The Nominal Catholic Reporter (Catholic in name only) continues its rush to irrelevance in this weeks edition. Their target audience must be a small cadre of geriatric dissidents with “groovy” notions of what relevance means.
This week, NCR gushes over those dissident kooks in Holland who decided “Priests? We don’t need no stinkin’ Priests!” by deciding that any man, woman, or active homosexual can consecrate the Eucharist. Yet even NCR cannot help vut observe a little truth now and then although the irony is likely lost on them.
There is a saying among Dutch Catholics these days that the situation of the church in the Netherlands is “hopeless but not serious.” This Zen-like assessment reflects dual realities of the Dutch church: It is the place where some of the most dramatic innovations in Catholic practice in the past half-century have occurred simultaneously with one of the most precipitous drops in church membership in the Western world.
Hmmm. Crazy innovations and dramatic drops is Church membership. Go figure. NCR not only leads with the article on the “innovative” Dutch but editorializes on the subject as well.
Ah, those postmodern Dutch, so far ahead of us, with their eclectic and chaotic social liberalism, their blunt talk, bold experiments, utopian impatience with rules and tradition. What a refreshing notion they have: that because the Eucharist is the essence of Christian community, that community therefore has a right to it. And if the hierarchy fails to bestow that right from above, local communities can claim it from below: “Where two or three gather in my name,” share scripture, break bread, pass the cup, there is Real Presence, holy Communion, the freedom of the Holy Spirit to give charisms with or without official permission.
The post modern Dutch with no church attendance. Utopia in the mind of NCR. But wait, there is more! Not satisfied with gushing over modern day crazies, they dig up one of their heroes from the hey-day. Yes, none other than Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx. Yes, apparently he is still alive and NCR dug him up for a trip down memory lane. Of course, to tie the old in with the new, Schillebeeckx gives his imprimatur to the postmodern Dutch.
In “Church and Ministry,” the newly released document, the Dominicans put forward such “new possibilities” as this: “Men and women can be chosen to preside at the Eucharist by the church community; that is, ‘from below,’ and can then ask a local bishop to ordain these people ‘from above.’ ”
If, however, “a bishop should refuse a confirmation or ordination” of such persons “on the basis of arguments not involving the essence of the Eucharist, such as a requirement that deacons or priests be celibate, parishes may move forward without the bishops’ participation, remaining confident “that they are able to celebrate a real and genuine Eucharist when they are together in prayer and share bread and wine.”
Groovy.
December 13, 2007 at 12:30 am
The irony is a delight to behold. Declining Church attendance andy ‘way out” practices…
Then they bring out an old-as-Methuselah theologan to say that this is the way of the future, because, well, no young person actually believes that gobshite… I don’t wish to sound uncharitable, but truly, the answer to many of our problems lies in the Missa pro Defunctis. Twenty years’ time, and these people will all have been “euthanized” with pillows by their own children.
December 13, 2007 at 3:59 am
Perhaps like our presumptive Cocaine Padre, Father Leonard Van Vlaenderen, the editors at the National Catholic Apostate, I mean, Reporter, are only indulging in a bit of recreation. I wonder if they write this stuff in their cars with the windows rolled up while parked in dark alleys? It does seem strange also that Fr. Coke has a Dutch appearing name. Then Rembert isn’t exactly on the list of the five hundred most popular American names for males.