**Cat, again, you seem to make blanket statements and wholesale generalities. ** Disagreeing with one’s bishop or priest, when there is legitimate cause for doing so, does not equate to disobedience. As I read your posts, you seem to harpen on that theme. Disagreement and disobedience are two very different things. You seem to mesh them into one.
There was an incident back in 2000 when the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger disagreed with the apologies that Pope John Paul II wanted to make during the Jubilee Year. Cardinal Ratzinger even disagreed with the Holy Father about having Bob Dylan in the same program as the pontiff. They disagreed, but, the future pope deferred to his predecessor. Disagreements do not equate to disobedience.
My parochial vicar is my best friend, as many of you who regularly read these threads know. There was one time when we sharply disagreed on the manner of employing EMHCs for daily Mass. I wrote him a letter devoid of any emotion and pointed out to him that the documents called for X when he was doing A. He read the letter and did not speak to me for three weeks. However, he stopped what he was doing. When we spoke again, we did not broach the subject, but, from time to time, he has asked me to look up things for him regarding what should and should not be done during the Mass. We know each other well because I served under him while he was rector at the Cathedral. He taught me a lot and he augmented what I learned about reading statutes by channeling that experience into the liturgy.
As I see it, there is nothing wrong with reading the authoritative documents of the Church. If the Church did not want us to read them, she would not put them up on her website for the whole world to read. And, she would not have given us the means to go about handling liturgical abuse matters when these issues are bona fide.
boldface above–And THAT, benedictgal, is my point.
Do you think that I am the only Catholic who makes blanket statements and thinks in wholesale generalities?
No. If you think so, you are naive, not me.
Weaker Catholics (and I would put myself in that category, since I am a fairly new Catholic who came into the Church after being kicked out of the Protestant fellowship that I belonged to) WILL make generalities when they hear other Catholics criticize their priests and bishops. Yes, they will.
YOU, as a stronger Catholic, have no problem differentiating between “disagreeing with a priest about liturgy” and “disagreeing with the Catholic Church about faith and morals.”
But OTHERS do not have that same ability to separate the two.
We are more like little children, who, when they see Mommy and Daddy fighting, become afraid that there is going to be a divorce. As a grownup, you can try to explain to little children that Mommy and Daddy still love each other, even though they fight all the time. But we don’t buy it. We are still afraid for Mommy and Daddy.
There are many Catholics who are living in mortal sin but still receiving Holy Communion because they “disagree” with the Church regarding co-habitation, same-sex relationships, abortion, artificial birth control, etc. I know many Catholics like this, and so do you.
While YOU and other strong Christians can clearly see the difference between these issues and the liturgy, weak Christians cannot. They see you stating that the priest is making a mistake, and they also see that the priest is making a mistake. They don’t see the difference.
It doesn’t help when you and others make statements to the effect that the liturgy is of “supreme importance”, or is “THE most transcendant issue in the Catholic Church.” When the weaker Christian hears (or reads) you say this, they think, “Wow, if the Liturgy is the most important issue and the priest/bishop is WRONG about it, then he might also be wrong about sex outside of marriage!”
Yes, they’re looking for an excuse to disobey the Church, and you’re handing it to them.
There are a lot of secular companies in the U.S., including mine, who will fire an employee for “disagreeing with the management.” The employees argues that they have a right to disagree and indeed they do, but management points out that their continual disagreements create an atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust and ultimately undermine the company.
I think that those who are stronger Christians should be very careful to protect the weak. Sure, go ahead and disagree with your priest and write him letters and even speak with the bishop. According to the Catechism, you have a right to do this.
But do it in private, like the Bible says. Or keep it among your very close friends who you trust to stay strong in the faith.
There is no reason to broadcast your disagreements over an open online forum that thousands may be reading.
I can testify that these kinds of posts criticizing the clergy have caused me a great deal of unrest and trouble in my soul. I keep telling myself to trust the bishop, trust the Church, not listen to the naysayers.
But as an ex-Protestant (of 47 years), I can’t help but think, “Well, once again, another Church that is constantly messing up what Christ intends. These fallible men are making a mess out of things, just like they did in the Protestant churches. There really isn’t a True Church, so I may as well just give it up and trust Jesus Only.”
These thoughts are not good, are they? I probably shouldn’t read your posts and others like them, but I have a stubborn determination to try to help others who might be floundering in the Catholic Church, so I keep trying to defend the Catholic Church and the priests and bishops.
But I am overwhelmed by all your quotes from genuine Church documents.
These documents of the Church seem to condemn the very men that the Church says we should trust, and that leaves me (and others, I’m sure) in a quandry, which leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the only person we can trust is OURSELVES. Like it or not, that’s what we hear YOU and others like you saying. You can argue with us all you like, but you are trying to argue with children who don’t hear things the way you hear them.
And that is not Catholicism.
