Posted on 10/26/2016 3:27:24 PM PDT by piusv
The trouble with the terms even when they were useful was that they were moving targets. One could only be a “conservative” or a “liberal” in comparison to someone else. It was a sliding scale, and your position on it depended on where you were standing on the line – or who was standing next to you. So, a guy like archbishop Gomez got called a “conservative” (or sometimes an “archconservative” depending on who was doing the labelling) when he went to Los Angeles to take over for the uber “liberal” heretic Mahoney. And when Gomez would say or do something that was more in the “liberal” line of things, he was either excused or ignored by “conservatives” fearing to lose their spot in the narrative.
But it was the secular newspapers that set the person’s position on the scale. (No one had to worry about where the Trads were on this scale, because there weren’t any in episcopal or political circles… there still aren’t. Sorry, Burke/Schneider partisans, but there aren’t.) You were a “conservative” because a newspaper called you one. And the metric was always the big three: contraception, abortion and homosexuality (nobody ever cared about divorce). This was the only thing the newspapers cared about with regards to the Catholic Church; the beginning and end of Catholic teaching.
When it started, the political nature of the distinctions were often decried by Catholic writers talking about ecclesiastical matters, but nearly everyone used them, if often with a little apologetic disclaimer about the imprecision. The use of political terminology was always excused because it was a set of terms that everyone could readily understand. Which I suppose was true as far as it went.
But this is as far as it went; we’re at the end of it now.
(Excerpt) Read more at whatisupwiththesynod.com ...
I vehemently disagree that “conservative” can only be defined in relation to “liberal.” Conservatism is based on unchanging precepts and is not a relative term. But what do I know?
Even a lot of the people complaining about liberals are already a long way past conserving a thing, especially on any unchanging precepts.
I took the piece to be talking more about the labels and how they relate to Catholics...lay as well as clerical, not to the political realm.
Did you read the whole piece? Perhaps I picked the wrong portion to highlight as an excerpt.
Secular political labels are germane to this treatise. As I read it, the author acknowledges this but thinks the labels are being overridden. To quote ...
“When it started, the political nature of the distinctions were often decried by Catholic writers talking about ecclesiastical matters, but nearly everyone used them, if often with a little apologetic disclaimer about the imprecision. The use of political terminology was always excused because it was a set of terms that everyone could readily understand. Which I suppose was true as far as it went.
“But this is as far as it went; we’re at the end of it now.”
Dunno.
I’m actually a Moderate Centrist - circa 1968.
When “conservative” and “liberal” use used as synonyms of frugal or profligate, they can be relative terms. But when used to describe a philosophical mindset versus a utopian ideology they are not at all relative.
I guess that means you're a fire-breathing rightwinger now!
I still disagree. I think the main gist of this piece is conservative and liberal and how it relates to recent times in Catholic circles.
It means I am a Reactionary.
I don’t want to ‘conserve’ anything any more.
I want to move Backwards to a decent future.
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