Happy With Ratzinger! (No, Really!)

Traditional Piety: the Unforgivable Sin

I won't paste any links to articles in this post as examples nor do I wish to hurl specific accusations. If you happen to be a Conservative or Traditional Catholic such as myself, you won't need a specific example -- you can probably draw upon personal experience.

By now you may be asking yourself: "What is he talking about anyway?"

If the title of this post hasn't clued you in on today's topic then you may very well be a Liberal Catholic and probably won't care about this post except to wish that I would just shut up, hold hands and sing Kumbai-ya. Not only that but you would, given the chance, tell me that I was being very pre-Vatican II and worse than that: JUDGMENTAL!

Figured it out yet? After reading many reports over the years and several just this week, it has become increasingly clear to me, at least, that there is a double standard at work in the modern Catholic Church in America. ( I won't use the term American Catholic Church as the formal schism hasn't occurred yet.) The first and most common standard is the one applied to the Liberal wing of the Church. (for lack of better terms I will use Liberal and Conservative instead of the lesser understood Heterodox and Orthodox) This standard, embraced by the majority of American bishops, priests and religious says that you can be accepted within the Church if you are seeking innovative and interesting new ways of worship that may or may not include the presence of a duly ordained priest, since he may not be in residence at your local parish anyway, and if you accept the possibility that the Magisterium of the Church may have been wrong all along on such diverse issues as sexual morality, abortion, contraception, sexual morality, Mary's perpetual virginity, sexual morality, the pope's infallibility and...did I mention sexual morality?

The second standard has been applied to those viewed as the throwbacks of the Church. Ecclesial Neanderthal if you will. Come on, you know who I am talking about. Everyone together now: Traditional (Conservative) Catholics. Pre-Vatican II, liturgy-hugging, pope-loving, schism-hating, Communion-kneeling Catholics. You can still see them huddled in the rear pews of your local church/multi-purpose buildings with their three to five children and their irrational feelings of repulsion towards the community building sign of holding hands during the Our Father prayer. Towards them is often applied the standard of open hostility and rejection.

Now I don't want to get into too much of a rant here because I could probably go on all day long and you probably won't want to read about it anyway. But I do want to draw your attention to one point. Conservative Catholics have been and continue to be angry with their priests and bishops not to be argumentative or overly legalistic when it comes to things like the Liturgy but rather because they recognize the double standard that is at work. We have all heard the argument applied that we should be accepting of everyone. We have been told over and over again that we should be, as good Christians, accepting of everyone and their behaviors regardless of what those may be. Therefore a good parish community will accept nearly any behavior simply because we have been told over and over again that we should not judge anyone. Anyone that is except those that wish to worship their God with a traditional piety.

Don't get me wrong, we must not judge anyone's heart, that is the state of their soul. That is for God alone to judge as only He can see our true intentions. But we can and indeed must judge the actions of others so that we can avoid that which is evil and embrace that which is good. But I digress.

Back to my original point. Popular church opinion holds that we cannot judge anyone except traditionally minded Catholics. They are in perpetual open season. Conservative Catholics it seems may routinely be ostracised and ridiculed. They may, when they resist their ill treatment be harassed and in extreme conditions "invited" to leave their parishes and diocese. This is a wrong that must be righted. Our bishops and our Pope owe us that in all truth and justice. If there is to be a true accepting of differences then it must be an acceptance of all differences, not just those accepted by the Liberal clergy of this country.

Labels: Catholic, Catholicism

posted by Norm Johnson @ 11:25 AM