Guest
I love this article but here are my favorite parts! So true!!!
GOD BLESS!
Beckers
nationalreview.com/comment/rice200504250753.asp
So having a “living, breathing” Constitution, whose meanings can shift as easily as, say, having an associate justice hear about some new trend in European law at brunch, obviously defeats the whole purpose of having a (relatively, not absolutely) fixed Constitution. Likewise, if you believe that your church was literally founded by the Son of God, based on principles he personally handed down to His followers (as Catholics do), why would you make your church’s doctrine conveniently open to revision by its flock? It’s like deliberately designing a bucket with holes in it, then wondering why it won’t hold any water.
And that, folks, is pretty much how it works. The Catholic Church is not a democracy, or even a representative democracy. They don’t decide things by a show of hands, other than Bingo, and even then all winners have to be verified. The Church doesn’t use focus groups. The pope doesn’t go on listening tours. There’s no website that lets the faithful interactively change church doctrine based on how many hits it receives. Catholics don’t choose new gods to worship with the help of their good friends at A. T. & T. Wireless — although if they did the process would still look and sound remarkably like American Idol. The Church is not a democracy, and part of being Catholic is being cool with that.
So if you think this or any other pope is just plain wrong on celibacy or homosexuality or anything else big, and this upsets you so much it interferes with your spiritual life, you’d be well advised to find yourself another church. Otherwise you’re like the orthodox Jew who, in light of recent developments, has taken it upon himself to decide that it’s all right for him to eat pork. You can be an orthodox Jew, and you can eat pork. You’re free to do either one. But folks, you just can’t do both. There are names for Catholics who don’t accept that they can’t do certain things and still receive the sacraments, and one of those names is Senator John Kerry.
Andrew Sullivan points out correctly that the Catholic Church has changed over the years, offering examples such as Vatican II and absolving the Jews for Christ’s death. But those changes weren’t dogmatic, as a liberalization of the Church’s views on abortion or homosexuality would be, and they certainly weren’t the result of a town-hall meeting or an online poll. They came about as a result of years of prayer and reflection from within the Vatican, not because of a particularly meaningful Oprah episode.
Finally, for those who would chafe under the yoke of commandments, or a catechism, or a constitution, or the mission statement every Taco Bell employee has to read, or any other articulation of first principles, consider the words of Cardinal Ratzinger shortly before he became the new pope. Warning of the “tyranny of relativism” that’s become so pervasive, Cardinal Ratzinger argued that it’s better to be guided by time-honored principles of morality than to be endlessly buffeted about by the myriad whims of conventional wisdom in the name of “freedom.” With the clear implication being, if you don’t like these principles the rest of us here have agreed to live by, maybe this isn’t the Church for you. Or as my Dad used to say during dinner, if you don’t like what we’re serving here, try next door.
GOD BLESS!
Beckers
nationalreview.com/comment/rice200504250753.asp
So having a “living, breathing” Constitution, whose meanings can shift as easily as, say, having an associate justice hear about some new trend in European law at brunch, obviously defeats the whole purpose of having a (relatively, not absolutely) fixed Constitution. Likewise, if you believe that your church was literally founded by the Son of God, based on principles he personally handed down to His followers (as Catholics do), why would you make your church’s doctrine conveniently open to revision by its flock? It’s like deliberately designing a bucket with holes in it, then wondering why it won’t hold any water.
And that, folks, is pretty much how it works. The Catholic Church is not a democracy, or even a representative democracy. They don’t decide things by a show of hands, other than Bingo, and even then all winners have to be verified. The Church doesn’t use focus groups. The pope doesn’t go on listening tours. There’s no website that lets the faithful interactively change church doctrine based on how many hits it receives. Catholics don’t choose new gods to worship with the help of their good friends at A. T. & T. Wireless — although if they did the process would still look and sound remarkably like American Idol. The Church is not a democracy, and part of being Catholic is being cool with that.
So if you think this or any other pope is just plain wrong on celibacy or homosexuality or anything else big, and this upsets you so much it interferes with your spiritual life, you’d be well advised to find yourself another church. Otherwise you’re like the orthodox Jew who, in light of recent developments, has taken it upon himself to decide that it’s all right for him to eat pork. You can be an orthodox Jew, and you can eat pork. You’re free to do either one. But folks, you just can’t do both. There are names for Catholics who don’t accept that they can’t do certain things and still receive the sacraments, and one of those names is Senator John Kerry.
Andrew Sullivan points out correctly that the Catholic Church has changed over the years, offering examples such as Vatican II and absolving the Jews for Christ’s death. But those changes weren’t dogmatic, as a liberalization of the Church’s views on abortion or homosexuality would be, and they certainly weren’t the result of a town-hall meeting or an online poll. They came about as a result of years of prayer and reflection from within the Vatican, not because of a particularly meaningful Oprah episode.
Finally, for those who would chafe under the yoke of commandments, or a catechism, or a constitution, or the mission statement every Taco Bell employee has to read, or any other articulation of first principles, consider the words of Cardinal Ratzinger shortly before he became the new pope. Warning of the “tyranny of relativism” that’s become so pervasive, Cardinal Ratzinger argued that it’s better to be guided by time-honored principles of morality than to be endlessly buffeted about by the myriad whims of conventional wisdom in the name of “freedom.” With the clear implication being, if you don’t like these principles the rest of us here have agreed to live by, maybe this isn’t the Church for you. Or as my Dad used to say during dinner, if you don’t like what we’re serving here, try next door.
