Category: Churchy Stuff
We’re 0-2 with the Tobins
On Saturday, Bishop Tobin of Providence, RI, reminded Catholics via Twitter not to participate in Gay Pride marches, which is about the most non-controversial thing a Catholic could say.
Yesterday, through an official diocesan statement, he apologized and was praying for their activities to be ‘productive’ (I doubt the chancery queens intended the irony).
Can there be any doubt why, with cowardly leaders like this, there is a vocations crisis? (Providence has just 12 seminarians in a diocese of 670,000 Catholics!! That’s a decline of 98% compared to 60 years ago, if you’re wondering).
What straight young man would look up from the pews and, gazing upon his Bishop, say to himself, “I want to learn what is right, and how to quickly apologize to the mob for saying it”.… Read the rest
The Erratic Ordinary of Knoxville, TN
The featured photo, shared by the erratic ordinary in Knoxville, TN compares the saintly Catholic Archbishop to the heretic and apostate Luther, while his own diocese suffers from a severe lack of vocations.
Imagine having just 13 seminarians to show for the 75,000 Catholics in your diocese and critiquing the Society of Saint Pius X, with their 100 seminarians from a population of lay faithful numbering just 25,000.
Matt 7:16… Read the rest
Choosing a Catechist
Nothing to See Here
Benedict wants to blame the 1960s for the sex abuse problem. He doesn’t address how this explains the sex abuse which began decades earlier and was enabled by the widespread corruption and perversion already entrenched in the episcopate before the 60s. The man who abandoned his post now praises the work of Francis and wants the faithful to look the other way.
One friend on Facebook tried to explain Benedict’s actions as a criticism of Francis, although Benedict closes the essay with this gem:
At the end of my reflections I would like to thank Pope Francis for everything he does to show us, again and again, the light of God, which has not disappeared, even today. Thank you, Holy Father
Another friend observed that Benedict was subtly contradicting the Francis approach to things.
However, I’m of the mind that Ratzinger was a big part of the problem. He was a periti at the council, he was a major influence on the new theology, he was the right hand man to JP2 for all those years, who presided over the greatest collapse in the Church since the Arian crisis, and when it was his own time to make the tough decisions as Pope, he quit. (All this having been said, I don’t deny the good he did with SP and the lifting of the unjust excommunications).
If he’s having a crisis of conscience, it doesn’t indicate that he truly understands the nature of the problem (which is not pedophilia). If … Read the rest