Replies

There is a really unfortunate tendency among some self-styled stalwart Catholics - (keep in mind, I am a Catholic conservative) - to talk about things as if all that is involved in matters of the spirit is lining up all the rules in neat, tidy hierarchical order with plenty of quotations from papal encyclicals. The serious spiritual matters of "the Church" are spiritual realities, deep phenomena of human nature and consciousness, and really have very little to do with the shenanigans, political jockeying, and silliness of the bureaucratic administrative structure of the earthly institutional Church, the "bingo" BS, the buffet dining of national bishops' conferences, and the vacationing habits and fashionwear of Jesuit university professors, Richard McBrien's wardrobe, and so forth. This is all part of "the show" but has very little to do with serious spiritual realities.

There is a very sad and pathetic side to AmChurch which revolves around what Fr. Tom ate at the five-star restaurant during the conference in Philadelphia or what kinds of golf clubs the bishop has, which layman won the golf outing tournament, how many Tootsie Rolls the KofCs sold during their drive,why Notre Dame selected this guy as their football coach, and which priest got to lead the vacation group to Cape May or on the Caribbean Cruise. The dysfunctional nature of much of AmChurch Catholicism really ought to be an unacceptable outrage for everyone. Liberal dissenting Catholics can be very annoying, but among the self-claimed ultra-orthodox conservatives, there are plenty of kooks - people who can't stop talking about their disgust with sex, etc. Just because someone claims to be Catholic, to support the pope, and shows up in the proper uniform does not necessarily mean that they are a great spiritual Christian. We have a lot of work to do in this country in the way of ecclesiastical reform. There was a priest I heard speak at a conference once who couldn't stop talking about masturbation. This was a guy who was clearly too unbalanced to be hearing confessions regularly. There are BIG problems in AmChurch. The Catholic college nearby is run like a zoo and our bishop does nothing about it. None of these goofy, ridiculous, absurd sociological phenomena have anything to do with the Holy Spirit!!!

Then you have these nutty self-righteous converts who appear out of nowhere, from the fundamentalist underworld, and start trying to boss everyone around with their own pay-as-you-go/buy-my-book NFP conferences & seminars, the absolutely loony Pre-Cana Marriage Prep programs, Enneagrams still buzzing around among the wacky liberal set, the NewAgey "charismatics" lifting their arms up in the middle of Mass like they are about to establish contact with the Mother Ship, adding revivalist "clapping" etc., etc.!BIG problems. There is a Laurel and Hardy, Three Stooges, or Marx Brothers aspect to AmChurch which is quite...disturbing. At the English-language V II-approved Novus Ordo Mass I most recently attended there was a 300-pound woman with a speech impediment hovering around in the sanctuary who served as "lector." I wasn't sure whether this was Mass or a Shriners' circus.