The Catholic Herald reports:
"The new Bishop of Jefferson City, Missouri has expressed his shock at the McCarrick scandal and 'the silence of so many bishops who knew about him.'
Writing on the diocesan website, Bishop Shawn McKnight said the reports were 'almost unbearable', adding: 'How could a brother bishop disrespect with such callousness the dignity of young boys, seminarians and priests over decades and no one called him on the carpet?'
'It is inexplicable to me. This cannot continue, and I hope with God’s grace there will be a change of culture among the clergy.'
The bishop, who was installed just six months ago, also urged any victim who has not yet come forward to do so now 'so that justice may be served and healing can take place.'
Bishop McKnight was ordained in 1994 for Diocese of Wichita, Kansas and has held teaching posts at Newman University and at the Pontifical College Josephinum Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. From 2010 to 2015 he was a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations.
His comments come as bishops call for an inquiry into the allegations surrounding Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl suggested on Monday that a panel of bishops could investigate claims and rumours against their fellow prelates and report the findings to Rome.
However, two bishops have said any investigation must be independent. Bishop Timothy Doherty of Lafayette said the US Conference of Catholic Bishops could hire an outside investigator to find out 'who knew what, and when' over the McCarrick affair.
Bishop Edward Scharfenberger of Albany also said any investigative panel 'would have to be separated from any source of power whose trustworthiness might potentially be compromised.'
'While I am heartened by my brother bishops proposing ways for our Church to take action in light of recent revelations – and I agree that a national panel should be commissioned, duly approved by the Holy See – I think we have reached a point where bishops alone investigating bishops is not the answer,' Bishop Scharfenberger said."
A change in clerical culture is indeed sorely needed. We need priests and Bishops who are capable of being outraged at sexual abuse and perversion. See my post here.
It's time to fashion a whip and drive the filth out of the Church. Something Pope Benedict XVI called for years ago.
Showing posts with label Outrage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Outrage. Show all posts
Thursday, August 09, 2018
Friday, January 12, 2018
Selective outrage and hypocrisy from the Democrats and the liberal msm
The Washington Examiner is reporting that President Trump denies using vulgar language attributed to him. See here.
Rolling Stone Magazine has listed examples of vulgarity employed by a host of presidents, vice-presidents and presidential candidates:
Abraham Lincoln: "There is nothing to make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of General George Washington."
Barack Obama: “Obama really drew the ire of the pious, calling opponent Mitt Romney a ‘bullshitter.’ Sometimes the dirty word is the most precise.”
Joe Biden: "This is a big f**king deal."
Dick Cheney: “Cheney reportedly told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to ‘go f**k [himself]’”
George W. Bush: “Commented on the presence of New York Times reporter Adam Clymer. Believing he had an audience of one, Bush called Clymer a ‘major-league asshole.’”
Barack Obama: "I don't think I should take any sh*t from anybody on that, do you?"
Richard Nixon: “The Watergate tapes put the phrase ‘expletive deleted’ on the map.”
Lyndon Johnson: "I do know the difference between chicken sh*t and chicken salad,"
John F. Kennedy: "This is obviously a f**k-up."
Harry Truman: “In Truman's eyes, General Douglas MacArthur was a "dumb son of a bitch," and Nixon was ‘a shifty-eyed goddamned liar.’”
So why is President Trump being singled out for describing certain governments (not the people) as "shit-holes"?
I think we all know.
And while the liberal "mainstream media" are busying themselves with bashing the President over his language, their outrage is most selective. Where is the concern over well-documented comments made by Nancy Pelosi? See here.
Or what about President Obama's disparaging remarks regarding white middle-class voters in old industrial towns? See here.
Hypocrisy is the pretension to qualities which one does not possess. Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in a sermon delivered in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI on March 11, 2007, explained the gravity of hypocrisy: "Hypocrisy is the sin that is most powerfully denounced by God in the Bible and the reason for this is clear. With his hypocrisy, man demotes God, he puts him in second place, putting the creature, the public, in first place. "Man sees the appearance, the Lord sees the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7): Cultivating our appearance more than our heart means giving greater importance to man than to God.
Hypocrisy is thus essentially a lack of faith; but it is also a lack of charity for our neighbor in the sense that it tends to reduce persons to admirers. It does not recognize their proper dignity, but sees them only in function of one's own image.
Christ's judgment on hypocrisy is without appeal: "Receperunt mercedem suam" (They have already received their reward)! A reward that is, above all, illusory, even on a human level because we know that glory flees from those that seek it, and seeks those who flee from it.
Jesus' invectives against the scribes and the Pharisees also help us understand the meaning of purity of heart. Jesus' criticisms focus on the opposition between the "inside" and the "outside," the interior and the exterior of man. 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and filth. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity' (Matthew 23:27-28).
The revolution which Jesus brings about here is of incalculable significance. Before him, except for some rare hint in the prophets and the Psalms — 'Who will ascend the mountain of the Lord? Those whose hands are innocent and whose hearts are pure' (Psalm 24:3) — purity was understood in a ritual and cultural way; it consisted in keeping one's distance from things, animals, persons or places that were understood to contaminate one and separate one from God's holiness. Above all, these were things associated with birth, death, food and sexuality. In different forms and with different presuppositions, other religions outside the Bible shared these ideas.
Jesus makes a clean sweep of all these taboos and does so first of all by certain gestures: He eats with sinners, touches lepers, mixes with pagans. All of these were taken to be highly unsanitary things. He also sweeps away these taboos with his teachings. The solemnity with which he introduces his discourse on the pure and the impure makes apparent how conscious he was of the novelty of his doctrine. "And he called the people to him again and said to them: 'Hear me all of you and understand; there is nothing outside a man that by going into him can defile him. It is the things that come out of a man that can defile him.... For from within, out of the heart of a man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man'" (Mark 7:14-17,21-23)."
Jesus knew that the pharisees often preached a good game but that they failed to live up to what they preached. Which is why He told His listeners, "Do as they say, not as they do." Might not the same be said of the Democrats and the liberal mainstream media with its selective outrage?
Related reading here and here.
Rolling Stone Magazine has listed examples of vulgarity employed by a host of presidents, vice-presidents and presidential candidates:
Abraham Lincoln: "There is nothing to make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of General George Washington."
Barack Obama: “Obama really drew the ire of the pious, calling opponent Mitt Romney a ‘bullshitter.’ Sometimes the dirty word is the most precise.”
Joe Biden: "This is a big f**king deal."
Dick Cheney: “Cheney reportedly told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to ‘go f**k [himself]’”
George W. Bush: “Commented on the presence of New York Times reporter Adam Clymer. Believing he had an audience of one, Bush called Clymer a ‘major-league asshole.’”
Barack Obama: "I don't think I should take any sh*t from anybody on that, do you?"
Richard Nixon: “The Watergate tapes put the phrase ‘expletive deleted’ on the map.”
Lyndon Johnson: "I do know the difference between chicken sh*t and chicken salad,"
John F. Kennedy: "This is obviously a f**k-up."
Harry Truman: “In Truman's eyes, General Douglas MacArthur was a "dumb son of a bitch," and Nixon was ‘a shifty-eyed goddamned liar.’”
So why is President Trump being singled out for describing certain governments (not the people) as "shit-holes"?
I think we all know.
And while the liberal "mainstream media" are busying themselves with bashing the President over his language, their outrage is most selective. Where is the concern over well-documented comments made by Nancy Pelosi? See here.
Or what about President Obama's disparaging remarks regarding white middle-class voters in old industrial towns? See here.
Hypocrisy is the pretension to qualities which one does not possess. Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in a sermon delivered in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI on March 11, 2007, explained the gravity of hypocrisy: "Hypocrisy is the sin that is most powerfully denounced by God in the Bible and the reason for this is clear. With his hypocrisy, man demotes God, he puts him in second place, putting the creature, the public, in first place. "Man sees the appearance, the Lord sees the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7): Cultivating our appearance more than our heart means giving greater importance to man than to God.
Hypocrisy is thus essentially a lack of faith; but it is also a lack of charity for our neighbor in the sense that it tends to reduce persons to admirers. It does not recognize their proper dignity, but sees them only in function of one's own image.
Christ's judgment on hypocrisy is without appeal: "Receperunt mercedem suam" (They have already received their reward)! A reward that is, above all, illusory, even on a human level because we know that glory flees from those that seek it, and seeks those who flee from it.
Jesus' invectives against the scribes and the Pharisees also help us understand the meaning of purity of heart. Jesus' criticisms focus on the opposition between the "inside" and the "outside," the interior and the exterior of man. 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and filth. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity' (Matthew 23:27-28).
The revolution which Jesus brings about here is of incalculable significance. Before him, except for some rare hint in the prophets and the Psalms — 'Who will ascend the mountain of the Lord? Those whose hands are innocent and whose hearts are pure' (Psalm 24:3) — purity was understood in a ritual and cultural way; it consisted in keeping one's distance from things, animals, persons or places that were understood to contaminate one and separate one from God's holiness. Above all, these were things associated with birth, death, food and sexuality. In different forms and with different presuppositions, other religions outside the Bible shared these ideas.
Jesus makes a clean sweep of all these taboos and does so first of all by certain gestures: He eats with sinners, touches lepers, mixes with pagans. All of these were taken to be highly unsanitary things. He also sweeps away these taboos with his teachings. The solemnity with which he introduces his discourse on the pure and the impure makes apparent how conscious he was of the novelty of his doctrine. "And he called the people to him again and said to them: 'Hear me all of you and understand; there is nothing outside a man that by going into him can defile him. It is the things that come out of a man that can defile him.... For from within, out of the heart of a man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man'" (Mark 7:14-17,21-23)."
Jesus knew that the pharisees often preached a good game but that they failed to live up to what they preached. Which is why He told His listeners, "Do as they say, not as they do." Might not the same be said of the Democrats and the liberal mainstream media with its selective outrage?
Related reading here and here.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Message for World Youth Day: Violence is never the answer, we can do nothing else but love, love, love...
As noted here, "Msgr. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, secretary general of the French Bishops Conference, told reporters in Krakow..that the atrocity (a priest having been martyred by having his head cut off) was 'an unbelievable, unspeakable and heinous act.'

But he added that it means World Youth Day 'needs to proceed with even greater intensity and power so young people who are the present and the future can show a path for the Church, and for being within the Church.'
'We need to see a horizon of peace, joy, brotherhood and prayer,' he continued. 'We are rooted in Christ and, I repeat, we believe evil and violence will not have the upper hand.'
Noting that many young people from Rouen are in Krakow for WYD, he said they have come 'to build a new civilization of love that Pope St. John Paul II had called for — we want to build it and that’s why we’re gathered here in such big numbers.'
He stressed that 'anger and revenge would be the easiest ways out but all of this can crush us' and called for mercy on the perpetrators, saying that we all 'live thanks to Jesus and we’re all gathered here because of the mercy he has lavished on us all.' Neither violence nor hate 'are a way out', he said, and one 'cannot surrender to these sentiments,' nor to 'suspicion of neighbors.'
He also recalled that in every part of the world today people are 'killed because they’re Christians or Muslims, more Muslims than Christians.' Asked by the Register if what is really needed is for Muslims to hear the Gospel and convert, he said 'sure', but added that what is important now is dialogue, collaboration and fraternity.
'The answer is only love,' he said. 'We cannot do anything else: love, love, love, dialogue, dialogue and also mercy for all those who are totally destroyed by the violence.'"
Msgr. Ribadeau has forgotten that it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4: 26), and he is not alone.
Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J. Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..."
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
The time has come for a Crusade against the satanic forces of radical Islam. Now is not the time for cowardice or a deformed spirituality. Now is the time for real men to stand up and fight for Christian civilization (what's left of it).
We don't need the "moral" advice of sissy clerics who lack testosterone. We need to listen to authentic men who understand that there is a time for peace and a time for war and that war has been declared on us by the antiChrist forces of militant Islam.
In the words of Cicero: "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war."

But he added that it means World Youth Day 'needs to proceed with even greater intensity and power so young people who are the present and the future can show a path for the Church, and for being within the Church.'
'We need to see a horizon of peace, joy, brotherhood and prayer,' he continued. 'We are rooted in Christ and, I repeat, we believe evil and violence will not have the upper hand.'
Noting that many young people from Rouen are in Krakow for WYD, he said they have come 'to build a new civilization of love that Pope St. John Paul II had called for — we want to build it and that’s why we’re gathered here in such big numbers.'
He stressed that 'anger and revenge would be the easiest ways out but all of this can crush us' and called for mercy on the perpetrators, saying that we all 'live thanks to Jesus and we’re all gathered here because of the mercy he has lavished on us all.' Neither violence nor hate 'are a way out', he said, and one 'cannot surrender to these sentiments,' nor to 'suspicion of neighbors.'
He also recalled that in every part of the world today people are 'killed because they’re Christians or Muslims, more Muslims than Christians.' Asked by the Register if what is really needed is for Muslims to hear the Gospel and convert, he said 'sure', but added that what is important now is dialogue, collaboration and fraternity.
'The answer is only love,' he said. 'We cannot do anything else: love, love, love, dialogue, dialogue and also mercy for all those who are totally destroyed by the violence.'"
Msgr. Ribadeau has forgotten that it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4: 26), and he is not alone.
Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J. Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..."
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
The time has come for a Crusade against the satanic forces of radical Islam. Now is not the time for cowardice or a deformed spirituality. Now is the time for real men to stand up and fight for Christian civilization (what's left of it).
We don't need the "moral" advice of sissy clerics who lack testosterone. We need to listen to authentic men who understand that there is a time for peace and a time for war and that war has been declared on us by the antiChrist forces of militant Islam.
In the words of Cicero: "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war."
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Liberal hypocrisy and the incivility of the left...
We've all witnessed the liberal establishment pouncing on Rush Limbaugh this past week because of comments which he directed at Sandra Fluke, a long time liberal activist.
Brian Maloney, writing at his Blog Radio Equalizer, notes how, "When looking for fresh examples of 'progressive' hate talk, it really doesn't take much digging. From any day's libtalk lineup, pick an hour at random and one or more will usually slither its way to the surface quickly enough. But why go to the trouble? We've already done the work for you, tracking lefty smears by the hundreds (thousands?) here at this site for years. It's all right here.
Despite their horrible nature, it's quite rare to see these instances picked up by the establishment media. Conservatives apparently deserve to be slandered. That's why the latest manufactured OUTRAGE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) from our 'progressive' friends rings hollow. If subjected to the same standard applied to Rush Limbaugh this week, not one libtalker would still be on their air. Instead, two of the most hateful spent today celebrating a new cable talk deal." (See his full post here).
Remember when Alec Baldwin made an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on December 12, 1998, eight days before President Bill Clinton was to be impeached, and said, "..if we were in another country...we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they’re doing to this country."
Where was the liberal outrage? If Rush Limbaugh crossed a line, isn't it fair to say that Alec Baldwin not only crossed the line but obliterated it? How about the thousands of other examples of liberal hate speech provided at Brian Maloney's Blog?
Hypocrisy is the pretension to qualities which one does not possess. Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in a sermon delivered in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI on March 11, 2007, explained the gravity of hypocrisy: "Hypocrisy is the sin that is most powerfully denounced by God in the Bible and the reason for this is clear. With his hypocrisy, man demotes God, he puts him in second place, putting the creature, the public, in first place. "Man sees the appearance, the Lord sees the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7): Cultivating our appearance more than our heart means giving greater importance to man than to God.
Hypocrisy is thus essentially a lack of faith; but it is also a lack of charity for our neighbor in the sense that it tends to reduce persons to admirers. It does not recognize their proper dignity, but sees them only in function of one's own image.
Christ's judgment on hypocrisy is without appeal: "Receperunt mercedem suam" (They have already received their reward)! A reward that is, above all, illusory, even on a human level because we know that glory flees from those that seek it, and seeks those who flee from it.
Jesus' invectives against the scribes and the Pharisees also help us understand the meaning of purity of heart. Jesus' criticisms focus on the opposition between the "inside" and the "outside," the interior and the exterior of man. 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and filth. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity' (Matthew 23:27-28).
The revolution which Jesus brings about here is of incalculable significance. Before him, except for some rare hint in the prophets and the Psalms — 'Who will ascend the mountain of the Lord? Those whose hands are innocent and whose hearts are pure' (Psalm 24:3) — purity was understood in a ritual and cultural way; it consisted in keeping one's distance from things, animals, persons or places that were understood to contaminate one and separate one from God's holiness. Above all, these were things associated with birth, death, food and sexuality. In different forms and with different presuppositions, other religions outside the Bible shared these ideas.
Jesus makes a clean sweep of all these taboos and does so first of all by certain gestures: He eats with sinners, touches lepers, mixes with pagans. All of these were taken to be highly unsanitary things. He also sweeps away these taboos with his teachings. The solemnity with which he introduces his discourse on the pure and the impure makes apparent how conscious he was of the novelty of his doctrine. "And he called the people to him again and said to them: 'Hear me all of you and understand; there is nothing outside a man that by going into him can defile him. It is the things that come out of a man that can defile him.... For from within, out of the heart of a man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man'" (Mark 7:14-17,21-23)."
Jesus knew that the pharisees often preached a good game but that they failed to live up to what they preached. Which is why He told His listeners, "Do as they say, not as they do." Might not the same be said of the liberal mainstream media with its selective outrage?
Brian Maloney, writing at his Blog Radio Equalizer, notes how, "When looking for fresh examples of 'progressive' hate talk, it really doesn't take much digging. From any day's libtalk lineup, pick an hour at random and one or more will usually slither its way to the surface quickly enough. But why go to the trouble? We've already done the work for you, tracking lefty smears by the hundreds (thousands?) here at this site for years. It's all right here.
Despite their horrible nature, it's quite rare to see these instances picked up by the establishment media. Conservatives apparently deserve to be slandered. That's why the latest manufactured OUTRAGE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) from our 'progressive' friends rings hollow. If subjected to the same standard applied to Rush Limbaugh this week, not one libtalker would still be on their air. Instead, two of the most hateful spent today celebrating a new cable talk deal." (See his full post here).
Remember when Alec Baldwin made an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on December 12, 1998, eight days before President Bill Clinton was to be impeached, and said, "..if we were in another country...we would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families, for what they’re doing to this country."
Where was the liberal outrage? If Rush Limbaugh crossed a line, isn't it fair to say that Alec Baldwin not only crossed the line but obliterated it? How about the thousands of other examples of liberal hate speech provided at Brian Maloney's Blog?
Hypocrisy is the pretension to qualities which one does not possess. Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in a sermon delivered in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI on March 11, 2007, explained the gravity of hypocrisy: "Hypocrisy is the sin that is most powerfully denounced by God in the Bible and the reason for this is clear. With his hypocrisy, man demotes God, he puts him in second place, putting the creature, the public, in first place. "Man sees the appearance, the Lord sees the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7): Cultivating our appearance more than our heart means giving greater importance to man than to God.
Hypocrisy is thus essentially a lack of faith; but it is also a lack of charity for our neighbor in the sense that it tends to reduce persons to admirers. It does not recognize their proper dignity, but sees them only in function of one's own image.
Christ's judgment on hypocrisy is without appeal: "Receperunt mercedem suam" (They have already received their reward)! A reward that is, above all, illusory, even on a human level because we know that glory flees from those that seek it, and seeks those who flee from it.
Jesus' invectives against the scribes and the Pharisees also help us understand the meaning of purity of heart. Jesus' criticisms focus on the opposition between the "inside" and the "outside," the interior and the exterior of man. 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and filth. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity' (Matthew 23:27-28).
The revolution which Jesus brings about here is of incalculable significance. Before him, except for some rare hint in the prophets and the Psalms — 'Who will ascend the mountain of the Lord? Those whose hands are innocent and whose hearts are pure' (Psalm 24:3) — purity was understood in a ritual and cultural way; it consisted in keeping one's distance from things, animals, persons or places that were understood to contaminate one and separate one from God's holiness. Above all, these were things associated with birth, death, food and sexuality. In different forms and with different presuppositions, other religions outside the Bible shared these ideas.
Jesus makes a clean sweep of all these taboos and does so first of all by certain gestures: He eats with sinners, touches lepers, mixes with pagans. All of these were taken to be highly unsanitary things. He also sweeps away these taboos with his teachings. The solemnity with which he introduces his discourse on the pure and the impure makes apparent how conscious he was of the novelty of his doctrine. "And he called the people to him again and said to them: 'Hear me all of you and understand; there is nothing outside a man that by going into him can defile him. It is the things that come out of a man that can defile him.... For from within, out of the heart of a man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man'" (Mark 7:14-17,21-23)."
Jesus knew that the pharisees often preached a good game but that they failed to live up to what they preached. Which is why He told His listeners, "Do as they say, not as they do." Might not the same be said of the liberal mainstream media with its selective outrage?
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Where was the outrage?
By now you've all heard about Pastor Terry Jones, head of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, who plans to burn copies of the Koran on September 11th. No decent person would agree with Pastor Jones' plan. It is morally offensive. And there has been outrage across the globe. Various world leaders have been highly critical of the pastor.
But what concerns me is that when Islamic extremists treat the Bible (or Christians) with contempt, we do not hear anything approaching the same level of condemnation from world leaders. Back in 2007, Islamic extremists stormed the Latin Church and the adjacent Rosary Sisters School in Gaza City. These gunmen used rocket-propelled grenades to blow through the doors of the Church and school before burning bibles and destroying every cross they could get their hands on. Father Manuel Mussalam told the Associated Press that these Muslims ransacked, burned and looted both the school and the convent.
Where was the outrage? How many of you have even heard of this incident? Anyone?
When Muslim students in Melbourne Australia urinated on bibles and burned them (what would this suggest they were being taught about the Bible), the story was barely reported by the press. As Patrick Buchanan notes, "..Islam, the faith of one in five people on earth, does not mean freedom. It means 'submission' - to the will of Allah. In the Islamic world, there is no freedom to preach and proselytize for faiths such as Christianity...The secular Western idea - that all religions should be treated equally and permitted to convert non-believers - is punishable heresy in the Islamic world. Can not we Americans, who once called ourselves a Christian country, understand that?" (Day of Reckoning, p. 76).
It would seem not.
Friday, September 04, 2009
"He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins.."
In my previous post, I noted how it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4: 26), something which Cardinal Sean O'Malley obviously does not understand. And he is not alone. Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J. Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..." (Full article here).
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..." (Full article here).
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
One shepherd [and he is that in every sense of the word] who possesses such a mature faith is The Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. His Excellency has been quoted as having said, "No words that are printable, or even conceivable, are adequate to express my outrage, fury, and depression upon learning that anyone, much less a priest, would sexually molest any children. Such a thing is an unspeakable abomination. Upon hearing such things, I must confess that I am tempted to look for my shotgun and baseball bat, much sooner that I am tempted to give any consideration to a possible 'sickness' in a perpetrator. Molestation victims and their families are certainly entitled to anger. Sometimes their excessive anger and demands, while often becoming unacceptable and unreasonable, are still understandable to me." Read full statement here.
How much more just anger should a shepherd demonstrate against those who would spiritually molest faithful Catholics.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
