Pope Questions Interfaith Dialogue

[Crazy_Diamond]

Oh, dear. Well, if you want to play that way, let’s see how you like being on the receiving end.

Where did that thumbs-down in the title come from? I can’t seem to get rid of it in the edit mode.

 

[Peter_J]

Believe what you will, Crazy Diamond, I have no interest in continuing this conversation with you. I am truly saddened, however, because at first you seemed extremely reasonable.

 

[Crazy_Diamond]

Believe what you will, Crazy Diamond, I have no interest in continuing this conversation with you. I am truly saddened, however, because at first you seemed extremely reasonable.

You’ve made two points so far. One is that some people use imprecise terminology that results in technically false statements. The other is that imprecise terminology is the result of false ecumenism.

So far, I agree with one of your points and not the other. It is indeed better to be more precise in your terminology. You are correct there. However, imprecise terminology is just that. It can be corrected if one is willing. There’s no reason to ascribe all imprecise terminology to “false ecumenism.” Doing so simply makes you guilty of using imprecise terminology too.

My apologies, since my joke offended you. It was intended as irony.

 

[Peter_J]

You’ve made two points so far. One is that some people use imprecise terminology that results in technically false statements. The other is that imprecise terminology is the result of false ecumenism.

No, I never said that. Please stop putting words in my mouth, it’s really getting tiresome.

 

[Crazy_Diamond]

No, I never said that. Please stop putting words in my mouth, it’s really getting tiresome.

Hmmm… well, maybe I have gotten completely distracted from what you were trying to say.

Here’s how it’s looked from my perspective:

Initially, we agreed that Benedict wasn’t talking about intra-religious dialogue being impossible, but only inter-religious dialogue:

We have mutually agreed upon authorities, so the meeting is possible. No such mutual meeting ground exists between religions, except in the imaginations of material rationalists.
Peter J;4478100:

When you put it that, I can agree with you.

We first disagreed in regards to the word “doublespeak”. Something I only just noticed is that you said we are all guilty of doublespeak, Catholics as well as everyone else. I hadn’t noticed that before:

Peter J;4482129:

That is, perhaps, the most important point: there’s double-speak on all sides, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. For example (I’ve brought this up before, and I don’t mean to harp on it, but I think it illustrates the point nicely) there was a recent thread in which sandusky said that the Council of Trent “infallibly defined such-and-such”. But if you ask sandusky whether such-and-such is true, he’ll tell you that it isn’t. Now if that isn’t double-speak, then I don’t know is.

I’m not so sure I’d call the problem doublespeak, exactly. It’s more an inherent weakness in human communication. We all have unspoken definitions, concepts, and emotional attachments to particular words and phrases.

…]

I wouldn’t pick on Sandusky in this regard. His (I assume Sandusky’s a “he”) profile says he’s “Reformed (former Roman Catholic)”. Councils can say whatever they want and label it at whatever level of authority they care to, and Calvinists won’t necessarily agree. Sounds perfectly consistent to me.

It looks now to me as if you were trying to point out that there’s way too much false ecumenism all around. That’s a point I certainly agree with, and didn’t really elaborate on. Perhaps we should talk about that more, because the concepts of false ecumenism and indifferentism provoke a very strong reaction from me. I react strongly because people commonly accuse me and my wife of supporting false ecumenism and indifferentism, simply because she’s Catholic and I’m Protestant. You can read some of my views on the problem of false ecumenism in mixed-tradition marriages in this thread.

So maybe we should talk more about false ecumenism. As I say, I agree with you that it’s a huge problem. However, I disagreed that your Sandusky example was a good illustration of false ecumenism. That’s where we got off track, I guess. Instead of talking about the general problem, we got to arguing about a specific example.

I still think the Sandusky reference is a poor example of false ecumenism, but only because it came from Sandusky. If it had come from somebody else, with a history of “let’s pretend we’re all the same” statements, I would have agreed. (His history seems to fit more under the category of “let’s just admit you are obviously wrong about everything.”)

So, then, what do you want to say about false ecumenism? Whatever it is, I think it fits in this thread since false ecumenism is the sort of thing Benedict’s statement challenged.

 

[Peter_J]

^^ Well if you say (or if sandusky says, since you keep going back to him) “Such-and-such statement was infallible”, and if you actually believe that such-and-such statement was fallible, then that’s not just “using imprecise terminology”; that’s saying the opposite of what you believe.

But I do agree with you that we’ve sort of hijacked the discussion away from the Pope questioning interfaith dialogue. (I intended to read what John Allen had to say about it, but I still haven’t. Perhaps now I’ll get to it, now that I’m reminded of it.)

Thanks for the link to the mixed-marriage thread. I hadn’t noticed that one. (I mostly just go to the Non-Catholic Religions Forum, the Apologetics Forum, and the Eastern Catholicism Forum – and, even out of those three, I spend a lot more time on the first one than the other two.)

 

[Crazy_Diamond]

^^ Well if you say (or if sandusky says, since you keep going back to him) “Such-and-such statement was infallible”, and if you actually believe that such-and-such statement was fallible, then that’s not just “using imprecise terminology”; that’s saying the opposite of what you believe.

Okay, agreed. It’s a really sloppy error. The only reason I know it’s an error is because I’m familiar enough with the author to make that judgment. Otherwise, I might judge it as confusion over the meaning of “infallible.” And “is”, I suppose. Neither of us believes that “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”, do we? Thought not.

(I mostly just go to the Non-Catholic Religions Forum, the Apologetics Forum, and the Eastern Catholicism Forum – and, even out of those three, I spend a lot more time on the first one than the other two.)

I like the Eastern Catholicism forum. I get a lot of really new info there. My wife is Latin Rite, so I don’t get to see those differences in her parish.

 

[Peter_J]

Well, better late than never. I finally read John Allen’s comments. For anyone who hasn’t already read them, I recommend it.

 

[Crazy_Diamond]

Well, better late than never. I finally read John Allen’s comments. For anyone who hasn’t already read them, I recommend it.

He’s the only reason I read National Catholic Reporter. Well, the main reason. Their editorials can be pretty hilarious. Reading the comments sections also helps remind me that liberal Catholics can be just as vicious as anyone else online. When we lived near a liberal parish (an agony to my wife to attend) the people always seemed super nice to me, so I have a real soft spot in my heart for liberal Catholics.

 

[Peter_J]

One thing I would take issue with is Allen’s criticism of the Pope for being too European. (‘Of course, a pope is supposed to be a universal pastor, not a European cultural critic, and one might legitimately wonder if the rest of the world ought to be expected to automatically situate his declarations in the context of European cultural debate. Despite the Vatican’s insistence that Benedict is not “Euro-centric,” this week’s episode offers a reminder that those declarations sometimes ring hollow.’)

It seems to me that there has really been too much emphasis on the Pope having a universal role, and not enough emphasis on the fact that he’s also the Primate of Italy, the metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of Rome, and the bishop of the city of Rome. (I didn’t include “Primate of the West”, naturally, since that’s been dropped from the Pontifical Yearbook. But ‘Head of the Latin Church’, or whatever you want to call it, is still a very significant role as well.)

 

[Crazy_Diamond]

One thing I would take issue with is Allen’s criticism of the Pope for being too European. (‘Of course, a pope is supposed to be a universal pastor, not a European cultural critic, and one might legitimately wonder if the rest of the world ought to be expected to automatically situate his declarations in the context of European cultural debate. Despite the Vatican’s insistence that Benedict is not “Euro-centric,” this week’s episode offers a reminder that those declarations sometimes ring hollow.’)

I guess I didn’t take it as Allen’s criticism. He was just bringing up a very likely criticism that will occur to people, especially the readers of NCR. The criticism occurred to me, as well, but then I do think the Vatican is far too European in its perspective.

Historically, Allen has often been at pains to describe how apparent faux pas on the part of Vatican announcements are really the result of an out-of-date communication system. The Vatican spokesman just isn’t set up to make declarations that will be heard 'round the world within a half hour and then have ten thousand bloggers adding their own comments within the day. Allen’s best comment about it was something like John Paul II brought Vatican communications into the twentieth century - now if we could just get them up to about 1960 standards we’d really have something effective.

But back to criticism of the criticism… it is a bit ludicrous. The statement is in a preface to a European book, by a European, about Europe, to be read by Europeans. Taking European culture into account in interpreting that statement is only natural. It’s just as ludicrous to criticize Benedict for writing a preface to a French book by a Frenchman about France to be read by the French in French. What, people expect him to write it in church Latin or something?