Key point: The unfortunate nature of taking cadavers and cadaver parts on tour to present a spectacle (“bread and circus”) for a nameless, faceless paying audience, all while pretending that it has anything to do with the objective of the Church’s Jubilee Year of Mercy.
Confusion: Any objection to such a spectacle must be an attack on the belief in the Communion of Saints or the very veneration of or devotion to the saints.
I agree to your key point – “The unfortunate nature of taking cadavers and cadaver parts on tour to present a spectacle (“bread and circus”)”
with this exception. I am not convinced that there is pretending, maybe yes, maybe no. The point of “dressed-up corpses” (my printed article page 3) is the key point especially in the below quote also from my printed pages 3-4.
I put in bold the point which eventually has to be addressed because it appears twice in the article. Is the author actually, but maybe unintentionally, presenting the real important issue of the “Extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy”? We can discuss this later.
From my printed pages 3-4 of the article.
"Do the men in the Vatican – including our dear Pope Francis – really think that dressing up dead bodies, even of the holiest of saints, is really going to help people
“understand the ways in which God’s great love manifests itself in their daily lives”?
Most reasonable Catholics – Italians included – disagree with the need for such props and gimmicks the jubilee committee is using to promote the Holy Year."
I do not agree with your statement about confusion. – “Any objection to such a spectacle must be an attack on the belief in the Communion of Saints or the very veneration of or devotion to the saints”
Looking at the flow of the article, the first comments about the Sacrament of Confession are these from my printed page 2.
"Both of them are aimed, fundamentally, at one thing – getting people to go back to confession, a practice most Catholics gave up a long, long time ago.
Well, good luck, fellas.
Pope Francis is popular and influential, but it’s unlikely that even he will be able to spark a revival in a practice that most Catholics know (correctly) is not essential to their membership in God’s household."
From page 3, referring to the bodies of two dead Capuchin saints.
“It’s more than a little ironic that Fisichella, who is considered to be one of Italy’s most intelligent theologians, is being asked to promote this medieval, pietistic practice.”
In my opinion, the basic objection to the spectacle of dressed-up corpses is that it is a medieval, pietistic practice. Medieval is the operative word.
Please keep all of the above in mind as I switch to the comments section. Here Pete the Greek replies to the medieval issue.
“Know what’s also ‘medieval’ and ‘ancient’? The Eucharist, The Trinity, marriage, etc. Just because something didn’t have its origin in your latest issue of Cosmo isn’t a good reason to throw it out.”
My apology for this rough draft; but I needed to get my ideas down on paper before I forget them during a busy weekend.
Most of us do not need Robert Mickens to tell us what is happening to the Catholic Sacraments. In this article, Mickens first gives us the normal “evidence” for the decreased interest in the Sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation. Then, out of the blue, Pete the Greek alerted me to the obvious – we are living in a modern world and the Catholic Church needs to update those “medieval” and “ancient” teachings.
Mickens says on page 3. "But, beyond all that (referring to Padre Pio and Leopoldo Mandic`), this is the 21st century. Not the Middle Ages.
Personally, I do not see the article as directly attacking Catholicism. What I do see is that the author is inferring that the Sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation belongs in the medieval, pietistic practice category which is home to the “bread and circuses” event of displaying the bodies of two dead Capuchin saints. For those modern progressive emerging Christianity big tent individuals, the medieval connection is one more nail in the coffin of the Sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation.
Personally, I am not totally confident that I have made a strong case for dismissing the Sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation because it belongs with “medieval” and “ancient” pietistic practices. However, there is a prevalent view on the internet that certain “old” annoying doctrines need to be re-evaluated according to the ideas in this “new” century.
