Over at American Catholic my friend The Motley Monk saved me some time and effort by providing a good look at the increasingly irrelevant and yet always disappointing Richard McBrien, dissenter and retired ailing prof at Notre Dame.
McBrien, who still writes – quousque tandem? – for the National catholic Fishwrap, recently raised his elderly whine to his aging-hippy readers about the menacing ultra-conservatives John Paul II and Benedict XVI have appointed as bishops.
Even though McBrien, who has a predilection for lists, has provided names, I have never met any actually ultra-conservative bishops in the US. How odd! Then again, McBrien is so far off the reservation that to him even a tepid centrist would seem like Robert Bellarmine.
Let’s have a look at a bit of the Monk’s motley:
[…]
What these ideological progressives have always feared most is any conservative bishop—not just an ultra-conservative—having the audacity to challenge the their magisterium on what they have made their home turf.
That said, Fr. McBrien’s article in the National Catholic Reporter may provide an indication of a far more profound change: The pendulum is changing directions, potentially threatening the protections afforded Fr. McBrien and those ideological progressives for nearly five decades.
Yes, those new conservative prelates are emphasizing fidelity to Church teaching. That alone seems to be scaring the bejeezus out of Fr. McBrien and ideological progressives.
A formerly compliant national hierarchy—whose members generally allowed those progressives free reign to redefine Church teaching in their image and likeness—is becoming increasingly less compliant. Its members may even possess sufficient backbone at some point in the near future to extend their long arm into those institutions and hold the ideological progressives—like Fr. McBrien—accountable for their doctrinal errors…in exactly the same way the nuns are now being held accountable for their doctrinal errors.
Of course, Fr. McBrien’s hope is that Benedict XVI’s successor will adopt McBrien’s progressive vision for the Church and will undo the “terrible backlash” visited on the U.S. Church by those ultra-conservative appointees who “overemphasize the abortion issue” over “social justice.”
Short of that, what’s next? “Ideologically progressive professors at Catholic universities and colleges on the bus?”
The “signs of the times” indicate that something more may be transpiring than just the pendulum shifting direction: Communio with the Bishop of Rome is in.
The week after the NCR published Fr. McBrien’s article, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Carlo Maria Viganò, extended his long arm into the matter. HERE.
[…]
I wrote about Archbishop Viganò HERE.
McBrien and the Fishwrapers are watching the destruction of everything they built and controlled for decades.
Biological solution.
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Adding to what you have said on this topic today and previously Fr. Z, The Cardinal Newman Society also emailed something today. They focused on two important phrases of +AB Vigano regarding this subject. They said:
“You may recall that three weeks ago, the notoriously anti-Vatican Fr. Richard McBrien—who still teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame—publicly boasted that “progressive” Catholics have found refuge on Catholic campuses, “where the long arms of a bishop cannot reach.”
But the very next week at Notre Dame, the Vatican’s “long arm” wagged its finger at Father McBrien and his dying breed of “progressives,” declaring them a “grave” threat to the Church!
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, Pope Benedict’s ambassador to the United States, said that certain American professors…
…who claim the moniker “Catholic,” are often the sources of teachings that conflict with, rather than defend, Catholic teachings in the important public policy issues of the day.
And he lamented that many of these dissenters…
…teach at institutions that hold themselves out to be “Catholic.” This, my brothers and sisters, is a grave and major problem that challenges the first freedom of religious liberty and the higher purpose of the human person.“
I’m so happy that Fr. McBrien wears that red tie so he is recognizable as a priest and not a layman. (sarcasm)
“McBrien and the Fishwrapers are watching the destruction of everything they built and controlled for decades.”
Faster, please. . .and good riddance. McBrien, et al are unwilling and incapable of helping the Church navigate out of the mess they’ve created. All they are willing to do (and capable of doing) is dancing in the ecclesial debris.
Fr. Philip Neri, OP
http://www.hancaquam.blogspot.com
Faster, please. . .and good riddance. McBrien, et al are unwilling and incapable of helping the Church navigate out of the mess they’ve created. All they are willing to do (and capable of doing) is dancing in the ecclesial debris.
Wow! What an excellent summary!
I read too fast and was confused – I had never heard of any McBrien wine before. Astigmatism.
The Rev. McBrien will continue fighting to the bitter end (emphasis on the bitter).
McBrien previously gushed over a past apostolic nuncio who was responsible for recommending the slough of liberal bishops America has had throughout the past few decades. This present whining of his over the appointment of bishops of a different stripe doesn’t surprise me.
Current dissenters may be fortunate to be living today rather than in the early 1900s. This is a view given by somebody writing in 1903:
“Assuredly, such confusion, chaos, and contradiction in matters of religious belief must to every Catholic, appear a perfect travesty of the Christianity founded by our Divine Lord. He thinks of the tens of thousands of priests, and the hundreds of millions of lay-folks in the bosom of the Catholic Church absolutely united in their religious tenets, and submitting as one man to her authority in questions of faith and morals. He knows that anyone of these, whether priest or layman, who should dare to disbelieve or doubt or deny a single article of defined doctrine, would straightway be guilty of a grave sin against God and would be cut off as a dead branch, and would be good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under the feet of men, and cast into fire. Such a thing as a priest presuming to pick and choose among the church’s doctrines and yet be suffered to act and speak as a priest, is a thing simply unthinkable.”
That was written by the Rt Rev Henry Grey Graham, a Bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. He was writing to explain why he converted to the Church. Previously he had been a minister in the Church of Scotland. He was comparing the disunity among Protestants with the unity found in the Catholic Church. Bishop Graham died in 1959. Perhaps fortunately for him he did not live long enough to witness the level of dissent we have seen in the last fifty years. It sounds as if he would have made short shrift of them.
“…the increasingly irrelevant and yet always disappointing Richard McBrien…”
That was pithy.
I realize nothing ever happens quickly in an organization as big as the Church, but it is too bad we have to just wait for the “biological solution”; in the meantime every day many souls are being mislead by the heretical teachings of these people.
those ultra-conservative appointees who “overemphasize the abortion issue” over “social justice.”
Well, at least McBrien cannot accuse these “ultra-conservative” bishops of something truly disastrous, like insisting in adherence to Summorum Pontificum by every parish and pastor.
those ultra-conservative appointees who “overemphasize the abortion issue” over “social justice.”
This is hardly an ultra-conservative position.
Even Cardinal Bernadine which is considered a social justice hero among dissenters repeatedly stated that preventing abortion is much more important than social justice since there can no social justice for a life that has been snuffed out before birth:
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/1713/cardinal_bernardin_corrects_douglas_kmiec.aspx
We will know that the world has truely changed when
1. Irish-American Catholics take the photo of JFK off their walls,
2. When Lenin is buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg, and
3. When no one takes McBrien seriously anymore.
Sid, I am trying to imagine which of those is most likely to happen…. I fear it is #2.
All this drivel is not only taught by the McBrien’s in the Church (I agree with faster please!) it is also taught on a broader scope, sanitized of direct Catholic attacks, in your schools!
“to him even a tepid centrist would seem like Robert Bellarmine”