cognitive dissonance –noun Psychology. anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like
Professional progressive Fr. Richard McBrien in his most recent column displays a very striking (and humorous) cognitive dissonance when it comes to the laity.
McBrien laments the use of Good Shepherd Sunday as an excuse for the clericalists (you know who you are) to “exhortations to obey the hierarchy with the same commitment as one would obey Christ himself.”
Sheep need not listen to the shepherd. McBrien ridicules the notion that today’s modern laity are sheep in any way.
While there is surely a sense in which Jesus Christ is our Good Shepherd and we the flock that he tends and loves, the relationship is not literally that of a shepherd and his sheep.
…
Never before in the entire history of the Church have we had such a well-educated laity. And never before has the label “sheep” been so utterly inappropriate a designation for them.
Never before have we had such a well-educated laity. Not sheep. Baahh.
Interestingly, earlier in the very same article, McBrien despairs over the trend in the church he sees as “a stampede back to the Council of Trent” (Apparently not a cool council like VII)
Parenthetically, one cannot deny the sense of demoralization experienced by many Catholics who were deeply committed to the renewal promoted by Vatican II and Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, only to see evidence of a return to pre-conciliar ways of thinking and of doing business.
Perhaps the obvious has eluded Fr. McBrien. This well educated laity, chafing from decades of being force fed drivel by progressive clericalists, are helping to lead the very stampede he so disparages.
It seems that when this well educated laity dismisses “the Spirit of the Council” along with McBrien and his ilk, they do not merely revert back to sheep but take on the distinct aspect of the lemming.
Truth is, in this latest outburst from McBrien, he is really hinting at his own bafflement that these lemmings did not follow him of the cliff with smiles on their faces. Now drowning himself, he gazes back at the cliff off which he just plummeted wondering “Where did they all go? Damn sheep!”
May 6, 2008 at 12:58 pm
That is a great insight Patrick.
Perhaps the interpretation of Vatican II by the laity has been stronger than the modernist snake oil salesmen would like it to be.
JBP
May 6, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I’ve met a lot of people active in their parishes, who confuse pretense with being “well-educated.” Having people over to dinner with advanced degrees and their own pet theories does not make someone “well-educated.” Knowing how to think, as opposed to being TOLD what to think, is where it starts. To know the fundamentals, to be able to scrutinize the errors of the day against universal truths. It ain’t rocket science, but the power of faith seeking understanding, rather than reason demanding proof.
The oracle of Delphi once told Socrates that he was the wisest man in the world, because he claimed not to know everything.
Or was that Plato?
May 6, 2008 at 2:05 pm
It was Socrates.
What strikes me is that some of the most fundamentalist of Catholics are those committed to their own interpretation of Vatican II, which often has little resemblance to what the conciliar documents actually say. Everything the Church has taught for 2,000 years is open to speculation and dialogue. But just try to suggest that maybe things got a little out of hand the last forty years, and suddenly you’ve joined the ranks of the maddened reactionary crowd.
Bob Hunt
May 6, 2008 at 5:12 pm
As you’ve so aptly illustrated, few are as hung up on the authority of the clergy as are liberal clergymen.
Father Altier was silenced thoroughly and promptly, but like the poor, Father McBrien is with us always.
May 6, 2008 at 5:51 pm
That’s awesome, “Where did they all go? Damn sheep!”
May 6, 2008 at 6:29 pm
OK, so we’re supposed to follow our consciences, right? But if we follow our consciences to the pre-conciliar way of living out our Catholicism (the straw man of progs everywhere), then we’re just sheep? It’s a bitter shepherd who sees the flock he thought he had thrive in greener pastures, while he sits alone amidst the stones.
May 8, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Mark Shea, on his blog, quoting Chesterton, reminds us that the world does not progress, it wobbles.
The pendulum is swinging again. Each generation repudiating the previous. Although IMHO, I find this generation (i.e., the “Spirit of Vatican II” generation) exceedingly pernicious, I have not been Catholic long enough to know/understand what that generation was repudiating from the generation before it.
The only glimpse I have is from an Eastern Catholic radio show called “Light of the East,” where the Priest/host noted that the chuch has gone from one extreme to the other; i.e., the pre-concilliar days, everything was a sin, to the post concilliar days where nothing was a sin; and he was calling for balance.
Thoughts/comments?