Posted on 01/28/2004 12:46:44 PM PST by heyheyhey
In my opinion, the NCR (different from the National Catholic Register and from the Catholic World Report) appears to be classic type of a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is the most anti-Catholic weekly publication that I know, and yet it continues pretending to be "Catholic." The evidence of NCR's anti-Catholic and anti-Christian agenda is somewhat camouflaged, so let it be dug up and brought to daylight in this thread.
- Why, and who cares? Under normal circumstances I couldn't care less, but very many American priests and religious read the NCR, and it has poisonously influenced a generation or two of priests. When we see the sorry state of affairs in our Church we should know, for our own protection, where the devil dwells. Many screwy things (most of all the disdain for the Teaching Magisterium) originated and/or have been, or continue to be, sponsored by the NCR.
There is only one FReeper, as far as I know, vigorously defending the NCR, so he is rare and dear - let's be respectful to him.
I believe the NCR to be more like a wolf in sheep's clothing or rat poison - deceiving in its appearance. There is this saying, "one rotten apple spoils the barrel." The NCR is so full of them, that the whole barrel smells like a crapper.
So, even on FR, the NCR stimulates discussion.
Whining about the success of NCR does nothing to diminish its influence. If you want to do that, you must counter with something that people will buy and read.
Syncretism is Rita's answer?
Rita, that's heresy.
We can reject the Apostolic Tradition and all that the term implies but if we do that with full knowledge and a free will we shouldn't pretend to be Catholic. That's dishonest.
If "Catholic" is a pretense then the motive for all this dissent is questionable. It can't be trying to have a better Catholic Church.
I don't care how "successful" is the NCR. I intend to rip their sheepskin off to expose the ugly fleece of an anti-Catholic tabloid, that's all. :)
Even Our Lord couldn't find kind words for religious hypocrites.
Like us, the sacraments are sexual, filled with the exhilarating creative energy that brings and enlarges life that touches, now softly and now transcendentally, the strings of every human sensation. Should we be surprised at the passions put to use in God’s giving himself for us in the sacraments, would we be dismayed -- although neither John of the Cross nor Teresa of Avila -- were, at the ecstasy, at least partly sexual, that exploded out of their wholehearted surrender of themselves to God or in his response to them? We humans are never moved thoroughly without, even outside our awareness, being moved sexually. We can never create anything without engaging our sexuality in the process. We, and the sacraments, in the curious but commonplace harmony of all things human -- more often like the disjointed everydayness of Charles Ives than the melodic high tides of Ludwig van Beethoven -- are thoroughly spiritual as well.This rather lengthy rant basically says that the author loves the Eucharist so much that he wants anybody to be ordained a priest (not just celibate males) so that he can go to daily Mass.
I think, this dude is not telling the whole truth. I doubt he cares about daily Mass.
The tag, “Vatican III,” is purely utilitarian. Obviously the sessions ought to be held in cities large and small throughout the developing world, with perhaps the final session held in Rome. This council, realistically, ought to be Haiti I, or Calcutta I, or Benin City I or World Church I.There are many, many more NCR-style "nuggets" in there. Click the link and look for yourself, if interested :)
Preamble
The editors undertook this project because we believed there was a compelling need to gather the people of God around their shared views as we look to the future. With the clergy culture and hierarchy in disarray, there is a growing yearning for shared leadership and vision.
It became evident as the e-mails began to arrive that the respondents see a Catholic church straining to move away from its Western and Eurocentric model to a regional and inculturated local church with collegial connections to the center. This is in the face of the current Rome-based Vatican leadership’s determination to retain its 19th-century European structures and models of church.
What impressed us in this Blueprint project was the range of responses to the editors’ request. The volume of returns from the worldwide church was reassuring -- some 60-plus from an estimated 300 people contacted. The respondents were in thirds -- about one-third women religious, one-third laity and one-third priests. There was at least one cardinal, and at least three bishops.
About 40 percent of the respondents seemed to be Americans, most either in developing countries or returned from mission work there. Critics might contend that the issues raised in the Blueprint are foregone conclusions, given who asked the question. That is a little simplistic if they do.
Man-made rules can be changed. We immediately need a married clergy to make the Eucharist available to everyone, to help make priests more human in how they relate with people, to make a more horizontal and less hierarchical church, to make a greater understanding of women and elimination of discriminatory practices and attitudes, and to eliminate unnecessary conflict in those who want to be priests, to eventually open the doors to women priests.
I would like to see a discipleship of equals. The issue goes to the heart of the patriarchal and hierarchical structure of the church and the false holding of one person above another. It means opening all church offices to women. It means shifting the weight of power away from Rome and church pulpits to the people of God. It means getting rid of all parent-child terminology like “Father” (Holy and otherwise), and attendant behaviors.
Council Preparations
It is vital to the respondents that the laity has an equal presence, voice and vote with the hierarchy at the council on the reforms and direction of the church. One cardinal from the developing world suggested all religions be invited to the council, “and with the right to vote.” Another writer suggested the council should be planned jointly with the World Council of Churches and have all Christian denominations represented. Writers felt keenly the isolation of Catholic Christians from the community of faiths worldwide. With no sense of sacrificing what is unique to Catholicism, many decried the lost opportunity to grow with, as we learn from, other Christians and other believers in the world religions.
And nobody who reads it (I'm likely the only one on FR) will stop reading it because of what you do, nor will they start reading because of what I do.
So, basically, your wasting your time.
I intend to continue to post John Allen's Friday columns, as he reports on things that no other Catholic paper does, and gives perspectives of Vatican insiders who won't talk to anybody else.
If I save only one soul, it'll be well worth my time.
I intend to continue to post ...
It's perfectly fine with me - maybe I’ll get from you additional quotations for this thread. I'd appreciate if you post a link to this thread also because I don't always have the time to check out the forum. I think many people may be mislead by the NCR's name and may think it is indeed a Roman Catholic Church publication. I think that’s how Allen deceived people and got his contacts in the Vatican. I can only imagine the articles he’ll write against the Vatican when he finally gets booted out from there.
You're right that Allen seems to be the least sleazy of the NCR's mob, perhaps because he is the youngest of them all ;) But if you look closely at his diatribe on the Pope's 25th anniversary (posts 15, 19, 44), you'll see that Allen is well worth his company.
Sinky, I sincerely thank you for your input and your posts to this thread. :)
It often startles outsiders, especially business school graduates and policy wonks, to discover that senior managers in the Vatican are frequently appointed with little regard for expertise in their area of responsibility. The president of the Council for Health Care, for example, has no background in medicine; the prefect of the Congregation for Education is not an educator; the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship is not a liturgist; and the prefect of The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the office that oversees missions, is not a missionary.This is brand new text (January 30, 2004). If anyone has any doubts about Allen's catholicity or journalistic integrity he or she should read this text. It's so self-explanatory, that it doesn't need a comment. If someone has any questions about it, please post it here.
...
From an Anglo-Saxon point of view – influenced by the Enlightenment, scientific thinking and capitalist notions of efficiency – such an approach cannot help but seem cavalier. How can the pope’s top advisors give him proper advice if they don’t have a grasp of their fields? It would be as if President Bush were to appoint someone who’s never handled a foreign policy job to run the State Department, or Bill Gates were to turn over Microsoft’s R&D operation to someone who never booted up a computer.
In the cultural world of the Holy See, however, shaped more by Augustine and Aquinas than Adam Smith, content-area expertise has never been the highest value. The system puts the premium on loyalty, understood as internal assent to the philosophical and theological fundamentals of the church. The role of a superior in the Vatican system is not to make the trains run on time, but to make sure they all head in the same direction.
...
In a Jan. 28 interview with NCR, Stafford, who despite being American is thoroughly familiar with the cultural tradition of the Vatican, endorsed this view.
“I think that the church has relied too much on experts. That’s one of the great problems we’re having in the United States,” he said. His argument is that bureaucrats, therapists and social scientists, among other classes of experts, have sometimes played too strong a role in determining the American church’s policies, one factor he sees contributing to the sexual abuse crisis.
“The basic necessity for leaders within the church is prudence – a virtuous life and an ability to make discerning judgments from common sense, based on the common good,” Stafford said. “Our reliance upon experts is one of the great faults of the post-modernist society.”
One person’s negligence, in other words, is another’s prudence. All of which helps illustrate how, in many ways, Anglo-Saxons are from Mars, the Vatican from Venus.
It would be very interesting to see if there is ANYTHING good at all that the Vatican does - according to the NCR, of course.
Please, post ANY text from the NCR that would appear to agree with the Vatican on ANYTHING.
My question is, if, according to Allen, the Vatican is run by thick unprofessionals and the "Anglo-Saxons" do things with expertise, then why is all from the Vatican so clever, and almost all from the NCCB so painfully dumb?
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