.
Father Martin Fox of Piqua, OH, by Dayton, who blogs at Bonfire of the Vanities and who is one of the premier priestly bloggers, has an extremely important post today dealing with the hatred many "good Catholics" hold for certains priests, bishops, cardinals, and even some Popes.
In recent decades, we've seen a phenomenon that seems very strange to me: Catholics who deem themselves very traditional, very orthodox -- and to show it, they dispense the most cynical, vile invective against the hierarchy, from top to bottom.
I am not talking about mere criticism. One can easily think of criticism one can make of any bishop, even the pope, and of them all acting together. One can think of criticisms, even rather severe, that would be fitting in areas of liturgy, financial management, clarity and boldness of teaching, and certainly in handling the clerical crimes.
Catholics, it seems to me, are supposed to love their pope, their bishops, and their priests -- after all, we're supposed to love our enemies aren't we? Can't the pope and bishops get a piece of that?
I realize many feel deep hurt and anger over the way bishops and priests have conducted themselves. They are impatient for the pope to remedy things. They fear for the future of the Church.
[snip]
"Faithful" Catholics would seem to be mindful of the sin of detraction -- which denotes repeating truthful but hurtful information unnecessarily; as well as the better known sin of calumny, and plain old lying. Also, the demand of charity, including -- as St. Ignatius of Loyola taught -- giving one's opponent the benefit of the best reasonable explanation of his conduct or words. [snip] Read it All
No comments:
Post a Comment