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The Forum > Article Comments > Is the Catholic Church losing its grip? > Comments

Is the Catholic Church losing its grip? : Comments

By Brian Holden, published 28/7/2008

The Catholic Churches' cathedrals are among the West’s most magnificent artistic achievements - and they will remain to be its headstone.

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George

As our species moves forward in time, it builds its store of information. As the information gets more comprehensive, understanding becomes closer to the full picture. We may still not know the truth, but we have a much better idea than what we had 1900 years ago. An attempt to structure our knowledge today to keep a 1900 year old book viable is nothing short of intellectual gymnastics
Posted by Brian Holden, Tuesday, 29 July 2008 10:23:29 AM
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runner,

'We have already had about a dozen blogs on homosexual paedophile priests. Why don't we have a few on paedophile doctors or earth worshippers or sports coaches or Labour Ministers? I wonder?'

Probably because of the hypocracy element. A priest puts himself up as a moral authority.
Posted by Usual Suspect, Tuesday, 29 July 2008 1:57:11 PM
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Certain criticism of the Catholic Church is perhaps made from shallow observation, where the appearance of an external authority belies its true spirit. Roman Catholisim is what could legitimately be named a traditionalist organisation based on evolving patterns of theology (or thought), albeit at the caprice of papal censorship or agreement.

Science and modernity have successfully challenged most medieval assumptions. Apart from the intransigence of the traditionalists, Catholicism perhaps presents us with an entirely different ‘animal’ – particularly post Vatican II.

Ironically, the R.C. tradition does not render consistency, for example, in the fifth century Augustine expressed the mainstream view that early abortion requires penance only for sexual sin. Eight centuries later, Aquinas agreed, saying abortion is not homicide unless the foetus is “ensouled,” and ensoulment, he was sure, occurred well after conception. The position that abortion is a serious sin akin to murder and is grounds for excommunication, however, became established only 150 years ago.

A contradiction occurs also for ‘bible-believing’ Christians, where action is derived from a strict biblical literalism e.g., we have the classic scriptural passage, often used to "justify" domestic control and abuse: Ephesians 5:22, where the author exhorts women to be submissive to husbands. In this passage the author speaks from within the patriarchal social structure of the time, where slavery and the submission of wives was taken for granted. A more modern and ‘gentler’ interpretation, whilst heartwarming does ignore the important cultural context.

Liberal Catholic theologian, Father Richard P. McBrien perhaps sums up the dissidence within the masses: “If... after appropriate study, reflection, and prayer, a person is convinced that his or her conscience is correct, in spite of a conflict with the moral teachings of the church, the person not only may but must follow the dictates of conscience rather than the teachings of the church.” Yes, I’d happily say, the Catholic Church has lost its grip, but fortunately not its conscience.

No matter the culture, however, or the organisation, the abuse of children appears the most heinous of crimes – no amount of reflection or prayer will excuse anyone from this.
Posted by relda, Tuesday, 29 July 2008 9:54:08 PM
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Brian,
>> An attempt to structure our knowledge today to keep a 1900 year old book viable is nothing short of intellectual gymnastics <<

The writings of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras etc. are older that 1900 years and still “viable”. Children still learn about the Pythagoras Theorem, and contemporary mathematicians honour it although they have a much deeper understanding of its validity and applicability than Pythagoras himself. As I said before, the problem is not with those who do not understand e.g. differential geometry or non-commutative geometry, and their usefulness in our modeling of physical Reality (models that are unintelligible to those without an “insider knowledge” of mathematics), but with those who dismiss these insights, as incomprehensible to them as they are, as mere “intellectual gymnastics”.

Relda,
That is an illuminating positive perspective, complementing the somewhat less illuminating but comprehensive negative one provided by Brian. I do not know Father McBrien and in what sense is he “liberal”, however the quote is just the standard Catholic teaching about the freedom of conscience, at least for a private individual (it is more complicated in case of a “public individual“ e.g. a politician).
Posted by George, Tuesday, 29 July 2008 11:46:00 PM
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Hello George,

To give a sense of, or, to put into context McBriens ‘liberalism’, we can perhaps find it illuminated by his more conservative critics.

Ronald J. Rychlak, an R.C.,also academic, scholar and lawyer, is one such critic of McBrien. In "Catholic Answers" Rychlak writes (when referring to McBrien), “One of the most difficult problems for an apologist is a dissenting Catholic who makes public statements at odds with the true teaching of the Church.”

Some of the Rychlak laments of McBrein are that:
• He denied that Christ founded the Catholic Church as we know it.
• He wrote that the sacraments were not directly instituted by Christ.
• He said that "the idea that the Catholic Church is the one true religion no longer exists."
• He depicted Christ as if he did not always know that he was the Son of God.
• He questioned the virginal conception of Jesus and the perpetual virginity of Mary.
• He wrote that the dogmatic definitions of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary are not part of the essential core of the faith.
• He endorsed philosopher Paul Ricoeur's assessment of original sin as "a rationalized myth about the mystery of evil."
• He was one of the original signers of Fr. Charles Curran's Statement of Dissent against Humanae Vitae, and he has argued that this reassertion of the historical Christian position on contraception was fundamentally wrong teaching.
• He said the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses but were the products of the later Christian communities who invented miracles in order to convey certain theological meanings and establish the divinity of Christ.

From this I sense that Fr. Richard McBrien is quite ‘liberal’.
Posted by relda, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 10:53:09 AM
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Welcome back George

It is difficult to convey to Creationists or Evolutionists that their 'dispute' is predicated upon a somwhat narrow and too literal interpretation of Creation on the one hand and a complete misunderstanding of the nature of Scientific theory on the other.
Posted by waterboy, Wednesday, 30 July 2008 9:35:21 PM
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