I’m heading home after a maternal visit.
Alas I am reading the spittle flecked raving of a hysterical and, apparently psychic, Austen Ivereigh at Commonweal.
“None of this will bother Francis”! As if he has a clue about what bothers him or what he thinks.
He is doing his best to savage Card Sarah. To cover his own crazy leaps to conclusion before he ever read the book?
I have a long layover in ATL. Sigh. I’ll probably read more.
UPDATE:
As it turned out, in the lounge between flights I read a little more of this dreadful and undignified piece and did some selective quotes and red ink.
It’s truly nasty.
I suspect the reaction of the papalotrous is partly due to their opposition not only to celibacy for priests but their opposition to any sort of sexual control. I can’t shake the suspicion that they think that if priestly celibacy isn’t take down, then it will be much harder to force a change to the CCC on homosexuality. They have to break it the nuptial connection of priest and Church in order to weaken the ends of marriage between one man and one woman. Communion for unrepentant adulterers was a step in the right direction when it comes to the nuptial character of Christ and the Church and the Eucharist. Now they have to bust the priesthood down too.
Does that sound right?
That, as I wait to take off.
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One imagines these men have the impression that the average Catholic in the pew can’t possibly perceive coverups, nor comprehend the sleight of hand that accompanies these episodes. They couldn’t be more wrong. The history and personalities of all involved are actually pretty well understood by now, so when a situation like this comes up we can fairly easily deduce what we see from what we already know and arrive at a reasonable conclusion, attack dogs notwithstanding.
Benedict co-authored this book with Cardinal Sarah. They both intended to defend the priesthood from destruction, which seems imminent. Francis realized too late what it was, flew into a hysterical rage, yelled and screamed and swore a lot, leaned on Ganswein to get the retraction, and Cardinal Sarah is likely to end up retired with no position and what will happen to Benedict, we don’t want to guess.
Cardinal Sarah does not have a reputation as a liar, nor does Benedict.
The whole thing is nuts. It’s obvious that Benedict XVI and Cardinal Sarah had some collaboration on the content of this book. It’s also quite apparent that what was being said did not meet the current zeitgeist of those running the show. Archbishop Ganswein got his orders from the current establishment, consulted Pope Benedict who acceded to the wishes of the current ruling Politburo, and everyone followed the party line. Why are we surprised?
AI also assumes Benedict’s funeral takes place before the current Pontiff dies.
Father, your conclusions hit the nail firmly on the head. These people think they can arrange things so that they can do what they like and still get to Heaven.
In a remake of Christmas, Austen will reprise Darren McGavin’s role. His sputtering at the furnace clinkers ought to be something. Also the narrator’s voice-over for the ‘Scut Farkas Affair’.
Aaaargh! “…remake of Christmas Story.
Ivereigh isn’t completely wrong. In the second to last screenshot, being married is not an ontological impediment to the priesthood, as there are many married priests in the Catholic Church outside of the Latin Rite. Thus we can’t imagine some kind of automatic continuum from married priests to homosexual marriage: what would that say about the Eastern churches and the Anglican ordinariate, which on the whole are stronger defenders of traditional marriage than many clergy in Western Europe and North America.
Priestly celibacy should continue in the Latin Rite as a matter of traditional discipline, but it should be described and defended as such. And there’s no fallacy in defending it on the grounds of long-standing custom which has been received by the faithful for many generations.
(Matters that do rise to the level of ontology, due to their truly universal witness and divine revelation, include heterosexual marriage, the immutability of sex and gender, and the male-only priesthood.)
The point that isn’t just discipline (although you can give an indult about it, apparently) is the idea of continence.
In Jewish law, it was “no priest sacrificing before the Lord, or doing various sacred things in the Temple, can be having sex at the same time.” So the priests were on a rota system where they only served for a short time (with the rest of their assigned section) every year. (And their wives too, who also lived continent during that time; and I think there were other special regs for the whole household, to maintain a high level of ritual purity during Temple service times.) But all married Jewish men (and women) were called to continence and prayer at certain times, showing that they were part of a priestly people.
In the Eastern churches with married priests, the priests can’t have nookie before saying Mass, so they don’t say daily Mass. And they (and their wives) have to follow an additional continence schedule that goes along with the fasting schedule, just like their married laypeople do. Bishops and monks can say daily Mass, and are more free to do liturgical things, so long as they follow perpetual continence as part of their celibacy.
In the West, we also used to have a fasting/continence schedule for laypeople, and even more continence for married priests (and their wives). Our side of things wanted daily Masses and more celibacy. Maybe this is harder to put across, since obligatory continence schedules for laypeople have slowly disappeared since Trent. Obviously all fasting is “just discipline,” but relaxing continence for married priests is more of an indult matter.
Indults are supposed to be about enabling piety for large numbers of people, or making pastoral exceptions for small numbers of people.
If there are going to be large numbers of married priests on the Roman/Latin side of the Church, they and all Catholics are going to have to go back to continence schedules (and more fasting days every week) to enable more prayer, and to keep reverence for the Mass. That is the context where married priests (that aren’t pastoral exceptions) make sense.
Or we could stick with celibacy and nuptial Ecclesia identification for priests, and modern amounts of nookie for married laypeople, and more meat every week for everybody.
“…their opposition to any sort of sexual control.”
That is it in a nutshell. That is exactly what this is all about. And rest assured that the push to come after a married priesthood will be a married homosexual priesthood.
Astonishing? Impossible?
Who would have believed after near thirty years of Pope John Paul we would be at this moment? With secular materialism and soft atheism in the driver’s seat nothing is out of the question.
Love all the attention this book is receiving….
Father Zuhlsdorf:
I hope you made it home okay and enjoyed visiting family. Looks like Delta went fairly smooth this time, and weather delays were minimal.
It’s good to have a short break after Christmas. People sometimes don’t realize how busy priests are during the Advent season.
My take on this debacle:
Pope Emeritus Benedict did indeed write the contributions to Cardinal Sarah’s book, and it is a given that Ganswein had insight into them;
Pope Francis caught wind of the book that Sarah and Benedict had written, completely lost it and demanded that Ganswein force Benedict to withdraw as co-author;
Ganswein, out of fear, complied.
The fact remains that nobody can dispute that Benedict did, in fact, make the contributions to the book. Nobody involved, including Ganswein, is implying that Benedict was tricked or coerced (that is a fabrication by Poison Gnome Ivereigh, Beans, Ratty Mickens, Dave Armstrong and the Patheos trolls, etc).
So the issue seems to be simply an attempt to attack Pope Emeritus Benedict, Cardinal Sarah and Ignatius Press for daring to defend traditional Catholic teaching on priestly celibacy.
I will continue to support Ignatius Press as I have in the past (they were invaluable in my religious education, both in RCIA and as a Catholic convert) and will definitely give this book consideration.