Allen’s explanation of this term was recently spelled out to an audience at the University of Texas. It was necessary, Allen said, to strike “a balance between two extremes”. This is how he described these extremes:
“On the one extreme lies what my friend and colleague George Weigel correctly terms ‘Catholicism Lite’, meaning a watered-down, sold-out form of secularised religiosity, Catholic in name only. On the other is what I call ‘Taliban Catholicism’, meaning a distorted, angry form of the faith that knows only how to excoriate, condemn, and smash the TV sets of the modern world........Singled out for special attention was RealCatholicTV.com, which, accused the paper, is “hunting for ‘traitorous’ nuns, priests or bishops throughout the American Church”. “We’re no more engaged in a witch hunt than a doctor excising a cancer is engaged in a witch hunt,” said Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com and St Michael’s Media. “We’re just shining a spotlight on people who are Catholics who do not live the faith.”
Exposing apostasy within the self-governed organized religion is not becoming a “taliban”.
This isn’t even kicking out “false followers”. This is appraising those serving within the church.
Here in the US, we could use a little “McCarthyism” today. As for the Church, I’d prefer going back to the 50’s. One problem today is converts want to run the church without understanding the church. It seems that they come to the Catholic Church and attempt to change it to what they left and weren’t happy with.
Bookmark.
Be hot or cold in the faith, just don't be lukewarm or as it's better know as "lite".
Uh........so let's see if I understand this correctly.
You sit Catholics in the pews and then subject them to loony liturgies, heretical homilies and lousy catechesis. You tell them that the Catholicism which their parents practiced is history and they need to "get with it". You force them to watch while priests break their vows, nuns throw away their religious habits and become ecologists and the Church is turned upside down.
Rinse and repeat as necessary for...........ohhhhhhhh........say about forty years!.
They then get to watch as their children lose their faith and entire dioceses are bankrupted by the antics of the lavender mafia.
Can you say "laity abuse"??
Now you mean to tell me that after all that, lay Catholics actually start to get angry???
Amazing!
Who would have thunk it!!
No, no, no, John..........this is not Taliban Catholicism. This is Vatican II Catholicism. You know that tired cliche which we've been hearing for the past 40-odd years about how Vatican II was all about getting the lay people "involved"??
Well it's happening. They are "getting involved". They're taking up arms against those who've been trying to destroy the Church. Dontcha love it??!! They're blogging and making their voices heard.
OK, so this isn't exactly what the liberals and radicals had in mind with their "spirit of Vatican II" shtick but hey,............it's all good, right?
The author is too historically ignorant to realize that to intelligent, informed people, “McCarthyism” is a compliment.
Not that the Left won’t fight tenaciously, to cling to one of the rotting foundational pillars supporting their edifice of propaganda.
That sounds like a complement. McCarthy was one of the good guys.
"Folks, I think John Allen crossed over the line when he called conservative Catholic bloggers "the Catholic Taliban." I used to think he was pretty fair when it came to his reporting. But now, I'm having a change of heart. What do faithful Catholics on here think?"