Replies

ever more irresponsible attacks on John Paul II, and ever narrowing and cartoonish attacks on anyone and everyone who refuses to play their game of Aren't I Orthodox

Maybe you're right about the Remnant, but I don't see any of this in the article posted above. I don't see anything narrow or cartoonish, except your description of Michael Matt, Chris Ferrara and Thomas Woods. Far from being irrresponsible, the "attack" in the above article seems to be measured, prudent, and well-documented. He is wisely advising his fellow traditionalists to avoid hysterics, while pointing out undeniable historical facts.

Where is the new springtime of the Church? It was promised to us back in 1962. Then the date was moved back to 1978, then it was moved to the Jubilee year of 2000. Isn't this moving target of failed prophecies beginning to resemble the farcical predictions of founders of sects like the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Worldwide Church of God?

The new Springtime of the Church or whatever will occur exactly when God sees fit, not one minute sooner or later, and most certainly not as a result of the constant carping and complaining and nitpicking directed at JP II by these pipsqueaks. I am personally acquainted with both Woods and Ferrara and I can assure you that each is exactly the kind of preachy, self-obsessed, sort of personal attention getter that we do not need to be led by. It is a shame because each is talented but they are putting their talents to work for nonmeritorious purposes. So far, I have resisted getting their book. If I feel mugged into getting it to attack it and them, there will go many more hours which will be spent here instead of elsewhere.

They can go to hell in their own respective and particular handbaskets. That's one thing. The scandal they give is another. The Remnant is also, btw, fond of a particular breed of ahistoric antiAmericanism which is, on the right, the equivalent of San Francisco Democrats like Ms. D'allesandro Pelosi. In the Remnant it is Solange Hertz and John Rao who are the enthusiastic worshippers of all things they imagine as European and, therefore, ohhhh so superior to anything so benighted and low rent as to be American.

We also need not have growing schism. They attack the pope. They attack the Church. No volume of self-serving denials will diminish that fact.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Of course, they are not perfect. But they are not good either since their stock in trade is unwarranted and persistent attempts to discredit this truly remarkable pope. Those who disagree with the incredibly insightful them are written off as neoCatholics or post-conciliar Catholics (wouldn't that be anyone baptized since the council or admitted to the Church since then as Woods was?). This mirrors the obnoxiousness of the constitutional fantasists and isolationists that anyone with a foreign policy and supportive of military effort where necessary must be a "neo-conservative."

AND, now that I have read Michael Matt's impudent drivel more closely, I would add only:

Ubi Petrus, Ibi Ecclesia. JPII is pope. Michael Matt is not. Chris Ferrara is not. Tom Woods is not. Solange Herz is not. John Rao is not. John Galvin is not. And none of them will be. Yet, the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, as we are guaranteed on the Highest Authority. Matt, Ferrara, Woods, et al., are beginning to sound like those every morning callers on the first half-hour of C-SPAN's Washington Journal who believe that Bush was selected and not elected, that Bush had Wellstone assassinated, that drugs are a Republican plot to keep ghetto folks from power and in jail, etc.

One might also summarize this silly "analysis" by Michael Matt as a tantrum of jealousy that, inexplicably, Catholics listen to and love this great pope (not merely as a fellow human as Matt suggests) and, confound it, fail to put Matt, Woods, Ferrara, et al., on a higher pedestal. These people are sooooooooooo tiresome. AND, there was, gasp, rock 'n roll at some of the youth gatherings! Doesn't that just prove it all?

And to top it all off: This pope is found wanting on matters of geo-politics? Does anyone remember the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union, the drudgery that was Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, et al.? Those memories ar fading fast, aren't they? JPII may know more even that Michael Matt, Chris Ferrara and Tom Woods rolled into one! Just a guess.

Just what is it that distinguishes Michael Matt, Christopher Ferrara and Tom Woods, in modus operandi and insolence from the Church's honest enemies who proclaim themselves as such? I sure cannot tell.