[Notwithstanding]

please ping all around

[yendu bwam]

Michael Rose is trucking with pope-bashers and marketing his books through them

The Pope is a wonderful and holy and erudite man. But the truth is that Michael Rose's books expose a dirty and disgusting set of truths about the Church. The Pope bears a significant part of the responsibility for what has happened with the rapes of thousands of teenage boys by homosexual priests. It would do the Pope well to find the courage to address this issue while in Toronto, before the Church's youth.

[Gophack]

Very good article. Clearly outlines the difference between constructive criticism and outright dissent. I never want to be opposite of the Church, and because the Pope IS in fact the Vicar of Christ, to attack him is to attack Jesus Christ Himself.

I do believe that it is acceptable, and perhaps even necessary, to highlight inadequacies in individual dioceses or where parished or priests deter from the Living, Teaching Church because we are then supporting the Church and her teachings, as long as we are respectful and loving. But trying to bring ones parish into full faith is different than attacking the Pope's teachings.

We don't know everything. We don't know what the Holy Father has or hasn't done regarding the Priest scandals. We must have faith and trust in the Lord that the Holy Spirit is indeed guiding the Holy Father, as Jesus Christ said He would. If we don't have that faith, what do we have? We become no better than the Protestants, who dismiss clear Truth for personal revelation.

God bless His Church.

[narses]

ping

[marshmallow]

Second guessing the Pope is the favorite sport of many. At the basis of much of it is an overweening pride which says that I know better than he.

Only God knows how many of the various traditionalist and conservative lay groups which have sprung up are truly loyal subjects of the Church and which are pushing their own agenda under the guise of "true" Catholicism.

Those with misgivings about the various actions of the Pope should leave these in the hands of God during prayer, for that is all the Holy Father truly needs from us. Our prayers.

[Starwind]

The Holy Father is being persecuted from all sides today in something like apocalyptic storms. And now, some of his former friends are showing signs of deserting that cross and blaming him for the consequences of not heeding his own teachings-----and they do not see how ironic and absurd and tragic that is.

I have a sense that this is a straw-man argument, designed not to defend the Pope, but to silence the critics of the RCC problems, and implicity to advance liberalism.

I don't recall the published books and authors accusing the Pope personally. At most they implicitly ask what is the Pope's response to the problems.

But Hand seems intent on painting the messengers as the problem and portraying them as against the Pope, which conveniently takes attention off the message.

[Polycarp]

Personally, I'll trust the judgement of

Michael Rose,
Robert Sungenis,
Patrick Madrid,
Brian Barcaro at the Diocese Report,
Steven Brady at "Roman Catholic Faithful"
and others such as Helen Hull Hitchcock of Adoremus
and Alice Von Hildebrand, who wrote the forward to Rose's book,
and her late husband Dietrick Von Hildebrand who wrote eloquently about the Latin Mass,
and Cardinal Ratzinger, who has publicly voiced grave misgivings over recent liturgical changes,

over the patronizng and arrogant and self-important rantings of this author any day.

[nickcarraway]

While I agree with the spirit of the article, I think it's purposely inflammatory and at least somewhat self-serving. Undoubtedly, there are some publications that have varying degrees of fidelity to the Pope, but they are trotting out ``pope-bashers'' too easily. This article gets more and more arrogant as it goes along. Being faithful to the Pope doesn't mean having no disagreements with the write of this piece,

[Polycarp]

Real traditionalists---such as we are proud to be---

Here's my parable for the Steve Hand's out there:

Imagine you are seated on a sailing ship, staring upwards at the main mast high above you. The ship rocks to and fro on turbulent seas.

A crewman on the crow's seat at the top of the mast casts a rope to one who has fallen overboard on the right side.

Wisely, the overboard sailor, seeing his peril, grasps the line and pulls himself up.

As he does so, he praises God for his salvation and humbly draws towards the deck.

But as he reaches the deck, seeing the joy of being aboard ship and the peril of his comrades still floating about in the water off the right side of the boat, he decides he can do more good for his brothers sinking into the deep waters if he climbs just a little higher towards the crow's nest, to help direct the sailor there in his aid to those overboard.

As he rises higher, the ship lists in the storm, and not yet being anchored on deck, he swings wildly on the rope, yet still attached to the crow's nest.

From our position seated on deck, we see a man saved from the waters on our right, swung high on the rope offered for his salvation, but...

as the ship lists left, the man on the rope swings wildly left.

But looking from his vantage point swingly wildly from his rope, and with the eyes of pride that comes from his superior viewpoint, and having had the experience of once being in the water on the right, he now judges those seated on deck to be listed to the right, when in actuality it is only on his rope that he is swingly rapidly left.

Eventually in his pride, he may think he no longer needs the rope, and can just let go and drop onto deck.

In reality, his trajectory has him overshooting the left most part of the ship's deck by a long shot, and more than likely our sailor will find himself in the waters on the left of the ship, still cursing those on deck for having listed so far to the right.

Interestingly, while those on deck may be squabbling over the proper placements of the riggings and the proper way to save those falling overboard to left and to right, and the proper course to sail through the turbulent seas,they still and always were sitting squarely on the middle of the deck, contantly being accused by those wet ones with the changing perspectives on the ropes of listing too far left or right themselves.

Please be patient or forgiving if those of us sitting squarely on the middle of the deck smirk a bit at our critics careening wildly overhead.

Dr. Kopp

[Havisham]

Not, can we definitively say that, in general, the U.S. bishops are in schism? There are few others whose opinion I would seriously attend on this question.

[Antoninus]

Here we see the next phase of AmChurch's attempt to strike back. Declare that the Michael Roses and RCFs of the world are the 'dissenters' (because they dare to publicize wicked deeds that are highly destructive of the Church) and that they themselves are the true protectors of the Pope and the Church. Seems like yet another desperate move on their part. Get real, Mr. Hand. If you read Michael Rose's book, Goodbye, Good Men you would know that Mr. Rose is not a Pope basher. He is a liberal basher, a modernist basher, and a sexual profligate basher. Let us focus upon the true enemies of the Church -- the pseudo-Catholic dissenter groups, the active, unrepentent homosexuals in the priesthood and episcopacy, and the Culture of Death storm troopers on the outside.

[Mike Fieschko]

In 1940, after Dunkirk, an English paper ran an editorial cartoon showing one of their soldiers looking out on the Channel at Europe from the Dover cliffs. He had his arm raised and fist clenched and he was saying 'Alone? All right ... alone!!'

In my fantasies, that's how I see myself at times.

I deeply wish I could find that cartoon on the 'net.

[Salvation]

Michael Rose is trucking with pope-bashers and marketing his books through them,

It figures.

[ultima ratio]

Stephan Hand is at war with the traditionalists in the Church. He represents a middle group between traditionalism and liberalism. (He would call himself a conservative, though it would be a misnomer.)

Right now the liberals have control of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and are doing all they can to wreck two thousand years of Catholic tradition so that it is indistinguishable from mainline liberal Protestantism. Many bishops and cardinals are in open opposition to the Faith itself.

Hand is the kind of Catholic who will on the one hand deplore the present crisis in the Church, but on the other hand will blindly absolve the Pope from any responsibility for it. This is because he believes to be a good Catholic above all means obeying the pope in all things--even if it means contravening the Faith itself. He ignores the long tradition of Catholics who criticized their popes, including many saints such as St. Paul, St. Augustine and St. Catherine of Sienna. For him, obedience trumps all else--a decidedly unCatholic attitude which is tantamount to Pope-worship.

Traditionalists will cite St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Robert Bellarmine, two of the most eminent doctors of the Church, who advocated disobedience even to the pope himself if he commands something harmful to the Church. Traditionalists also cite the First Vatican Council of 1870 which stated that the pope is not an absolute monarch. His power is bound up in his transmission of the Faith. The deposit of Faith and its transmission is his provence--not doctrinal novelties and innovation.

One way to descrie the difference between conservative (or liberal) Catholics and traditionalists is that conservatives view the past through a lense of the present (Vatican II), whereas traditionalists view the present through a lens of the past (2000 years of Church history).