Posted on 12/07/2009 7:25:56 AM PST by NYer
A friend wrote me about a school principal, a religious sister, speaking to a parent and requesting school funds. The gentleman was described as an "ultra-Catholic." My friend asked me: "What is that, do you know?" Evidently, the "non-ultra" principal thought it all right to siphon needed cash from the "ultra" parent. No strings were attached. Once the funds were donated, the non-ultra establishment would go its non-ultra way. The ultra was good for his cash, if he still had any. His ideas were, well, ultra.
Clearly, I cannot resist taking a stab at defining what a modern ultra-Catholic is. Some temptations are difficult to resist. Briefly, in today's multi-descriptor world, an ultra-Catholic is one who is a believing Catholic, a fairly rare bird. The country is full of ex-, disagreeing, non-practicing, right-to-choose, leave-me-alone Catholics. They tell us that they are better than their hapless co-religionists who naively think Catholicism is credibly the most intelligent thing on the public or private scene. In the public area, the most often cited "authority" on what Catholics believe is the dissenter. Catholics are the one group about which no one has to speak accurately.
A be-knighted ultra-Catholic holds the Nicene Creed as true. He thinks divine authority exists in the Church. He knows that he, a sinner, needs forgiveness. But he does not make his sins into some social-justice crusade. He does odd things like go to Mass on Sundays, even in Latin. He thinks it is fine to have children. He prefers to work for a living. He also knows that the Church is under siege in the culture. He belongs to the real minority.
The word "ultra" is Latin, meaning "beyond." We have things like ultra viruses, ultrasounds, and ultraviolet rays. In the Middle Ages, a pope was called "ultramontane" if he came not from Italy but from over the mountains. In France in the modern era, the ultramontanists were those Catholics who kept alliance with Rome. Jesuits, perish the thought, were said to belong to this alien group in the Gallican regime. Ultramontanists did not think the French government was divine. This latter view was considered to be rather extreme. I know this negative view of French glory is difficult for the average contemporary to grasp. We find divine authority neither in Rome nor in Paris but only in ourselves.
An ultra-Catholic today, however, is one who strives to do what Aquinas did: He distinguished between those who willingly practice virtue, because they understand that it is the noble thing to do, and those who practice it just to observe the minimum of the law.
In what is hopefully a pioneer endeavor, we even have a bishop explaining to a Kennedy what it means to be a Catholic. Bishop Thomas Tobin in Providence read what Congressman Kennedy said in the Congressional Record about his being a Catholic but still not "agreeing" with everything the Church held -- a highly unoriginal position, to be sure. The bishop wondered just what it was that the congressman did not hold, and whether these "un-held" things were central positions in the Church -- which, of course, they were. From the beginning, when this selective view of Catholicism first appeared, local bishops did not similarly inquire of politicians who invoked this fuzzy doctrine of themselves deciding what is Catholic, as if the politician were actually himself the pope.
Now about this ultra-Catholic character: We have all laughed at people said to be "holier than the Church." This latter remark is not a compliment. Unlike the congressman from Rhode Island, some Catholics add things instead of subtracting them, as is the current fashion. Usually, the additions are not really wrong or bad. Most devotions, like the scapulars, are additions in this sense. Aquinas said that adding to the law was not the problem; taking things away from it was.
In the contemporary world, the real enemy of the liberal culture is the "fanatic." He holds something. We have now reached the point where the fanatic is pretty much identified with the ultra-Catholic. What is dangerous is not some heretical notion of Christianity; it is Christianity itself, especially in its Catholic form. When many Catholics themselves do not know what they are and hold, we distinguish the Christian who defines his own beliefs from the one who holds the self-evident and revealed truths of the Faith.
When the non-ultra-Catholics identify themselves with a disordered culture, the ultra-Catholic is left standing by himself. The popes address their documents to "men of good will." We read in the Gospel of John: "I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them." Evidently, not all men have good will.
One look at the photo that appears at the beginning of this thread and you will see the sanctimonious voodoo that haunts the hallowed halls of the Vatican. You will observe the deep and abiding superstition that most Catholics hold that these ridiculous trinkets, these rusting objects of man-made junk, have more to do with being rescued from our sin, than the unmerited grace granted not on the basis of works, but by His choice.
“So, then it does not depend upon the man who wills or the man who runs, but upon God who has mercy...So then He has mercy upon whom He desires and He hardens whom He desires.” Rom. 9
The “alarm bell” is ringing only for those with ears to hear. If that is not you, well...Isaiah said it to a stubborn and unrepentent Israel before.
There you go, arguing without facts again.
Au contraire. You were asked to provide a book, chapter and verse to support the "pope in Rome is the big kahuna." No verse, no further...
Forgive me if you were only being humorous, but, actually, that is not true. No one is born as a Catholic, or inherits Catholicism as if genetically. One becomes a Catholic, a Christian, upon being validly baptized.
Oh. I was unclear” I entirely endorse the art of the insult and think that like all arts it should be pursued with the aim of excellence.
I was trying to present what I understood dutchboy88 to have as his standard and aim. He says he wants to “inform” people, but clearly those who take up the responsibility to “inform” in the normal use of that word would have the resulting responsibility to ascertain that they were speaking the truth.
But in the face of the implied allegation that we feelthy papists are not allowed to read, one has to conclude that we are not talking about a specifically true kind of information. I think the message is more like, “All you need to know is those Catholics and their religion is BAD. Stay away.”
So, if the goal is to keep people away from the Church, then success will not be measured by artfulness or veracity, but only by the number of people kept away. It was ONLY in THAT sense that I was saying excellence in insult was not important.
I was unaware that RCs considered Paul's letter to Rome "...without facts". That does, however, support most of the concerns I have been raising.
Interesting use of quotation marks. Which post do you pretend to be quoting? Who asked him to do this?
You're not exactly wedded to truth, are you?
Address your concerns about them TO them.
Sadly for you, however, Scripture does not support your evidenced hatred for the Catholic Church.
Perhaps your own personal interpretation of Scripture supports such, but again, so what?
I am. If you aren't addressed, then don't bother to answer.
In #42 you wrote:
For example, there is no support for a "pope". Nonewhatsoever. The gang from Rome cooked this preposterous charade up to grasp power over the sheeple. No one has ever found a single passage of Scripture that supports even the remotest possibility of the monstrosity that the RCC has become. There were separate churches everywhere in the first century, all with their own teachers-elders. The independence of these congregations allowed for safeguards not available to the central government of the gigantus that Rome has forced upon the world.In #45 you wrote
No, there isn't or instead of a protracted pile of mush, you would have cited book, chapter and verse proving that the Scriptures say, "You should have a pope based in Rome."Leaving aside the sophistry, I see no question in what you posted. I see an assertion with disparaging language.
Can you show me a place where you ASKED for a book, chapter and verse to support the "pope in Rome is the big kahuna."
All I see is some wild claims which YOU explained as coming from an intention to inform people.
I see a hand holding a rosary and part of the interior of a car.
I pray the Rosary almost daily. It has never once crossed my mind that I do so to be rescued. But I am just one catholic.
I cannot think of any serious passage of, say, the Catechism or a conciliar document that says the rosary rescues.
As for what "most Catholics" believe, I have no way of knowing.
In any event, I do not have any notion that there is any rescue in the actual rosary. It's just a tool for counting, and an opportunity for ateliers to make pretty things.
I am taking "voodoo" as a term of abuse and "sanctimonious" as being used in it's disparaging, not literal, sense.
I see no voodoo, no sanctimony, no superstition. My vision isn't good enough to see if the trinket is rusting. I've worn out, broken, and lost a number of rosaries in my time. Their cheapness and flimsiness don't affect what I believe one way or another.
I'm getting the impression that, well, either I am right, that the truth about us doesn't concern you or it does concern you but you don't know much of it. I'd be so interested in your response if you were to go to Mass tonight on this very Marian feast and, once you were there, if you were to hear the reading from the first chapter of Ephesians. There is no question that if any saving is being done, it's being done by Jesus and none other.
I understand what you mean.
I feel some are shirking the force of their convictions by not putting their backs into it!
If you really believe in keeping others from reading and discussing something, you need to come armed with delicious insults to keep those lurkers deflected.
The bane of my life are those dull stickers on cars: “My hockey mom can beat up your soccer mom.” How vapid.
I mean no insult, MD, knowing your background, but frankly, Calvinists seem as dour, sour and dull as their WASPish backgrounds suggest.
Put your backs into it. Papists, shaking the beads, voodoo, all that is so unutterably dull.
Entertain me.
I need to send you one or more of my bumper stickers for Christmas.
My current fave is “CRUSADER! you got a problem with that?”
But from my sheep farming days I had “Caution: Trained Attack Sheep” and, of course, “Sheep Happens.”
I’m so glad you crossed the Tiber. My spouse did, too, much to his surprise. It was like a very gradual ascent. I often think of the Blessed Mother taking him by the hand and walking very slowly up the mountain.
” I was just too much of a goof ball...”
Ah, a Chestertonian! A pint, a pipe and the cross.
*Seriously though, my little Anglican friend from childhood was quite the cutup.
Mary had a LOT to do with it. Did you see my little fatuous article on our lay Dominican web site?
Welcome back, bdeaner..you were missed! :o)
“....Did you see my little...article...”
Your writing fatuous!? If anything it’s pretty modest and intelligent.
I haven’t seen it, but it’s good to know that sometimes my “sentiments” may be more of a spiritual insight than I know.
Do you have the website?
No, of course not. The RC crowd is not that sophisticated. I told vladimir998 there was no support for a "pope" in Scripture. Instead of replying, "Yes, here it is in II Hesitations 5:2" (had to make up a book since it does not exist anyway), he replied "Sure there is. Even some Protestants believe there is..." Yada, yada. And left the topic to go on about rantings of "bigots".
I simply pointed out, that...
"No, there isn't or instead of a protracted pile of mush, you would have cited book, chapter and verse proving that the Scriptures say, "You should have a pope based in Rome."
If that is too hard to follow, let it go. But, the question is now out there, "Where in the Scripture (that your gang purports to have provided) does it say there will be a pope in Rome?"
And the methods Rome has devised to attempt to provide salvation to the sheeple are ineffective and fraudulent. Paul set out the Gospel clearly in the letter to the Romans and it is at odds with Rome's. The pope problem is just one among many. We see that, however, as Paul wins, Rome loses. I suppose we will find out when this is all over who did not have eyes to see or ears to hear.
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