I am posting this separately because it deals with the most striking fallacies in the early unsympathetic commentary on Pope Benedict's historic initiative. BTW the unsympathetic also do not see that it is historic in any way. The first remark about 'poaching' should apply to John Allen, as well, whose first blog entry ended with just such a suggestion!
Three dubious and curious conclusions
by CARL OLSON
Oct. 21, 2009
Yesterday's announcement from Rome was quite stunning and historical, and much ink is being spilled, opinions rendered, and spleens ruptured (at last metaphorically) as every stripe of Catholic, Anglican, human, and other biological life form takes aim, makes claim, and —i n some cases — cries, "Shame!" Amid the spilling, rupturing, and aiming, here are three negative, even sulking, pieces that caught my attention:
1. The
Times of London ran the headline, "Vatican moves to poach traditional Anglicans," with an article by Ruth Gledhill and Richard Owen that took wild aim at a target — the Vatican — few thought could move so swifty:
The Roman Catholic Church today moved to poach thousands of traditional Anglicans who are dismayed by growing acceptance of gays and women priests and bishops.
This abuse of the word "poach" really annoys me, in part, because I grew up around hunting (my father is a gun maker and a superb hunter) and I knew a poacher or two. Poaching is, even among the natives of western Montana (where I spent my youth), a rather reprehensible activity because, as any decent dictionary indicates and good hunter knows, it is a violation of law and property.
It is, put simply, cheating — either by trespassing on private property or by breaking the laws that regulate hunting. But, of course, Gledhill and Owen never show — or even attempt to show — how Pope Benedict or the Vatican violated anyone's rights or property or broke any laws (secular or canonical).
It seems quite obvious the term "poach" — even stretched thin for effect — is an infantile and empty insult, both to the Pope/Vatican and to those Anglicans who will enter the Catholic Church under the provisions to be detailed in the yet-to-be-released apostolic constitution.
It suggests the Pope is a sly cheater and greedy grabber who is preying on naive, wayward sheep while the good shepherd of the Anglican Communion does whatever it is he does. Pathetic.
[For more of this fallacy, see
www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/10/pope_poaches_on_unhappy_ang...
in which the ultra-liberal National Public Radio cites Allen's assertion of 'poaching' and actually interviews him rather than a canon law expert to explain his contention that the Church is violating an ecumenical ground rule!]
2. AOL News ran a piece focusing on married priests:
The number of married Catholic priests could grow sharply as the result of the Vatican's epochal decision to welcome thousands of disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians into the Catholic church. ...
"It's a stunning turn of events," says Lawrence Cunningham, theology professor at Notre Dame University. "This decision will allow for many more married clergy in Western churches, and that's going to raise anew the question, 'If they can do it, why can't the priests of Rome?'" says Cunningham. "I can already picture the electronic slugfest on the Internet in coming days and weeks."
The Catholic church already allows clergymen who convert from Protestant denominations to remain married on a case by case basis, and married priests are common in the Eastern Rite, a group that uses Orthodox traditions but is loyal to Rome.
On one hand, this aspect is both interesting and legitimate. On the other hand, it is being needlessly sensationalized (yes, that was redundant).
Saying the number of "married Catholic priests could grow sharply" is rather misleading considering there are about sixteen million Eastern Catholics in the world, and most of the Eastern Catholic Churches allow married men to be ordained priests, just as the Orthodox Churches do.
The language in the article is a bit sloppy: that should be "Eastern rites" or "Eastern Catholic Churches", as there are 22 such rites; the term "group" has the sense of a sub-section of Catholics, which Eastern Catholics certainly aren't (they are just as fully Catholic as any Western rite Catholic); and those Churches do not "use Orthodox traditions"—they are Eastern Churches that were once Catholic, then were Orthodox, then returned to full communion with Rome (the Maronites were always in full communion).
Be that as it may, I think
this focus on married priests is being blown out of proportion, especially since no priests — whether Eastern or Western — can be married after ordination. If a man wishes to be married and to become a priest (in that order, mind you) there is a simple solution: stay Catholic, go East, stop complaining.
3. TIME magazine has a piece that could be called the "Bu...bu...bu..." article, although its actual headline is: "The Pope to Unhappy Anglicans: Come On In!" Here are the three sections of interest:
At first glance, the surprising news on Tuesday that Pope Benedict XVI has created a new structure to welcome some disenchanted Anglicans into the Roman Catholic fold — it was accompanied by a joint statement from his counterpart, the Archbishop of Canterbury — might look like a happy reunion. But the Vatican's establishment of new "Personal Ordinariates," in which Anglicans, including married priests, can practice Catholicism while maintaining much of their own identity and liturgy, reveals more about the growing internal rifts within each of the two churches than any sign of real hope for reuniting the fractured Christian communion.
I'm assuming the "internal rift" in the Catholic Church referred to is the one that sprang up a few years ago, in the late 1960s, and has been a gaping chasm for about, oh, forty years now.
Does it exist? Sure enough, but the author, Jeff Israely, never backs up his dubious claim that this news — involving, keep in mind, the most significant development in Catholic-Anglican relations since, oh, the 1540s — says more about "internal rifts" than about reunion.
In a real sense,
the assertion completely misses a point that has been obvious to quite a few other reporters and commentators: such reunion was not going to be take place via endless official dialogue. That ship has sailed. Actually, it has mostly sunk.
But while seeming to douse one flame, the opening of an officially recognized channel for reverting to Roman Catholicism could spark other conflagrations within Anglicanism, both from conservatives and progressives who are suspicious that Rome is poaching their faithful. Indeed, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's outgoing chief of ecumenical, or intra-Christian, affairs, used a press conference last week to try to curb such fears, insisting that Rome was "not fishing in the Anglican lake."
See point #1 above about poaching, and then ask yourself: are these journalists capable of journalism and the correct, reasonable, and non-insulting use of the English language?
Strange, isn't it, how opening the borders of America to illegal immigrants is, for liberals, a matter of social justice, while opening the doors of the Church to spiritual refugees is a grave injustice. Go figure. As for Cardinal Kasper ... no comment: either from him or about him.
The incoming converts, however, may offer a false comfort to Catholics that Rome is winning the battle for Christian hearts and souls in the West. Indeed, in the bosom of Europe, where traditional Catholicism became an immense political force, the church is very much on the defensive.
There is a bit of truth here — the Church is on the defensive in many ways.
[Here is where I differ strongly from Olson. The Church is not simply on the defensive - it is striking back but in the gentle Benedictine way, what I referred to earlier as Benedict XVI's version of the 'Counter-Reformation'.]
But it's important to keep in mind the Church is also leading the fight for a European identity that actually has identity, not to mention a bosom, a heart, and a future.
Alas, Israely seems dedicated to finding the black lining in every silver cloud, just as he mistakes the Pope for a poacher.
What the naysayers choose to ignore is that the Holy Father's initiative with respect to the Anglicans, as I commented earlier and as Olson points out, is a direct road to reunification that bypasses or at least curtails the difficult and possibly interminable ecumenical process through dialog, for the non-Catholic Christians who wish to rejoin Rome without waiting for their respective churches or ecclesial denominations to do so.
Also, we must be realistic and not expect an immediate influx of converts in massive numbers. Even the TAC, which has said it was ready to 'cross the Tiber' as early as 2007, must follow its own internal rules and must now get the formal consent of the national Bishops' Synods, in the countries where it is represented, to the concrete offer by the Church of Rome. Presumably, they will wait for the full text of the Apostiolic Constitution to be released - appropriate discretion, one might say, for such a momentous move on the part of an entire 'sub-Communion'. And, as the saying goes, there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/10/2009 01:37]