Posted on 07/23/2008 2:47:21 PM PDT by Pyro7480
When Gov. Alfred E. Smith ran for president in 1928, his candidacy was derailed in large part by anti-Catholic prejudice. It has been nearly 48 years since John F. Kennedy became the first (and so far only) Roman Catholic president, but experts say that anti-Catholic sentiment — much of it originating in, or as a response to, immigrants in New York — remains an enduring force in American culture.
That was the consensus of a panel assembled at the Museum of the City of New York on Tuesday night to consider the question, “Is Anti-Catholicism Dead?”
...The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus — a leading conservative intellectual, a former Lutheran pastor and the editor of the leading Catholic journal First Things — offered a surprising view on the question.
“To be a Catholic is not to be refused positions of influence in our society,” he said. “Indeed, one of the most acceptable things is to be a bad Catholic, and in the view of many people, the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic.”
...He added that anti-Catholicism was as likely to come from the left — sometimes from commentators who believe that a “threatening theological insurgency is engineered and directed by Catholics,” with evangelical Protestants merely as the movement’s “foot soldiers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Please tell us . . . errrrr . . . IN THE WHOLE of the USA . . .
how many fingers does it take to count
the Evangelical Christian churches named after Mary?
Can we all pause for prayer right here? A little too loate in life, I came to realize that somebody's saying he thinks I am one heck of a wise, smart, pious, etc individual does not make them, wise, smart, pious .... Even if he really means it. In fact, especially if he really means it.
One of the charming things about our local Dominican guys is that when you get all rhapsodic about one of their sermons they say, "Praise God." And of course, as a former preacher, I get that. It was alway a little uncomfortable for me when somebody got all over one of my sermons (which of course happened ALL the time, I had to leave by secret exits and be whisked away in limousines with tinted windows, surrounded by very large men who looked like they had been taking hormonal supplements). I mean the POINT here, pipples, is that God Loves You, and with no futile longing either but with the power which made and remade creation. So could we just stop with how terrific I am, however true it is (and it's a LOT true) and praise God, please?
Thank you.
Driver, it's a little warm in here. Could you turn up the air conditioning?
I'm very interested (and not a little distressed)) and the rest of your post. It explains one thing, namely that the Filipino women (Filipinas?) in our congregation are not at all meek and mild but are strong and show good leadership capability.
Some of it may have to do with the place or mission. Thomas Aquinas being a great intellectual and all, it makes sense that the "university parish" have him as patron.
As far as what it has to do with the people who worship there, I think it's harder to say something meaningful. Jan 28 is Thomas Aquinas day, and it's when people interested in being lay Dominicans make their first vows, and when what used to be called "novices" make the temporary vows, and so forth.
So we laid on a "reception" and had a service with choir and general hootin' and hollerin' and what not. Maybe 150 people came. Our usual Sunday, spread over 5 Masses, is maybe 1,000 - 1,400 people, maybe more So you tell me how important Thomas Aquinas is to the parishioners. Short answer: not a lot.
Too bad they were not so much interested in the history of Thomas Aquinas.
Texas of course has a rich history and Texans are particularly proud of it - so much so, the flag is used in marketing for all kinds of products and often is overwhelming from billboards to coffee cups to tourist stops when newbies drive into the state.
Perhaps that is why the history of the Missions in South Texas is so captivating. Note my handle. LOLOL!
Do you know, today, if a Catholic group wanted to build a new Catholic facility - whether they would do it on their own or seek authorization, financing, etc. from some higher authority within the Church? And who would pick the name?
Let me darken council with words without knowledge. (It's one of my skills.)
My impression is that anybody can build, say a chapel or anything and call it "St. Swithin's in the swamp sanctified holiness frog-gigging gathering" if he wants. But the minute he calls it "St. Swithin's in the swamp CATHOLIC sanctified holiness frog-gigging gathering," then he's got to get the Bishop's permission. So then the log-rolling begins.
It's complex, I'd guess. In our parish there's a kind of interplay between the diocese and the Dominican Province. The Dominicans own the little house where the Dominicans live. The Diocese owns the Church. The Diocese pays the Province the stipends, etc. of the three full-time guys, and the Province passes some of that on to the guys. "Poverty" and all that.
So, say the local fathers propose to the Province that they build a real live little convent or whatever for the guys who serve the parish and guys who come the University to study/teach. That's entirely separate from the Diocese or the Diocese's loot.
But the Bishop could (theoretically) say at any time that he wants his own guys serving the parish. (He'd be a dope if he did, but he COULD.) So again, log-rolling ensues.
It's like, over here we have the "rules". And over HERE we have relationships. They meet in a tangle in the middle.
One last guess. If I turn out to get bazillions of dollars, I can build me the Mad Dawg Memorial Hospital of Ss Dominic and Gabriel or the Ss Michael and George institute of marksmanship, combat, and prayer. But most congregations/parishes or other institutions can't just start themselves. So whatever the "rules" are, if they truly want to be "Catholic" - have services, sacramants, blah blah, they are going to be appealing for help from all over the place. So If somebody says to me, I'll send you 5 kung-fu trained Dominican Snipers if you change the name to "the St Dominic Institute ...," well, that's an attractive idea, and what's in a name?
So-—it has all boiled down to this—the naming of names.
This is the criteria by which we are to present ourselves to the Lord?
Why is it that I’m not surprised?
Dear Lord—how do You put up with this ?
BTW-—there is a St. Ferdinard. That he was of Castilian royalty did not prevent him from leading a saintly life, in much the way St. Louis was a saintly man. So—we have the city of St. Louis and also of San Fernando.
I rejoice in these saints who will rise up to greet us and escort us into the Throne room of God.
I feel an eyeroll approaching. Have a nice day.
I gather that patrons and founders are pretty much free to do as they wish, including picking a name, until or unless they want the facility to operate under the authority of the Catholic Church, or need material help from the Church, in which case they would contact the Bishop and that contact may or may not affect the naming of it.
In sum, the planning, financing, naming of new Catholic facilities has not become centralized by the Vatican over the last century and a half. A patron's or founder's name could become part of the facility's name as it was as far back as the 1700's in South Texas.
So I THINK your last paragraph is correct.
It’s obvious to many Prottys
that
eye-rolls
are infinitely more manageable
than honest, historically accurate, logically accurate, linguistically accurate, true to life, true to Scripture, non-convoluted, . . .
meaningful answers . . .
And that the rabid RC reps hereon are terminally allergic to giving such answers.
Quite plausible and accurate to life in my estimation of things.
Whatever Quix.
That still does NOT deal with the issue of
priorities
distilled priorities out of thousands of individual choices over a vast range of RC’s in Los Angeles County.
PRIORITIES MATTER
to us and to God.
I think that's one of the most pregnant sentences I've ever read of yours.
Please bear with me Brother, but I believe that THAT sort of . . . goings on . . . has been part of the muddle that is life and human and the nature of humans in groups from time immemorial.
When politics is part of that picture--as it INHERENTLY IS--then the seeds of evil are multiplied.
And, it's true IN EVERY GROUP--AND MOST PARTICULARLY ABUNDANTLY TRUE IN EVERY RELIGIOUS GROUP of any stripe and brand.
Satan is an arch manipulator of rules and relationships. He was so 2000 years ago and has far from let-up since.
It doesn't take much 'leaven' to pollute the whole process top to bottom, inside out, thoroughly.
AND THERE IS NO MAGICAL AUTOMATIC INSTITUTION/EDIFICE WIDE REMEDY for that phenomenon--regardless of what !!!!TRADITION!!!! suggests.
The ONLY remedy for such is EACH INDIVIDUAL DAILY taking their sinfulness etc. to THE CROSS, UNDER THE BLOOD and what's left, then to be guided by Holy Spirit moment by moment. I know of on other remedy.
And all THAT is flawed, as well. Add in AUTHORITARIANISM and the rot thickens and breeds/multiplies like bacteria.
That's one reason I'm utterly convinced that God did NOT establish nor desire any sort of massive bureaucratic RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION to manage His Church Universal. He set Holy Spirit that task and Holy Spirit is well up to it WHEN WE SUBMIT as individuals and groups. THEN, it doesn't matter what title, brand is on the door or yard sign.
THEN it doesn't matter what the dogma, bylaws, !!!!TRADITIONS!!!!, customs, habits, horrors, histories etc. any given group has in their darkest closets.
GOD AND GOD ALONE is pure and able enough to lead any group of yahoos constructively, righteously, productively.
Like Jaded in the post following yours, I’m rolling my eyes.
Anything they can use is fair game, it doesn’t matter if it makes any sense or not.
I will say one thing about Catholicism, there is reasoning involved, it isn’t all one big happy dance with good music and good preaching. It isn’t all about me, me, me and whether I enjoy my attendance at Mass or even about my own salvation, although that is a huge part of it. It is all about Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is all about knowing and loving God, first and foremost. Hallelujah!
What about Ferdinand the Bull (by Munro Leaf)? I KNOW it’s Catholic because I have the text in Latin, so there!
Not according to the priorities of many endlessly paraded hereon.
And
AND THERE IS NO MAGICAL AUTOMATIC INSTITUTION/EDIFICE WIDE REMEDY for that phenomenon--regardless of what !!!!TRADITION!!!! suggests.
And
GOD AND GOD ALONE is pure and able enough to lead any group of yahoos constructively, righteously, productively.
For tonight's texts I'd like you to turn first to Genesis 50:20 and then to Exodus 14:14.
It seems a fact of nearly every human life, certainly of my own, that within me good and evil, life and death, are at war. This body has declined from the vigor it had 4 decades ago. This mind is not quite so acute. And while my moral discernment and intentions may have in some sens improved, still sin lies close at hand, and jostles my will so that all its efforts are awry.
And just to perceive this with any degree of constancy or perspicacity has taken years of study, service, and prayer AND the help of patient family and friends.
If I were fool enough to put my trust in men, well I'd have to be a very great fool indeed, because the man I know best is an unreliable sinner as well as being a bear of very little brain.
It is not in the Pope qua Joseph Ratzinger, or qua Karol However-you-spell-his-last-name in whom I trust.
Now that's not to say that I don't appreciate J2P2 as having an extraordinary theological and philosophical talent or BenXVI as being an intriguing thinker and impressive scholar. I just know that I also Like Heidegger and as near as I can tell he was a coward and a mean scoundrel.
SO my confidence in the Church and in all that tangle which I described is not in them but in what I take to be a promise to be with the Church. And that confidence is confirmed because God's track record seems to be to be that he works with the sinful aspirations and intentions of men to work his good and to save many lives. Through Joseph he demonstrates that even when evil is intended against Him, good can come through the working of His will.
There is no question that the "religious" impulse, after the flesh, is parlous. It has lead to the sacrifice of children at the feet of Molech, and the modern paganism of environmentalism, socialism, and personal libertinism still requires the life of children to sate its appetites.
And I imagine most of us, one way or another, have our own tales of religious leaders feeding their egos from the elan vital of their congregations. And this kind of thing is not confined to clergy. In families also "religion" makes a good cover for abuse, emotional and physical.
I don't think that that situation will improve between now and the eschaton. But I also don't think we need to get TOO exercised about it. And here's where the second text comes in.
It (too obviously, I fear) irritates the bejabbers out of me when what we teach is misrepresented. It wounds me a little when we are mocked and attacked, and it wounds me more when I return fire in the same way. But I am slowly learning not to worry too much about it.
Because I have a deep devotion to our Lady, some charge me with having an insufficient devotion to her Son. All I can do any more is regret the misunderstanding and laugh at it a little. I am sure all my devotions are inadequate and at least somewhat misdirected, that far to many of my prayers and intentions are directed NOT to God as He knows Himself to be, but to the construct of my imagining. But in the past I have found that before I got to do something at all well, I had to do it badly far more times than I'd like. And then, finally, doing it well was somehow granted to me.
SO when I read that awesome line from Exodus, I realize that even a forced passivity and stillness is not what "being still" really is about.
I will say my prayers, make my devotions, attempt the occasional good work, study when I can, and try when ever I catch myself being bored or fretful or grouchy to use that as a chance and an impetus to seek greater intimacy with God. IN other words, I will bumble along, rising, falling, attempting and failing, and whenever it occurs to me, offering all that comedy and melodrama to God.
Even when I don't really intend evil, my good intentions are weak and errant. Even my being still is crotchety, restless, and petulant. But God will fight for me, and in the strength and hope of the Victory that is already won, when evil was turned to good, I will remain confident that even the political tangle of the Catholic Church is not able to frustrate Him or hinder His intention to do me all the Good He can.
"He whose throne is in heaven is laughing." He sees all the priests who just by coincidence decide it's time to renew acquaintances at the Vatican just when a bishopric becomes vacant. He sees the creased brows and hears the snide remarks or unctuous advice given with complex motives. He can handle it. And I can trust Him.
Blah blah blah. I've been on the tractor and maybe got a touch of sun.
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