What is your opinion?

[otjm]

I was an altar boy when Pope Pius 12th was still alive. I was raised on the Baltimore Catechism, taught by sisters in grade school, sisters and priests in the fist two years of high school, Jesuits in the second two; two years of seminary (college) and graduated from a Catholic university where we had two brand spanking new theologians.

From my perspective it was a time of tremendous hope and a significant new understanding of faith.

I grew up, both in grade school and early high school, with the impression, given particularly by the sisters, that faith was a whole lot of rules and if you lived by the rules, you were good to go. We were certainly given the impression, if not the outright teaching, that it was sacriligeous to chew the Host (something that was hardly physically possible as it was thin enough it would disintegrate in your mouth); and a fear that if we touched a Host we might be struck dead, It was not really until I was being taught by Jesuits that faith was explained as something more than rule following. Vatican 2 ended while I was in seminary, and from late high school on, we read the documents of Vatican 2 as part of our classes. Changes in the structure of the Mass were explained to us; we were made aware of studies of the early Church and where the changes in the Mass were coming from. Perhaps I was far more privileged than most; while I did not decide I had a vocation to the priesthood, it did develop a serious interest in theology that continues to today.

One step ahead of the draft, I volunteered for the Army in intelligence and went to Viet Nam (several of my classmates from the seminary also went to military service; several others became COs). and gave some serious consideration to a military career.

I have seen some abuses in the Mass; I have seen one “liturgical dancer” (as she wasn’t even a barely good dancer, that only compounded the silliness); but I have attended far, far more good liturgies in a year than I have bad ones in 40.

Long, long ago I had an epiphany: the Church had gathered far more wisdom in 2000 years than I was likely to gain in my short lifetime. I have no patience with the goofblls of the left, and not a whole lot with the far right.

I have had the privilege of knowing a large number of priests, and out of the ones I have known or met, only a handful of bozos. I have personally experienced any number of Catholics falling away from the faith including relatives. To a person, that had nothing to do with chaos in the Church but had to do with personal choices (primarily marriage).

Has there been chaos in parishes? No question. Has the Church been a rock during all this time? Absolutely. Humanae Vitae was a brilliant prophetic work. John Paul 2 was a rock and Benedict another rock; Theology of the Body is God’s gift to counter the sexual revolution; and Benedict’s books on Christ an awesome work.

As I noted, I had an epiphany. I simply ignore the grey-haired twits, nitwits and bubble gummers on the left; I can’t be bothered with the vacuousness of the self-anointed pseudo-magisterium they constitute. And I struggle with the attitudes on the right, which seem to lead to a nearly pharisaical obsession with rules. Rules have importance, but trying to find how I need to follow Christ is far, far more important than getting into a twist over some of the issues that seem to pop up constantly. I don’t want to be liberal or conservative; I just want to be orthodox. And to do that, all I have to do is pay attention to what the Church teaches, whether it is in the documents of Vatican 2, or Trent, or Nicene, or others.

 

[GEddie]

Not to be a wet blanket - I have no doubt that we have good and holy men and women in Africa seeking God, and to serve Him.

But let’s not jump to the conclusion that all are there for the right reasons. There are many things that can impel one to seek community; there are many things that can impel a young man to seek the priesthood, and not all of them are admirable.

And no, I am not a cynic; I am a realist who has been around many, many years and I am a “people observer”. It is well known that poor countries can produce fantastic priests and religious; it is alos well known that going into the priesthood or religious life can bring great honor (and relative wealth to the truly poor) because of position. Hopefully those there for the wrong reasons will be weeded out. The whole issue is hardly a new phenomenon.

One could say the same about the often nostalgicized priestly abundance in the West of the 1900s. Young males had far fewer life choices then. The Church represented a better life in a position of social admiration. As an Irish priest in his 80s told me, in his youth, the choices were “the monastery, the army, or emigration to England.”

Not that any of these men did not love God, but improper motivations probably played a role for many of them. As the late 1900s brought more choices, fewer chose the sacrifice of the Church. That was never a “crisis”. It was a natural progression.

ICXC NIKA

 

[SMHW]

I simply ignore the grey-haired twits, nitwits and bubble gummers on the left; I can’t be bothered with the vacuousness of the self-anointed pseudo-magisterium they constitute. And I struggle with the attitudes on the right, which seem to lead to a nearly pharisaical obsession with rules. Rules have importance, but trying to find how I need to follow Christ is far, far more important than getting into a twist over some of the issues that seem to pop up constantly. I don’t want to be liberal or conservative; I just want to be orthodox. And to do that, all I have to do is pay attention to what the Church teaches, whether it is in the documents of Vatican 2, or Trent, or Nicene, or others.