Frogs croaking
There are occasions when you feel repelled by something you have touched, making you feel the need to wash. I got the same feeling this afternoon, when I caught on the radio, an interview with the editor of Catholic Truth, a Scottish magazine that prides itself on its orthodoxy and defence of what it considers traditional values. Its American peers call it 'feisty'.
The latest edition of the magazine has dedicated itself to a game that the Catholic Church does not normally take part in : Hunt the Homosexual. What it wants is for worshippers to snitch on priests who they think might be homosexuals. Presumably if some do, the religious police of Catholic Truth will turn up at their doors calling for such priests to come out and have their collars felt, if not burned.
Catholic Truth's unchristian call for informers has a history of course within the Catholic Church. At the beginning of the century, Pope St Pius X led the reaction of the Church to Modernism which he felt was undermining it. Instrumental in this procedure was Msgr Umberto Benigni, a Vatican official who started an anti-modernist network among his associates. His society, Sodalitum Pianum had less than fifty members who were influential in Catholic journalism and academic life. Their trick was to inform on intellectuals whom they suspected of Modernist thought and to publish their names in their own media outlets, and naturally they had easy access to Benigni. A thoroughly shameful activity that incidentally included among the suspects one Angelo Roncalli, then a history professor, later to be Pope John XXIII.
It is a relief to return to the sanity of true Catholic teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains sections on its position on homosexuality, 2357 ,2358, 2359. 2358 in particular is quite explicit in its description of how we are to treat people of this tendency. "They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. "
The latest edition of the magazine has dedicated itself to a game that the Catholic Church does not normally take part in : Hunt the Homosexual. What it wants is for worshippers to snitch on priests who they think might be homosexuals. Presumably if some do, the religious police of Catholic Truth will turn up at their doors calling for such priests to come out and have their collars felt, if not burned.
Catholic Truth's unchristian call for informers has a history of course within the Catholic Church. At the beginning of the century, Pope St Pius X led the reaction of the Church to Modernism which he felt was undermining it. Instrumental in this procedure was Msgr Umberto Benigni, a Vatican official who started an anti-modernist network among his associates. His society, Sodalitum Pianum had less than fifty members who were influential in Catholic journalism and academic life. Their trick was to inform on intellectuals whom they suspected of Modernist thought and to publish their names in their own media outlets, and naturally they had easy access to Benigni. A thoroughly shameful activity that incidentally included among the suspects one Angelo Roncalli, then a history professor, later to be Pope John XXIII.
It is a relief to return to the sanity of true Catholic teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains sections on its position on homosexuality, 2357 ,2358, 2359. 2358 in particular is quite explicit in its description of how we are to treat people of this tendency. "They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. "
The distasteful action of Catholic Truth in highlighting possible homosexuality among Scottish priests spotlights something else. Apart from causing division within the Church, they show clearly that they are, regardless of their protestations, on the sidelines of the Catholic Church in Scotland. St Augustine was faced with the Donatist heresy that emphasisied the unworthiness of some Catholics, and the predestination of some elect, ie themselves and had something to say about it. "The clouds roll with thunder, the House of the Lord shall be built throughout the earth; and these frogs sit in their marsh and croak - We are the only Christians!"
posted by JPK | 7:26 pm
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