Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 4:57pm

Commissar Inquisitors

Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts reminds us that the Catholic Left is ever watchful for the slightest whiff of heresy against Leftism:

In a way reminiscent of those old Hollywood stereotypes about the Catholic Church, it looks like a bunch of priests have been caught.  The reaction immediate.  The retaliation swift.  Caught doing what you may ask.  Molesting children?  Engaging in child porn?  Teaching false doctrine?

No!  They attended a Trump rally and responded positively, even when Trump said things that his critics were appalled by.  Alas, but the cameras caught them, and keen New Prolife Catholics were fast to jump on their error.  Calls to alert their bishop were made, and it looks like the Bishop himself got involved.

Ah, I can remember when Internet Catholics were disgusted by the idea that people would call someone’s bishop over something like politics, when a priest would suggest an ardently pro-abortion politician might be publicly chastened, or that the Church should even have an opinion on the behavior of its flock. We’re all sinners after all.

I remember Catholics laughing along with Obama, or Hillary, no matter what they advocated and it was all OK.  I remember them blowing beer out their noses over liberal late night comedians, even if they advocated intrinsic evil, mortal sin that cried out to heaven for vengeance, or even toyed with blasphemy. If you want to know what the modern Left values – and that includes the Catholic Left – you need only go back ten or twenty years and see what they condemned.  There is an ever increasing likelihood that the two are one and the same.

Not that this Catholic Left Inquisition is new.  I posted some time ago about a prominent Catholic blogger letting slip the dogs of war and calling on her readers to swoop in and derail the career of a judge who dared disagree with her.  The issue?  That would be the shooting of Harambe the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo.  So there is precedent.  It looks like calling down the wrath of Holy Mother Church on those who dare digress from the priorities and narratives of the Political Left is becoming quite the thing.  And it looks like ol’Holy Mother Church might be more willing to comply than it was back in the day; back when it did its best Rodney Dangerfield tug-at-the-collar impersonation when asked to punish people over advocating abortion or gay sex.

The Left is in full Inquisition mode, scouring the countryside every day, seeking out those who have fallen from the purer faith of the political Left and the superiority of the latest ethics.  You will be careful if you’re Catholic.  If you are a priest.   You can never be good enough.  And all notions of tolerance and diversity and respect for other opinions are out the window.  You’ve been warned.

Go here to comment.  Catholic Leftists often seem to ape the worst aspects of some of the human adherents of Catholicism down through the ages, suspicion, intolerance and self-rightousness, while simultaneously jettisoning much of the substance of the Faith.  Getting carried away in the cause of Christ is one thing;  getting carried away in the cause of the latest Leftist folly rolling down the pike is quite another.  One of the more frightening aspects of Leftism is how something unthinkable one year among most Leftists, can become mandatory by virtually all Leftists the  next.  Thus the ever popular sport of heresy hunting among Leftists, as they seek to punish those who hold opinions they held themselves the day before yesterday.

 

But practicing homosexuals (nota bene: I have nothing but respect for those with same sex attraction who choose to live chastely) and other enemies of people of faith are eagerly pushing to make it a crime to so much as think that homosexuality is an immoral perversion. That’s what gay “marriage” is really about: creating a legal basis to punish thoughtcrime as “hate speech.”

Mark Shea July 13, 2011

 

My own highly tentative notion is that something like what Mother Teresa proposed with Hindus and Muslims is the way forward, because it appears to be what Jesus did with the Centurion and the Samaritan Woman: meet them where they are according to what they were capable of doing and not expect instantaneous impossibilities. Tell the gay person trying to live according to his or her obligations to others to do the best they can and try to help them do it. This seems to me to be in accord with the Church’s historic habit of gradualism in helping people’s moral progression. Jesus didn’t tell the centurion, “Get out of my sight, slaveowner!” He commended him for the progress in grace he had made. He didn’t tell the Samaritan woman to depart from him. He met her where she was and helped her take a step toward faith in him. At no point, does he order her to go home and break it off with her fifth husband.

I suspect something similar is where the Church will wind up with gay unions. Gay people, like everybody else, will come to the Church for spiritual help sooner or later because the Holy Spirit cannot be denied and gay humans, like all humans, hunger for God. And when they do, real shepherds are not going to slap their faces and send them away any more than Jesus slapped the centurion for daring to approach him while still owning other human beings. Shepherds are going to meet them where they are in all the complexity of their lives.

This will offend Puritans, whose first and last impulse is always to drive the impure away from Fortress Katolicus. But it seems to me that the Church is pretty much bound to take this route. It will not mean sacramentalizing gay unions. Rather, it will mean finding some way to help gay people take steps toward Jesus (who is the only one who can untangle the human heart) where they are.

Mark Shea, February 8, 2018

 

 

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Don L
Don L
Tuesday, July 10, AD 2018 6:56am

The “Catholic left” is to the faith as Judas Iscariot is to the concept of “Apostle”.

ken
ken
Tuesday, July 10, AD 2018 7:52am

I will believe this when I see a rainbow pride parish hold a celebration when two of their flock finally make the transition from gay “married” to complete continence and separation. Why should I expect it to be so public? Because everything about the rainbow priests and parishes is about an outward joyous celebration of who you are; never a hint at conversion. Two words missing from the vast majority of Catholics- conversion and suffering. A Catholic who is about to be martyred for his faith shares little with two men who are hurt because they can’t kiss at the sign of peace.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe the “All are welcome” parishes are lacking in efforts at conversion and I’m pretty sure that was a central theme of the gospel. I’ll wager the confession lines aren’t very long. I’ll also wager that the average parishioner or priest at these places believe more that the Church needs to change rather than vice versa

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