So you remember this about the Maryknoller priest named Bourgeois who is being told he may be excommunicated for his participation in the unauthorized ordination of a female priest.
Well who’s speaking out for the priest and against the Church but a self professed Rabbi. According to Front Page Magazine, former Hillary Clinton guru Michael Lerner, publisher of Tikkun magazine is now slamming the Catholic Church for threatening to excommunicate leftist priest Roy Bourgeois.
“It’s not just Jews who demean others or see one type of human being as more valuable or closer to God or more appropriate to serve God than another,” Lerner bemoaned. “The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (the office that was previously named The Inquisition, but now no longer using violence to achieve its ends) has sent a letter to Father Roy Bourgeois threatening him with ex-communication (which effectively means an end to his income and to his teachings inside the church) for daring to publicly support the ordination of women and to offer remarks in a ceremony ordaining a woman as priest.”
They never wait long to bring up the Inquisition do they? But so many people see every institution as a power struggle between the powerful and the oppressed. I guess he doesn’t believe that the Church has any right whatsoever to expect adherence to rules. But, according to Lerner, this has nothing to do with fidelity. Here’s how Lerner sees the Church:
According to Lerner, the Catholic Church’s “current conservative leadership” aspires in “one fell swoop” to “rid itself of the progressive Catholic who has created the most important spiritual progressive demonstration taking place anywhere in the country for peace and against torture.”
Yes, of course, the ad orientem goon squad moonlights Tuesdays at the pro-torture “Go Gitmo” rallies.
Tikkun’s self-made rabbi knows exactly what is brewing within Roman Catholicism. “Politically conservative forces” have captured the church, Lerner warned, and are suppressing “progressive causes,” while protecting “those who support authoritarian and reactionary and violent causes.” Of course, he did not further describe these reactionary forces. Instead, Lerner condemned the Catholic Church’s “tenth century decision to exclude women from the clergy,” while the church ignores Jesus’ teachings against violence and for social justice, allowing priests who support “economic oppression and wars” to run rife. He urged his Network’s supporters to campaign against the forces of reaction within the Catholic Church. “We are not anti-Catholic,” Lerner insisted, even as he inveighed against the church hierarchy for bigotry and oppression.
I’m always amazed how little people know of Catholicism yet feel free to criticize it or even condemn it.
December 1, 2008 at 2:28 am
The good “Rabbi” (sic) preaches to a very limited and self-limiting choir. The part of Judaism under the progressive forces he represents is so fractured that it is becoming Unitarian with a few cute kosher items…there are now secular humanist Jews…who, like the Unitarians, find their high power in Einstein’s all beef hot dogs. And Reconstructionists who might as well have Gaia.
December 1, 2008 at 4:45 am
Well actually previously called the “Holy Office”, though at one time it was the “Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition”, though never just the Inquisition.
Plus they never understand that people appealed to the so-called inquisition since it was much fairer than the state-run inquisitions that actually did the killing.
December 1, 2008 at 5:32 am
Boy did this dude get the wrong memo.
Who brought justice in the workplace to the forefront? Which religion didn’t allow gladiators to join until they’d been freed and wouldn’t kill people any longer? Who preserved learning and culture in Europe? Who alone predicted the extraordinarily dangerous anti-woman fall-out of birth control and abortion? Who alone treats all equally, not endowing any with special privileges such as the rubber stamp on one’s desires, but calling all to the “high standard of ordinary Christian living?”
sorry, that sort of stuff ticks me off just a wee bit.
December 1, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I want to see a priest “running rife.” Or, actually, anyone “running rife.” One reads of people “running rife,” but how does one actually do that? What is a rife, anyway?
— Mack
December 1, 2008 at 12:25 pm
According to Lerner, the Catholic Church’s “current conservative leadership” aspires in “one fell swoop” to “rid itself of the progressive Catholic who has created the most important spiritual progressive demonstration taking place anywhere in the country for peace and against torture.”
Yes, indeed – because the progressives, under the “Spirit of Vatican II” wasted no time overthrowing parts of Catholicism (read: the orthodox parts) in the matter of a few years, right? In “one fell swoop” progressives not only got rid of pretty much everything beautiful about Catholicism and besmirched the liturgy, but set back both vocations *and* helped set the stage for the sexual abuse crisis by clearing faithful, orthodox men from the seminaries.
Plus they never understand that people appealed to the so-called inquisition since it was much fairer than the state-run inquisitions that actually did the killing.
Exactly. The Spanish took the inquisition far too far, and were even ordered by the Vatican to cease their actions. They didn’t. The process of the *real* inquisition was extremely fair and carefully run.
Of course, many on the liberal left have no qualms about the socialist/communist show trials that often sent dissenters to prison or mental institutions, but since this deals with Catholicism…well, that’s a different story.
We need to be in agreement that – whether liberal, Jewish, or non-Catholic – people who don’t understand our faith can have an opinion about it, but they’ll always be wrong and sorely misinformed.
December 1, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I actually have an acquaintance who writes liturgies for atheist humanist Jews. I know, it makes no sense.
December 1, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Help me out somebody, Catholics should care what a Jew (or anyone else not in the Church) thinks of our beliefs because…?
All I ever get is the sound of crickets chirping, what am I missing here?
December 1, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Ugh. More mouthy Jews thinking they know more about what’s best for Catholicism.
At least it isn’t from that weasel, Schmooley Boteach. That guy’s so bad he even turned Michael Jackson into a Muslim.
December 1, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Writing as a (technical) Jew, I could suggest that Rabbi Lerner put his own house in order first before proferring advice to others – Tikkun published the views of a known anti-semite, ( ironically someone who had claimed that Rabbi Lerner himself was part of the world Jewish conspiracy etc.) without realising who they were publishing.
Best to ignore them really.
December 1, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Help me out somebody, Catholics should care what a Jew (or anyone else not in the Church) thinks of our beliefs because…?
In a sane world, we wouldn’t have to. Who cares what non-Catholics think about traditions (Traditions) they don’t understand – right?
But this isn’t a sane world, and this rabbi’s screed is part of a larger narrative to paint the Church as this patriarchal, sexist, homophobic monster that needs to be subdued or – preferably – destroyed and remade in the image of the politically correct.
I care only inasmuch as it might one day affect my First Amendment, God-given right to free expression of religion.
Otherwise…not so much. They know nothing about my faith, ergo they cannot comment on it with any measure of validity.
December 1, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Amy, good point. We are definitely living in a battle for public opinion where the spoils are laws and regulations affecting our freedom of religion.
Mormons have for the last 100 years been the hands-down masters at PR. They can essentially do or say anything and come away unscathed. But the vitriol against the church is just too deep-rooted and ancient.
December 2, 2008 at 2:17 am
“But the vitriol against the church is just too deep-rooted and ancient.”
Deusdonat, that is one of the main reasons I returned to the Church. Christ had said no servant is greater than the master, since they had persecuted Him all His followers could expect the same.
Over 2000 years of getting slammed and it still takes a licking, keeps on ticking.
Must be the right one!
December 2, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Subvet, well said. The Catholic church is always portrayed as this top-heavy monolithic organization which has always controled people through whipping up fervor until they go to war or turn on themselves in an inquisitory mode. But the reality is there have been several points in history when the Catholic church could have been wiped off the face of the earth, save for the grace of God.
I honestly think that the church’s detractors (and I’m not talking about some kabal filled with secular humanists, Freemasons and Jews) have since realized that military might cannot overcome the church. So, we are now in the latter phase which entails public opinion, “reason” and political will.
Sad part is, sometimes I think they are really winning. CS Lewis wrote about this scenario on his chronicles of Narnia series. Couldn’t be more true.
December 2, 2008 at 9:37 pm
On the Inquisition, Mr. Lerner should read one of his: B. Netanyahu’s ORIGINS OF THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN. [He’s Bibi’s father]. But why let facts interfere with one’s prejudices.