I am absolutely not going to try to defend this pope, or even any Catholic dogma, though I don’t think it is all completely out of line.

But please, on things like this, it’s worth paying attention to what is actually going on. Excommunication or lifting it is not about agreeing with someone’s beliefs or policies, nor even about stating that someone is a good or bad person.

I’ll jump on the bandwagon with both feet about declaring this clown an idiot, and I’ll happily sit on the sidelines and cheer most anti-Benedict sentiments.

But excommunication doesn’t work that way. This is about recognized membership in the Church, and for those who feel bound by it, it impinges on someone’s eternal salvation. It isn’t even about being a good Catholic, just about being a Catholic.

Guy’s a whackjob.

The Pope has lifted the excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church of four bishops appointed by a breakaway archbishop more than 20 years ago. One of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s appointees, Briton Richard Williamson, outraged Jews by saying the Nazi gas chambers did not exist.

Er, the “bishop’s’” views on the Holocaust, women’s rights, gays, or the existence of life on Mars are pretty much irrelevant here.  Here’s the Catholic statement on excommunication.  The Pope excommunicates heretics, schismatics, persecutors of the church, people who try to use the secular law or temporal power against the Church, duellists, Masons, screwing around in a nunnery or monestary, simonists and sellers of indulgences, or people who absolve priests who have sex (I’m not kidding about the last one - go and look).

Withdrawing an excommunication on a person is not “propping up” their general stupidity, any more than finding them “not guilty” of murder would be propping up their views.  It’s a religious penalty imposed for a whole list of serious(*) religious crimes.  It is NOT, I repeat NOT, imposed for generally being objectionable.

(*)Serious to the Church, that is - the list of offenses is pretty damned funny, a history list of the Catholic Church spluttering and wheezing at the erosion of its power.

I blogged about this too, and I have to say that the fact that Ratzi is German only makes this move look worse. And Lymis, that may be an accurate way of describing the way excommunication works, but there’s also nothing in the rule book that required Williamson be reinstated to the church, and a better human being than the current Pope would have taken that into consideration.

Um… anybody wanna duel?  I think it would be pretty cool to be excommunicated.

I’d rather sell indulgences.  Less effort, you realise.

You are forgiven, my child - pay at the door, and we don’t accept Visa.

Meanwhile, awesome human beings like Father Roy Bourgeois get excommunicated:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/20/vatican_threatens_to_excommunicate_catholic_priest

Roy Bourgeois started the School of the Americas Watch after witnessing US-sponsored violence against, among others, liberation theology catholics in Latin America. He’s been to jail for his untiring activism. He’s being excommunicated over the presiding over the confirmation of a woman priest. Thisi interview is worth hearing/reading.

Shorter me: your little club really stinks, Papa Ratzi. You kick out the wonderful people
and welcome (and protect) sociopathic scum.

It is NOT, I repeat NOT, imposed for generally being objectionable.

But doesn’t rescinding the excommunication validate the schismatic and, arguably, heretical Society of Pious X which condones these objectionable views?

Wow, the former Hitler Youth pope throws a bone to a Holocaust denier. Color me Not Surprised.

Considering how the Vatican went deaf, dumb and blind about the Holocaust while it was actually occurring, I’m not surprised either.

Although maybe the next time a Catholic prelate makes one of those obnoxious, tasteless comparisons of legal abortion to the Holocaust, this will give him pause.

The revisionist clown said:
>>instinctive repugnance for other misuses of our human frame, such as coprophagy.

Anyone who’s ever had to actually take care of a child younger than two years old just LOL’d right here at the idea that repugnance for playing with and/or eating shit is instinctive, rather than learned.

But doesn’t rescinding the excommunication validate the schismatic and, arguably, heretical Society of Pius X which condones these objectionable views?

That’s a good point.  This convinces me more than ever that the current Pope’s aim is to reverse Vatican II as much as possible, which would only have the effect of driving those of us raised in Vatican II (like me) even further away from the Church.

And it goes without saying that anyone who listens to Fred Leuchter is a fucking moron.  If you don’t even know that it takes more cyanide to kill lice than it does humans, you should STFU about if the gas chambers “existed” or not.

On the one hand, the RCC might say that excommunicating a person for his views on the Holocaust would be introducing politics in the mix, and that rectifying that is in fact taking it out.

OTOH, intelligent people might ask why they were so keen on excommunicating the liberation theologists, and why ‘ordaining woman priest’ is against the rules of membership in their organisation but not ‘fomenting racial hatred’. Also, if the previous pope had collaborated with the Reds in Poland instead of resisting, would they have been as accomodating of his giving in to a totalitarian power than they were for Ratzi’s collaborating with the nazis by joining the Hitler Youth?

The idea that the RCC is this purely religious organization removed from political intrigue and temporal power is laughably naive, but apparently the believers have convinced themselves of it and claim the church should be apolitical.

Well, as Howard Zinn would put it, you can’t be neutral on a moving train.

While I do agree with Lymis and Phoenician about the “long-view” nature of the Church and it’s procedural policies, I think that ol’ Benny seems a bit more blatant about using dogma as a thinly-veiled excuse for pushing a radically right wing social agenda than JP2 was.

“Considering how the Vatican went deaf, dumb and blind about the Holocaust while it was actually occurring, I’m not surprised either.”

...but the Holocaust is just too recent for the Catholic Church to fully accept!  Don’t you people understand? 

Give them another 300-400 more years and they’ll come around.  After all, look what they did for Galileo in 1992?

:(

If there is a Catholic Heaven, I’d like to think that St. Edith Stein will be waiting outside the Pearly Gates to kick both Williamson and Benedict in the ass.

When J2P2 didn’t find it necessary to return these guys to the fold (or they were unwilling to repent the rejection of his papal authority), the arguments that suddenly they’ve seen the light now that B16 is in office are kinda slim. At the very least, since the papacy has spoken out about the Holocaust, you’d think some modification of those views would be in order.

On the one hand, the RCC might say that excommunicating a person for his views on the Holocaust would be introducing politics in the mix, and that rectifying that is in fact taking it out.

He wasn’t excommunicated for that—he was excommunicated for being a schismatic, which hasn’t changed in the intervening years. Now, Ratzi could have brought back the others and made his point about the schismatics without bringing back Williamson—that he didn’t says that he cares more about making this point than returning a Holocaust denier to a position of authority in his church.

In the exact same sense that what republicans needed was eight year long bush administration, pope ratso is exactly what catholics need.

what is widely believed today about the quote-unquote the Holocaust,

I almost emailed you about this last night.  Guess Mel Gibson is a real Catholic again.

I was willing to give Papa Ratzi the Nazi the benefit of the doubt regarding the Jungend.  They all had to join, and he was supposedly not enthusiastic in his support.

Not anymore.  Just…no.

I really hope Israel cancels the planned visit.  These guys not only deny the Holocaust (scare quotes?  really?) they insist that Jews killed Christ and retain a “blood sin” for doing so.  Yes, Jews are intrinsically evil—>a theological point that Vatican II threw out as false—>but these men are no longer excommunicated, but welcomed with open arms.

Get this straight, current Catholics who disagree with the teachings on birth control, gender relations, and sexuality are treated as pariahs, but these men, who are openly filled with hatred for Jews are welcomed as long lost beloved brothers.

I have a complicated relationship with Catholicism.  This?  Nail in the coffin.  No fucking way my kids are being brought up under this Pope.  I still love and respect priests and nuns of my acquaintance and family, but I’ll be god-damned if this crazy ass Nazi is having one ounce of influence over my kids.

Jesus did not teach hate.  Hate is exactly what these men have in their hearts and mean to teach to their flocks.

Unacceptable.  And the more that the RCC embraces Holocaust denial, the more irrelevent they will become.  Ignoring the bishops’ role in the pedarasty crisis and now this.  How can they expect anyone except a blindly obedient authoritarian to listen to them?

AND BLIND SUPPORT OF AUTHORITY IS NOT CATHOLIC DOGMA.  Fucking A, these men are evil and should not be welcomed back into the fold until they understand that Jews ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

Well, it wasn’t dogma for millenia.  Apparently Ratzi is in the process of rolling back V2 and pushing for an evangelical take on authority.  Too bad for him that most Catholics were born after those reforms, and the pre-Vatican Church is an alien to them.  The Vatican will never be a political power again like it was in the middle ages, no matter how hard JP2 tried to take it there and no matter how hard Ratzi continues to push it.

He’ll still have his Prada and his castle, though, so that’s something.

Lefebvre was a schismatic and hence so are his appointments.  To return him or his appointees is accept their doctrical viewpoints as acceptable.  This is disgusting.

Remember. JP2 was a liberal, as far as the church is concerned. Most of us have lived in a world where only one pope ever existed until this new one replaced him, so it’s natural for us to associate whatever policies JP2 had to the papacy as a whole, and to assume that it was the default views of the papacy. Not so. If you study the church’s history, most of JP2 predecessors were on the right of him, and it was pretty much a given that any successor would very probably be on the right of him as well.

Also, I think the church has given up on Western liberals. The mild reforms in Vatican II didn’t really bring new converts to the fold, and the fastest growing population of the church is from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa. Now, while these places are not more right-wing than the West, the people who are joining the church in those areas ARE more right-wing. I think the church has done the math and they realize that they can either reform the hell out of the church to start getting more Westerners, or just go back a century (which is easy) and win converts in the Third World that otherwise would go to evangelistic churches. The elites in the Third World are naturally more drawn to the RCC because it is less populist in its theology than evangelicals. As long as they support conservatives and excommunicate liberation theologists, elites in the Third World are less wary of the RCC than the evangelicals (who are conservative in their theology but are dangerous/suspect due to their championning of a more visceral, to the people form of religion).

But doesn’t rescinding the excommunication validate the schismatic and, arguably, heretical Society of Pious X which condones these objectionable views?

This is the concern I’ve seen from Catholics in the articles I read - that these folks still reject Vatican II and accepting them back into the fold is one more step toward undoing Vatican II, and in fact an interpretation that declares them “not schismatic” may imply that the real schismatics were those who embraced Vatican II, which given that Vatican II had the authority of the pope at the time, is pretty damn problematic.

It also just stirs the anti-Semitism back into the mix because part of Vatican II was rejecting anti-Semitism. That’s the backdrop for these guys’ views on the Holocaust.

On the one hand, I’m not Catholic, so it’s none of my business. On the other hand, I don’t think you can ask Jews and others not to be offended. It is a pretty big fuck-you.

Two things:

This is a man who, after living in a fascist country as a child and a teenager, believes that the greatest moral threat to the world is “liberalism”. Which sounds an awful lot like Nazi propaganda. Despite the fact that people say he only joined the Hitler Youth because he was compelled to do so by law, (which is true), he was constantly exposed to all of the Third Reich’s ideas from a fairly young age. That stuff will sink in, no matter who you are, and stay with you unless you actively try to de-program yourself, which he clearly has not. Thus, his views on women, gays, and “traditionalists”, who I loving refer to as “Inquisition Catholics”. Vatican II was the best thing to happen to the Catholic Church since the Protestant Reformation, and FYI, had John XXIII lived a little longer, birth control would’ve been given the okay. (He appointed a commission on it, but didn’t live to see their final report, which supported birth control. But the next pope (Paul?) chickened out, so here we are.)

Secondly, the most astute thing I’ve ever heard about Benedict came from a very irate scientist/priest at the Vatican Observatory, who of course agreed with John Paul II’s strongly pro-evolution status. Commenting on Christoph Schonborn’s Discovery Institute-style editorial in the New York Times, he said, “If the pope were still alive, he never would’ve allowed him to do that!” An interesting Freudian slip. We’re all hoping this will be a short run and he won’t do too muchmore damage.

Christ.  I followed the trousers link.

You want to see the patriarchy spelled out in print?

Original sin, whereby Eve made Adam sin and not the other way round (I Tim II 14), entailed Eve’s being punished, amongst other things, by the turning of her natural and painless subordination to Adam into a punishing domination of his over her, for she had shown by seducing him that she needed to be controlled… “thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee” (Genesis III, 16). Thenceforth with the transmission of original sin to all children of Adam passes to all daughters of Adam (except, of course, the Blessed Virgin Mary) this punitive subordination.

First off, Eve naturally was subordinate to Adam, but since she caused poor widdle Adam to sin, she and all her daughters unto eternity are subject to “punishing domination”.

Get it?  Women are subordinate by nature, and since one of them once tried to think for herself, they must all be brutally dominated.

Part of his backing for this?  First chapter of Genesis where Adam is created first.  Of course, the second chapter of Genesis retells the entire story with men and women being created together, but apparently these creation myths are irrelevant b/c they aren’t in Chapter 1.

AS IF ANY CATHOLIC WAS EVER TAUGHT THAT THE BIBLE WAS THE LITERAL TRUTH.

This man is pure hate.  He cannot deal with women wearing pants because it is a sin of immodesty—by separating our legs, we’re causing him to think about sex, we awful sluts we.  He believes to his core women should be “brutally dominated”.

And this man is no longer excommunicated.  He’s part and parcel of the New Catholicism.

No way in hell any of these men are ever getting anywhere near my daughters.

Remember. JP2 was a liberal, as far as the church is concerned.

No, you’re wrong.  John, Paul, and John Paul I were the liberals.  JPII was elected by the conservatives, even his name is a political pap and a lie.  He went out of his way to install extremely conservative priests everywhere and promoted more Cardinals and created more saints than any other.

He tried to erase V2, and Ratzi is helping it to happen.

You want to read a bunch of hate?  Follow Pam’s link to why women should never go to University.  Apparently God created my mind differently from men’s minds, and it’s really bad that it works so successfully and that studies show women aren’t ignorant cows like God commanded them to be.

Women should really have lobotomies at birth so we can properly fulfill our roles as pretty walking wombs.

I mean, shit!  Does he really think women only started working in the 1970s?  That women in the past just stayed at home and watched the kids?  No woman was ever widowed, or discovered radium, or anything.

Ugh.  I can’t stand it anymore.  I’m going to go play with my girls, who wear pants as it pleases them and go to school and have worth in and unto themselves.  If anyone ever tries to brutally dominate them, I’ll kill them.

This convinces me more than ever that the current Pope’s aim is to reverse Vatican II as much as possible, which would only have the effect of driving those of us raised in Vatican II (like me) even further away from the Church.

That’s what it comes down to. And if a few nasty relics like anti-Semitism come with that return to conservatism, what does Papa Palpatine care? And apparently, for some senior citizens, any small reminder of Youth [sic and sick] is welcome.

Also, I think the church has given up on Western liberals. The mild reforms in Vatican II didn’t really bring new converts to the fold, and the fastest growing population of the church is from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa.

Agreed. Seeking out cultural “markets” characterised by sub-par (or non-existent) education, poverty and caudillismo/tribalism/warlordism goes hand-in-hand with the regression to pre-Vatican II days.

John, Paul, and John Paul I were the liberals.  JPII was elected by the conservatives, even his name is a political pap and a lie.  He went out of his way to install extremely conservative priests everywhere and promoted more Cardinals and created more saints than any other.

Correct. JPII was just Ratzi (the Dick Cheney of popes) with better PR.

But doesn’t rescinding the excommunication validate the schismatic and, arguably, heretical Society of Pious X which condones these objectionable views?

I have no idea.

But the point is that the excommunication was over being a schismatic.  If the Pope has decided he’s no longer a schismatic, then that excommunication cannot be continued just because he’s also a Holocaust denier, or dislikes women, or whatever.  Excommunication is not merely a label the Church hangs on people who are officially Not Nice.

An argument about what actually is or is not schismatic or official Church doctrine is pretty much the same to me as a bunch of furries arguing about whether scritching counts as yiffing or not.  You just smile, keep your mouth shut, and sidle towards the door in the hopes that no-one notices and associates you with these dorks.

When JPII was pope, Ratzinger was his “political officer” and “protector” of the faith, so the Ratzingerization of the RCC began long before there was a Pope Benny, The Cruel and Unjust…

Well my historical knowledge of the church is regarding their influence on Quebec’s far right (my little corner of the Earth), and their support for Franco, Mussolini and toleration of Hitler. Like the fact that my countrymen who went to fight in Spain came back and were villified by the entirety of the nation’s elite due to the RCC running Quebec with an iron fist.

So yeah, maybe I skipped a chapter and everyone in-between Hitler’s Pope and JP2 were more liberal… I still hate the Catholic Church, and sometimes I wish half the shit about the Masons and Illuminati and the secret societies’ crusade against the church that the Catholic far right spout was true.

Pope Benedict XVI - making me glad I am now an Episcopalian!

Like the fact that my countrymen who went to fight in Spain came back and were villified by the entirety of the nation’s elite due to the RCC running Quebec with an iron fist.

That happened in the U.S., too, and not just because of the church. I once read a sort of “where are they now” article about the folks who went to fight in Spain. Several described trying to join the U.S. Army to go fight the Nazis in Europe and being rejected as security risks because they were “premature anti-fascists.”

Yeah but it was worse in Quebec. The church did not fare well in Spain. It helped the Francist coup, and the population knew it, so they turned against the Church.

The church also tried to use its political power to stop French immigration in Quebec around the days the Paris Commune was stamped out, because they figured that people who wanted to get out of France must be Communards.

Technically, all the lifting of the excommunication does is reconcile the fact that Williamson, et al. were illicitly consecrated bishops without papal consent in 1988. It does nothing to recognize their episcopal orders. Technically, the four bishops were already RC priests beforehand, so one view is that they are merely reconciled priests. However. per long standing RCC theology, the consecration was valid (proper form, intent, etc.) but illicit and highly irregular. Their orders are legit in the sense that they do have epsicopal “charisma”,  and the priests they have ordained have indeed celebrated actual masses. There has long been a crossover between faithful who visit SSPX parishes and those you attended authorized Tridentine masses under indult parishes or as part of the FSSP. In fact, this sorta misses the boat-so many traddie RC’s who attend valid RC parishes have just as fucked up views about Vatican II and modernity.

Whew! Back to being in progressive queer tranny mode…

Caren,

*hugs*

So yeah, maybe I skipped a chapter and everyone in-between Hitler’s Pope and JP2 were more liberal…

Well, yeah, if you missed hearing about Vatican II—which I’m sure those people in Quebec you’re talking about have been resisting for years—you missed out on a huge part of Catholic history of the past 50 years and the roots of the current schism in the Church.  I would argue that JPII’s backsliding on V2 was one of the big factors in the precipitous decline of the Church in the West.

Homer: Why don’t people like me, Marge?

Marge: Mmm, everyone likes you, you’re a wonderful person.

Homer: Then why don’t those stupid idiots let me in their crappy club for jerks?

Secondly, women stepping up to teach in public can easily inflame men’s lust (Ecclus IX,11).

This is why women should cover everything except their eyes. Because men can’t help themselves.

On a similar vein, women should go to school because a women learning in public will inflame men’s lust as well.

Thirdly, “Women are not usually (“communiter”) perfect in wisdom”.

And men usually are?!??

Then why are they inflamed with lust so often?

“And men usually are?!??
Then why are they inflamed with lust so often?”

...it’s god’s will, don’t ask questions, just do as we tell you, nothing to see here folks, move along…

people who absolve priests who have sex

Does that include covering up the crimes of pedophile priests?  If so, Ratzi has a long list of people who need to be excommunicated.

Bring back the Inquisition!  Come on catholics, where is your commitment to your core values?

Now that’s marketing I can believe!

See, and this is where Protestants should have a leg up on discriminating against women. Because their excuse has usually been that it’s impossible to be a female minster AND care for your children, and god knows your husband isn’t going to do it, so there you have it. I was going to whip this out for the Catholics, when I realized that their priests / ministers / whathaveyou can’t GET married with 2.5 children, so there’s no convenient excuse for denying women the ministry.

It’ll be interesting to see if misogyny wins over the no-marriage rule.

I don’t know why they don’t make marriage MANDATORY for the incoming priests (it practically is for protestants) and weed out the women (you don’t want a sermon from a pregnant chick, do ya?) and the gays in one fell swoop. Plus, I hear recruitment is a real downer lately, and I’d have to think that’s a good chunk of why…

This “excommunication” is a word
In speech ecclesiastical oft heard,
And means the damning, with bell, book and candle,
Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal –
A rite permitting Satan to enslave him
Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.

-Ambrose Bierce

syfr, do you mean that since his excommunucation is rescinded Williamson will no longer by Episcopelean (he has been since being excommunicated)?
In a bit of justice, the interview of Williamson took place in Germany where it’s a crime to deny the Holocaust and so an investigation has begun.

JohnL,

What I mean is that I was born and raised Catholic, 13 years of Catholic school, active participant in my local Catholic parish well into my 20s - regular Mass-goer, lector & eucharistic minister.

Over the past 7 years, I stopped going to Mass regularly, then at all.  A reaction to the coverups, and a realization that I was tired of being a Catholic who disagreed with the Church on so many major issues: abortion, gay right, contraception, married priests and female priests.  I recently joined my local Episocpal parish, and I am very happy there.  It is a relief to my integrity - I feel whole again, in a way I have not for at least the past 15 years.

which is to say, Williamson has nothing to do with the Episcopal Church!

Does that include covering up the crimes of pedophile priests?

Oh, dear me, no.  You see, it’s a priest telling another priest that he is forgiven for canoodling with a willing woman which is the problem.  Bishops saying “we know nothing” when priests molest altar boys (or girls) is perfectly understandable…

More seriously - the “absolve” bit is important - covering up is not absolving, and doesn’t warrant excommunication.  Having the bishop arrested by the secular authorities and charged with being an accessory to rape should be sufficient.

And the really fucking funny thing about this is that priestly celibacy developed as a way to preserve Church property, not originally as a theological issue.  If there was a policy of awarding Church assets to people who have been abused by priests and had it covered up, I bet we’d see the Church taking it seriously.

If there was a policy of awarding Church assets to people who have been abused by priests and had it covered up, I bet we’d see the Church taking it seriously.

Oh, they pay attention now that they are losing multimillion dollar suits, but not in the way you’d think.

The hierarchy resents going to court.  They believe all of this nastiness should be taken care of “in house” and that their assets should remain theirs.  They think the victims are lying and are just out to steal money from the Church.

The fact that they don’t punish the bishops and the statutes of limitations have run out so that the only hope of any kind of justice is a civil suit never penetrates their red beanies.

I seriously think it’s a Cheney kind of thing…children are fungible resources, whereas their brother priests are something truly spectacular and should be protected at all costs.

Personally, I think any man who has abused/raped anyone was never a real priest in the first place.  But that’s b/c I’ve known truly good men who are/were priests.  Funny how many of them end up leaving and getting married…

The hierarchy disagrees.  The bishops, such as Law and George, who hide the pedophilia are rewarded and are never punished or rebuked.  Somehow, we’re just supposed to understand that they are much wiser and holier and that they know better. 

I don’t think these celibate men realize how much people love their children.  JP2 attracted a particularly twisted and power hungry lot, and I think that the resentment they feel over the celibacy gets twisted into true freak territory way too often.

Just read Williamson’s crazy essays Pam links to above.  He—and all men—are complete victims of lust that is inspired by a woman wearing trousers.  He can’t even deal with a real issue, b/c he’s so inflamed by lust.

He even laughs about ‘liberal’ men getting what they deserve with sexual harassment suits…you championed letting women into the workplace, and now when you just normally try to have sex with them, for what else could you do since they are out in public without chaperons, they sue you!  Ha!

When Francis George first came to Chicago, a nun I know went to see him to discuss a serious issue with a charity she ran.  After she’d talked for a while, his response was “Are you a nun?  How can anyone tell if you don’t wear a habit?”  He’d paid no attention to her whatsoever.

They are so fucking tied up about pants and costumes that they can’t deal with the real issues!

You know what? A part of me loves this bishop. He does a much better job than any of us at forcing people to finally make that last logical jump to “and therefore, there is no God”.

You know what? A part of me loves this bishop. He does a much better job than any of us at forcing people to finally make that last logical jump to “and therefore, there is no God”.

Well, yeah, there is that.

My only real world issue will be with my church lady MIL, and that’s just too fucking bad.  I know catechism better than she does, so she won’t do anything to my face, she’ll just try to talk my hubby into letting the girls spend the night on Saturdays so she can sneak them to CCD on Sundays.

Ain’t.  Gonna.  Happen.

I suppose I still get so angry b/c I do know good priests.  And for the ones who really tried, and really bought the line about celibacy, I feel so bad for them, b/c here are these hypocrites making a mockery of it all.

Yeah, yeah, it mostly deserves mockery, but still.  There are good people who try.  This is a slap in the face.

That bishop is in for some awkward moments if he ever actually visited a university campus. Universities are now admitting slightly more females than males AND half of the girls walking around campus are wearing not pants but lululemon yoga pants. That’s hot hot ass, all over campus.

That bishop is in for some awkward moments if he ever actually visited a university campus. Universities are now admitting slightly more females than males AND half of the girls walking around campus are wearing not pants but lululemon yoga pants. That’s hot hot ass, all over campus.

I’m sorry, Stephanie, but I can’t really accept testimony like that without evidence.

Photographic, if at all possible…

Sweet DOG. I made the mistake of attending Thomas More College in NH, and when I attended 2002-3 they *were* more Catholic than JPII but not all the way to being schizmatic, mostly because they wanted to be able to venerate the Pope. Seriously, there were little Opus Dei members there, I’d put money to it. In a student population of 80, more than one.
...
...
And the current Pope makes THESE clowns look NORMAL. Even with the current income of converts in the places mentions, I don’t think this is sustainable. Much of the EU has laws regarding Holocaust denial, not just Germany, and religious radicals are getting a bad name (again). There are three nations in Europe who have traditionally vied to be “most Catholic”. France, Italy, and Spain *all* have legalized abortion…

Despite knowing quite well (as a historian) all the evil the Catholic Church has been/is responsible for and having been subjected to some pretty vile behavior personally from pushy Catholics this kind of story kind of makes me sad. My sweetie was raised Catholic in Kansas City and fondly remembers attending Anti-Bomb rallies with local and beloved priests and nuns. Good people doing good works, trying to make the world a better place by *any* metric. As have/do millions of priests, monks, and nuns around the world.

I suppose it makes me sad to see the structure that allows funding and organization for people wishing to devote their lives to the good of others devolving into the present mess.

Also—Re: St. Edith Stein… She is one of a handful of “Holocaust Saints”, people whom many who survived attested to having been extraordinary under terrible conditions. If there was no Holocaust, there’s no COD for these people, and no place for them to have shown themselves in life to be Christ-like. So… It’s OK for an ordained priest to *deny* the sanctity of certain saints as suits them?

I’m not Catholic (or even Christian), but that doesn’t sound right.

So… It’s OK for an ordained priest to *deny* the sanctity of certain saints as suits them?

Well, Edith Stein was born a Jew and merely converted to Catholicism (and became a nun), so for certain priests, she probably doesn’t count.

I’d be interested in knowing how zealously the Catholic Church stuck up during the war for Jews who converted to Catholicism, both clergy and laity. IIRC, it varied from one country to the next, but I’ve only read very superficially on the issue.

I’m not well enough versed to make a country-by-country case, merely enough to know that some good people happened to be Catholic. (Duh)

Any catholics want to take up the question of conversos? I’m not aware of any reason to doubt the sincerity of *any* conversion excepting direct evidence… And I’m pretty certain that any other position is not doctrinally supported.

Individual saints don’t come into play very often, with the exception of those who are considered some of the first Christians (Peter, Paul, etc.). Hagiography is a weird, culturally influenced thing anyway—case in point, no one called Mary Magdalene a whore until the Middle Ages. An individual priest who had a problem with a saint would just not reference him or her.
As for the Holocaust saints, modern Holocaust deniers don’t completely deny the existence of concentration camps, they just deny the number of Jews murdered there, and that there was a systematic persecution/execution of Jews. It’s like Mel Gibson’s response to the question, when he said there were concentration camps, millions of people died, and “some of them” were Jews.
As far as I know, no one has questioned conversions since the Inquisition. If you’re declared a heretic, it doesn’t matter if you converted or were born into Catholicism, you’re excommunicated all the same. Otherwise, I think every conversion (and it’s a long process) is seen as genuine.

Thanks Liz212. That’s all in line with my understanding, but it’s great to hear someone confirm my statements as correct.

Well, Edith Stein was born a Jew and merely converted to Catholicism (and became a nun), so for certain priests, she probably doesn’t count.

According to this Williamson, since she’s female, she deserves/d to be brutally dominated.  Her natural inclination toward submission was being subverted, just like Eve, when she didn’t just knuckle under to the men in charge of the government.  Her nature simply wasn’t meant to do anything else.

You know what’s horrible? Before Mary Magdalene was maligned in the early Middle Ages, some of the church fathers said that she, being the one to whom the risen Christ chose to reveal himself, became the “second Eve”, the second mother to us all, and erased the sin of the original Eve. Had we held on to some semblance of early Christianity, what with its female priests and all, we wouldn’t have this problem. Or if, you know, these guys would actually READ instead of just regurgitating old nonsense.

It’s not just lifting excommunication, it’s the language used, which didn’t point out that this isn’t necessarily complete rehabilitation.

Referring to these people by Mr. ____ rather than Bishop _____ or Father ______ would be appropriate, as would an explanation of excommunication as lifting a Church-wide prohibition on offering communion to the individual. They may have been consecrated bishops, but they can be disciplined or inhibited outright by the Pope or pertinent diocesans. Individual confessors or diocesan bishops may require further acts before admitting the individual to communion in their parish or diocese.

Among the acts incurring automatic excommunication are abortion, failure to conceal allegations of priest-child sexual abuse from the laity and the secular law, and many more.

How many MORE reasons does one need to swim the Tiber to a Protestant church or no church?

And how can anyone see arguments like “All women deserve to be brutally dominated because God made them out of total suck”, and not consider that pure hate?

To what precisely in the story are you referring?

PIotR, just follow the fucking tags in Pam’s post.  We’ve been talking about Williamson’s essays all thread.

Williamson is the most hateful thing I have ever seen called “Catholic” in my life.  His views on women just may be worse than his views on Jews.  They just have “blood sin” for killing Jesus, so they’re evil.  Women?  Subhumans created for slavery, and when Eve tricked Adam into sin (which, by the way, is NOT the Bible, but John Milton) it apparently wasn’t really Adam’s fault, seeing how men are so easily inflamed by desire by women.  Because Eve denied her natural submissive function to Adam, all future women must be “brutally dominated”.

There is no difference between Williamson and the Taliban.  None.  He has an absolute shitfit over women wearing “trousers”, and says they shouldn’t be sent to university.  If you follow that essay, there’s really no reason for educating women at all.  It’s not in our nature for our brains to do thinky stuff.

His screeds say more about his sexual hangups than about anything in reality. 

This is truly schismatic stuff—>never in all my life have I heard such pure crazy from a Catholic in the hierarchy.  No one has preached “the Jews killed Christ (who was a Jew) and are therefore more guilty than the Romans who actually crucified him” in my lifetime.  That was tossed out with Vatican II, along with a lot of hateful shit.

Which Ratzi the Nazi just let back in with open arms.

PIotR, just follow the fucking tags in Pam’s post.  We’ve been talking about Williamson’s essays all thread.

I have.

Williamson is the most hateful thing I have ever seen called “Catholic” in my life.  His views on women just may be worse than his views on Jews.  They just have “blood sin” for killing Jesus, so they’re evil.  Women?  Subhumans created for slavery, and when Eve tricked Adam into sin (which, by the way, is NOT the Bible, but John Milton) it apparently wasn’t really Adam’s fault, seeing how men are so easily inflamed by desire by women.  Because Eve denied her natural submissive function to Adam, all future women must be “brutally dominated”.

You’re talking about <a hrf=“http://www.sspx.ca/Documents/Bishop-Williamson/September1-1991.htm”>this</a>?

Original sin, whereby Eve made Adam sin and not the other way round (I Tim II 14), entailed Eve’s being punished, amongst other things, by the turning of her natural and painless subordination to Adam into a punishing domination of his over her, for she had shown by seducing him that she needed to be controlled… “thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee” (Genesis III, 16). Thenceforth with the transmission of original sin to all children of Adam passes to all daughters of Adam (except, of course, the Blessed Virgin Mary) this punitive subordination.

As with all problems of sin, the only true solution is the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. For instance in a Catholic marriage the painful control of man over woman, evident in all non-Christian cultures and re-emerging in our own anti-Christian culture, becomes by supernatural grace more and more that subordination of woman to man which is in accordance with their nature and which is profitable to both, which Eve had before she and Adam fell.

But away with Eden by grace! The modern world will have none of Jesus Christ’s solutions to Adam’s and Eve’s problems. Making idols of liberty and equality, to refuse any inequality or subordination of woman to man, it will deny any distinction between them, it denies of course any order of God in His creation, any need for Redemption, and it will deny if necessary God’s very existence. Today’s feminism is intimately connected to witchcraft and satanism.

It’s ludicrious, of course, but you’re misrepresenting it.  This twit is not saying women should be brutally dominated, he’s saying that the “natural order” is for men to dominate women, and that the brutality comes from an “anti-Christian culture”.  He’s a Catholic loon with an idealised version of Pleasantville stuck in his head.

Any catholics want to take up the question of conversos? I’m not aware of any reason to doubt the sincerity of *any* conversion excepting direct evidence… And I’m pretty certain that any other position is not doctrinally supported.

“Conversos” is actually a very specific term that applies only to Spanish Jews who were forcibly converted by the Spanish Inquisition (and often later had their conversions questioned and were burned as heretics, especially if they had some really good property that the Church wanted).  Everyone else is just a person who converted and it’s assumed they did so willingly.

The big problem we cradle Catholics have with the converted is that they tend to strut around claiming that they’re much better Catholics than we are, because they chose Catholicism and we were merely raised in it.  That’s why you’ll hear some Catholics being snotty about people who converted.

It’s ludicrious, of course, but you’re misrepresenting it.

No, I don’t think we are.  He’s falling into that old trope that all women are masochists who really want to be dominated just right.  It’s not that male domination is less “painful” in a Catholic marriage; it’s that in a Catholic marriage, the woman realizes that it’s her husband’s right to dominate her and so she accepts the pain.

Accepting pain as one’s lot from God is a huge part of Catholicism even to this day so, no, you can’t infer that he’s saying that domination in a Catholic marriage would be less painful than in a non-Catholic marriage.  He’s saying that a Catholic woman would accept the pain as her punishment for Eve’s actions.  Which is pretty fucked up.

Mnemosyne, you are right about some of the converts who go way, way too far. It’s an issue within the Catholic laity, but the most of the clergy don’t really care.

Thenceforth with the transmission of original sin to all children of Adam passes to all daughters of Adam (except, of course, the Blessed Virgin Mary) this punitive subordination.

OK, “brutal” must be in the other essay; here it’s just ‘punitive’.  He is saying that God made women to be submissive sex slaves to men.  He says elsewhere that women shouldn’t go to university, b/c God doesn’t want women in situations where they might be in command of men, since women are ALWAYS to be subordinate.

Plus, women are stupid.  They should never be put in charge of anything.  I’m sure he looked at Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and laughed and laughed at the lunacy and debauchery that allowed it.

He laughs at women in the workplace and at sexual harrassment suits, b/c of COURSE men will want to hit that, and isn’t it funny, those “Liberal” men let women into the work force, and now they have to behave as if their female co-workers deserve respect, despite the fact that they “inflame” all men around them with desire.  Act on that completely uncontrollable desire, and you get sued!  Ha ha.

Women are subordinate to men by God’s design.  And when they wear trousers, or even worse CULOTTES!!!!111!, they are separating their legs and inflaming men, who simply cannot control those urges.  You know, The Fall caused women to have to suffer punitive submission and men to be uncontrollably inflamed by women.  Yep, the Fall caused men to be rapists, who can only be controlled by marriage.

This asshole is acting like Adam and Eve actually existed.  Catholics are not Literal Bible people.  Or they weren’t.

It’s completely and totally fucked up.  Recognizing these men as Bishops is a massive step backward from Vatican II.  And that is what this does: if they aren’t excommunicated for being schismatics, then they are Proper Catholics, which makes NO SENSE, since they reject Vatican II.

Why not bring back indulgences?  Invent some sort of habit for ALL Catholic women to wear, like a burqua, but a bit more habit-like.  The wimple definitely should come back.  Maybe some of those wings like the Flying Nun had; as Margaret Atwood noted, they do a good job of blocking both the sinful woman’s vision and keep her face from being inadvertently glimpsed by poor easily inflamed to lust men.

There is nothing that is not completely fucked up and hate-filled in those links.

“Conversos” is actually a very specific term that applies only to Spanish Jews who were forcibly converted by the Spanish Inquisition (and often later had their conversions questioned and were burned as heretics, especially if they had some really good property that the Church wanted). 

This is actually a bit muddled. Spain, like England, France, Italy, Portugal, etc. formally expelled its Jews. To prevent expulsion, many Jews converted, or pretended to convert, to Catholicism. Later, Ferdinand and Isabella set up the Inquisition to root out these fake converts. The fake Catholics were burned at the stake, and their property went to Ferdinand and Isabella.

It’s ludicrious, of course, but you’re misrepresenting it.  This twit is not saying women should be brutally dominated, he’s saying that the “natural order” is for men to dominate women, and that the brutality comes from an “anti-Christian culture”.  He’s a Catholic loon with an idealised version of Pleasantville stuck in his head.
Phoenician in a time of Romans on 01/27 at 06:59 AM

PiatoR, you seem to be slipping back into your “play Devil’s Advocate for some obvious thug” mode again. Haven’t you learned yet that never goes well?

The “brutality,” which Caren correctly reminds us the guy says is “punitive,” is part of God’s curse on humanity. Sure, he says that in Heaven it will end, and that this is gracefully forshadowed in good Christian marriages. In place of being put brutally into submission, women will, sing hallelujah, gracefully submit, to their eternally ordained lesser role!

See, ladies, cooperate and you won’t get hurt. (If you think you are being hurt by being told you are lower beings and denied this that and the other thing, that’s just because you aren’t submitting yet!)

Honestly, PiatoR, how is that an improvement?

It reminds me of the parts of CS Lewis, both in fiction and in essays, where I want to throw his books against the wall.

At best Williamson is an obnoxious, obtuse twit. But guys like this are rarely at their best; the real world being what it is and women being, in fact, equal to men, his attitudes lead quickly to much uglier confrontations. In his case, I figure he actually gets his enthusiasm for this appalling ideology of his from being that ugly a lot in real life.