Besides being just ridiculously stupid, Eugene Cullen Kennedy at the Reporter manages to brutalize a metaphor so badly, its in a coma. You will may end up in a coma as well. No operating heavy machinery and all that.
The Reformers of the Reform resemble those who restore and sell antique cars. They labor strenuously to polish up once sleek models out of the ’20s and flog them confidently as the next big thing in Catholic life.
Their sparkling showroom is modeled on St. Peter’s, their sales people speak Latin, and, instead of cash, they offer plenary indulgences as incentives. They hand out a stilted language manual that promises the people they want to convert into pilgrims that they can ride happily again on the two-lane roads of pre-Vatican II Catholicism.
There is only one thing missing: the fuel of neurotic guilt that these vehicles desperately need in order to wheeze their way back to that church whose imagined glories depended on making people feel bad even about being good.
The so-called Reform of the Reform will sputter out precisely because it cannot drill in the Arctic, in the Gulf, or in people’s backyards for the massive amounts of inappropriate guilt that were pumped into the lives of Catholics to keep them in their pews and in their places in the Father-is-always-right era into which these deluded pied pipers of reform are determined to lead us.
We are all so much better off without guilt, right?
Kennedy should feel copious amounts of appropriate guilt for writing something so dumb.
August 5, 2011 at 2:24 am
This is but a sorry effort to show his lib "catholyc" colleagues how clever he is with his wordplay. Nothing of substance here, folks, move along.
Ann
August 5, 2011 at 2:44 am
Forget stupid, that was just plain painful to read. My brain hurts.
August 5, 2011 at 2:49 am
No, sorry, totally wrong. Out to lunch. He's got nothing so he figures, might as well slime everybody. Where has this guy been for like the last, thirty years? A house built upon ten stereotypes of forty caricatures of a dozen distortions cannot stand. When does he get around to addressing, um, an actual thought or idea, from reality? And who would want to follow what he is proposing? Harsh on 'them' and that's all he's got. Not anything worth considering unless you want to be trapped in the bitter room, forever.
August 5, 2011 at 3:28 am
Kennedy was totally correct is his article.
August 5, 2011 at 4:21 am
Hah! Good one Bill
August 5, 2011 at 5:49 am
Oh, those little rapscallions over at the National Gaffe-alot Reporter.
I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Kennedy may have hurt himself for his attempt at wit. Clearly, he's in no shape to be trying humour of a kind requiring even a modicum of mental conditioning. Pity the fellow who missed the cue to retire the quill.
August 5, 2011 at 1:43 pm
The essence of his proposal is to fear other Catholics, which is shameful in and of itself, and such things are never based in reality or rational thought, and of course his reasons for it are further pure fantasy. To call this divisive is an understatement. I feel very sorry for people roped into his paranoia who then treat other Catholics harshly as a result. It's no way to go for our future together.
August 5, 2011 at 2:28 pm
This was a joke, right?
August 5, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Somebody needs to read Simcha Fisher's piece on good writing…..stat!
August 5, 2011 at 2:38 pm
After reading the column I took a look at the author's profile. Confirmed my suspicion. He's very old.
August 5, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Though I've never cared a whit for his predictable dissents, by all accounts Kennedy was a serious academic and an intellectually-astute observer. Sadly, he's become a crank.
August 5, 2011 at 3:34 pm
This is what happens when you try to hard to be too clever and too different you your writing; a barely coherent jumble that makes it hard for anyone to relate too. After reading that mess, the new missile will be a breeze!
August 5, 2011 at 5:28 pm
You know why people get all upset about the state of education and literacy in America? Neither do I!
August 5, 2011 at 7:20 pm
I have to ask those who are being critical of Kennedy and his Reporter colleagues a question. I mean why do we need any reform what-so-ever? Like Catholic belief in the Real Presence is < 30%, < 25% attend weekly mass, Catholics divorce at the same rate as our protestant cousins, confession is now optional (no-body goes anymore), most think homosexual marriage is A-OK, many support women priests [in spite of those pesky infallible Church teachings] and entertaining masses and homilies are more important than talking about Church doctrines. Oh that toe tapping music! Catholic children lean to clap and dance at mass. Oh, and I don't want to forget to mention….most Catholic's dress like hobo's on the way to a dumpster dipping contest. I mean there is nothing wrong with wearing 'wife beaters', short shorts, flip-flops, low cut blouses, crack exposing pants or jeans to mass is there? And who needs a cry room when the little darlings can run up and down the aisles, pew jump, crawl aroung on the floor, eat cherrios, gummies, suckers, candy, work puzzles, play dolls or cars while being encouraged by the proud parents. I mean are they not the cutest?
Can someone explain to me why we need reform? I just don't seem to get it.
August 5, 2011 at 9:18 pm
I posted the following in the combox of the article. We'll see if its approved by the moderators.
"The Reformers of the Reform resemble those who restore and sell antique cars. They labor strenuously to polish up once sleek models out of the '20s and flog them confidently as the next big thing in Catholic life.
Their sparkling showroom is modeled on St. Peter's, their sales people speak Latin, and, instead of cash, they offer plenary indulgences as incentives. They hand out a stilted language manual that promises the people they want to convert into pilgrims that they can ride happily again on the two-lane roads of pre-Vatican II Catholicism."
Logical fallacy: False Analogy. Logically inconsistent. First, mechanical restoration bears no resemblance to the creation or reformation of policy. (Granting this analogy, for a moment, and as an aside, as the Catholic Church's leader is the Pope, and the Pope's seat is in Rome, I'm not sure what your objection is to "modeling" a showroom on St. Peter's. But I digress.) Second, the road to heaven is not a highway, and bears resemblance thereto.
Logical fallacy: Slanting. As you use words such as "stilted", sarcastically use the words "promise" (with the implication that it isn't true), and describe your view of them in as contemptuous a way as possible, you are guilty of slanting, and therefore, your statement is logically inconsistent.
"There is only one thing missing: the fuel of neurotic guilt that these vehicles desperately need in order to wheeze their way back to that church whose imagined glories depended on making people feel bad even about being good."
Logical fallacy: Reductionist. You reduce the entirety of the traditional Catholic cause to being about guilt and control. This indicates that you are either a) ignorant of what they actually believe, which means that your opinion is neither logical nor significant, or b) you do know, and are deliberately misconstruing what the believe in order to discredit their movement or c) both.
If it is a), you are guilty of the following logical fallacies: hasty generalization and stereotyping.
If it is b) or c), you are also guilty of the following logical fallacies: straw man argument (in which you set up a false set of premises which resemble the opponents, but are easier to knock down), dicto simpliciter, and slanting.
"The so-called Reform of the Reform will sputter out precisely because it cannot drill in the Arctic, in the Gulf, or in people's backyards for the massive amounts of inappropriate guilt that were pumped into the lives of Catholics to keep them in their pews and in their places in the Father-is-always-right era into which these deluded pied pipers of reform are determined to lead us."
Logical fallacy: False analogy. Guilt is not a natural resource, but a human emotion.
Logical fallacy: Begging the question. You assume that guilt is inappropriate and merely a mechanism by which the church controls people, which you are also seeking to prove with your false analogy.
On a side note, I would like answers to the following questions:
How can a practicing Catholic, who purports to believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church hold the following positions as I understand them from your comments, without contradicting himself?
1) Guilt is an inappropriate response to sin.
2) The use of both positive and negative reinforcement to encourage people to attend Church weekly is morally questionable, even though it is essential to salvation.
3) That the entirety of the Catholic Church, its teachings, and its practices, before the Second Vatican Council, were without value, and, at times, entirely erroneous.
August 5, 2011 at 9:19 pm
"Catholicism can rightly claim that it has always made room for, forgiven and offered comfort to sinners. The cultural evocation of Catholicism that gleams in the eyes of Reformers of the Reform is, however, a distortion of the church's humane and understanding pilgrimage with its people."
There is no logical fallacy, because there is no reasoning, because there is no definition of terms. What is "cultural evocation"? How does it bear on this discussion? Why is it bad? You are assuming an awful lot with that statement.
"These zealots do not understand the profound pastoral majesty of a Servant Church whose energy source is the Spirit; they want a Church as Master that exercises power to control and condemn, if need be, every believer's slightest thought or impulse."
Logical fallacy: Slanting. "Zealots", "they don't understand", "Master", "control" "condemn".
Logical fallacy: Straw man. You set up a vision of traditionalist thought that bears little resemblance to the deep and intricate position of traditionalists. Even though you may still disagree with it, do not insult the intelligence of your audience by misrepresenting and lampooning your opponents.
On zealots: Revelation 3:15-16 'I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.'
"They detest Vatican II because it did away with the pseudo-guilt that made good people feel uneasy or unclean about even the healthy aspects of being human, such as having sexual feelings and the desire for union that goes with genuine love.
Logical fallacy: Straw man, reductionist. The main reason that traditional Catholics hate Vatican II is because it got rid of guilt.
Logical fallacy: hypothesis contrary to fact: The Catholic teachings on love and sex remain virtually the same in the Catechism as they have for the last hundred years.
You are misrepresenting the facts of Vatican II. It did not abolish guilt. A full text search of the following site (http://www.stjosef.at/cgi-bin/council_search.pl) which has the entire council on it turned up this:
Search parameters:
Search for: guilt
Boolean mode: and
Case: no
“Still, she strives to detect in the atheistic mind the hidden causes for the denial of God; conscious of how weighty are the questions which atheism raises, and motivated by love for all men, she believes these questions ought to be examined seriously and more profoundly.
The Church holds that the recognition of God is in no way hostile to man's dignity, since this dignity is rooted and perfected in God. For man was made an intelligent and free member of society by God Who created him, but even more important, he is called as a son to commune with God and share in His happiness. She further teaches that a hope related to the end of time does not diminish the importance of intervening duties but rather undergirds the acquittal of them with fresh incentives. By contrast, when a divine instruction and the hope of life eternal are wanting, man's dignity is most grievously lacerated, as current events often attest; riddles of life and death, of guilt and of grief go unsolved with the frequent result that men succumb to despair.” Vatican II
In this passages, the Church affirms that what causes despair is a lack of teaching to atheists and unfaithful Catholics who cannot properly process their guilt. This further means that guilt is not bad or, as you put it, abolished. Perhaps you do not understand Vatican II or those who seek to "reform" it, as you say.
August 5, 2011 at 9:20 pm
"They want to overturn Vatican II because it placed the dignity of the human person at the center of its deliberations and as the subject of its extraordinary documents. They dislike Vatican II precisely because it did away with the imaginary guilt that these out-of-touch reformers need to fill up their out-of-style vehicles of spiritual life."
Logical fallacy: Ad populum. Timeless truth does not go out of style, and a two thousand year tradition does not become irrelevant because of the invention of the Internet or any other modern invention, political philosophical, or otherwise. Rather, you make this claim because it praises those who agree with you as “with it”, and those who don’t as primitive. This is pandering. It also begs the question of, once again, how you can hold that the Catholic Church is the one, true Church – an essential part of Catholic teaching – and yet also hold that that truth needs to be adjusted to better fit the times.
“The church they long to restore, but lack the fuel to run, was indeed a powerful force that could get people coming and going and give them a phony speeding ticket as facilely as a traffic cop on the take. Indeed, "Catholic guilt" remains a staple for literary critics who think that artists, such as playwright Eugene O'Neill, found their inspiration in the guilt that once seemed to permeate the lives of their people, no matter how hard they tried or how good they really were.”
Logical fallacy: anecdotal evidence. Perceptions and reality are two entirely different things. Mr. O’Neill, a fallen away Catholic, cannot deal with his guilt not because the Church gave it to him, but because he left, as was iterated in the above Vatican II passage.
August 5, 2011 at 9:22 pm
“Nothing is more human or natural than the sexual feelings or imaginings that course through ordinary people every day. If, as in a prime distortion of the dead and gone Catholic Culture, you could make people feel that each one of these was — if the person so much as hesitated no longer than it takes to smell a beautiful flower or savor a taste of fine wine — always and ever an occasion of serious sin, then you could make them feel needlessly guilty and in dire and urgent need of absolution in the confessional. If a person could be made to feel guilty for taking healthy pride in some achievement, then you could ruin their day and make them feel senselessly guilty even about their efforts to use their gifts wisely.”
Logical fallacy: Straw man. I hate to keep using this fallacy, because familiarity breeds contempt. However, it seems this entire article is entirely based on emotion and misrepresentation. As traditionalists hold to the church’s teachings on the above matters, you are wrong to attribute the above charges to them. No one can deny that sexuality, in its proper context, and followed prudently, is sinful. Neither is it wrong to take pride in accomplishments, as God has given us those abilities and asked us to use them, and as long as we acknowledge His role in anything we do, we can be proud.
“Many of the good men and women who entered seminaries and religious houses brought generous hearts but a cultural conditioning that made them feel guilty if they turned away from the idea. Many good people remained, against the grain of their truest selves, out of the counterfeit guilt piled on them by spiritual directors and others who insisted that God wanted them to stay.
I recall an 80-year-old priest who tearfully told me that he never really wanted to be ordained but that every time he tried to leave, he was made to feel guilty about departing, and was told that all he needed was "to want to want to be a priest." He made the best of it, as many married couples have of relationships that they were pressured to enter, but there is no way to measure how unhappy they were and how many other people that, incidentally and unintentionally, they infected with their own sorrows.”
Logical fallacy: Anecdotal evidence.
Logical fallacy: Oversimplification in Composition. What is true of the part, is not necessarily true of the whole. Even if those things did happen, it was never the Church’s position, and it the individual responsibility of those involved and not the Church’s.
Logical fallacy: Non sequitur. It does not follow that the above will happen as a result of traditionalists reforms.
August 5, 2011 at 9:23 pm
“The inability of these romantic reformers to find the fuel of guilt to keep their enterprise on the road explains the midsummer madness of the cardinal who has decreed that Catholics may only receive the Eucharist on the tongue while standing or the bishops of England and Wales who want to restore meatless Fridays. Granted that the latter is a great symbol but they will never again make Catholics feel that they commit a mortal sin equal to that of murder for forgetfully nibbling on a pig-in-the-blanket at a Friday cocktail party.”
Logical fallacy: slanting. “romantic” “fuel of guilt to keep their enterprise on the road” “madness”.
I must ask a question: how is requiring people to receive the precious Body of our Lord Jesus Christ on the tongue “madness”, especially considering that it was church practice for a thousand years? How is asking people to make a weekly sacrifice, and a small one at that, every Friday, in honor and respect for Our Lord’s sacrifice “madness”?
Logical fallacy: hyperbole. You exaggerate greatly the teaching of the Church and the ideas of traditionalists when you make the implication that they believe accidently eating meat on Friday (accidently means that no formal sin occurs, by the way, which a traditionalist would know) is a mortal sin on the level of murder.
August 5, 2011 at 9:23 pm
“Pope Benedict XVI plans to emphasize the sacrament of penance at the forthcoming World Youth Day but, wonderful as the sacrament of forgiveness is, not even he will persuade people to feel that they are guilty of real sin when they are distracted at prayers or feel discouraged about life.
Catholics cut down on confession not because they abandoned the idea of sin but because they discovered the meaning of sin and realized that it was much different in many of its social dimensions than the personal foibles they had been trained to feel guilty about in the pre-Vatican II Church.”
Logical fallacy: hypothesis contrary to fact. Vatican II did not change the nature or place of sin, or of confession. This conception is simply not in the document. Additionally, you do not seem to understand the Catholic conception of sin and reconciliation:
From the PA Catholic Conference of Bishops:
“Unfortunately, in society today, many people have lost the understanding of sin. Our Holy Father has stated that "it happens not infrequently in history, for more or less lengthy periods of time and under the influence of many different factors, that the moral conscience of many people becomes seriously clouded. . . . Too many signs indicate that such an eclipse exists in our time" Reconciliation and Penance, 18). In our day, many people have lost the sense of sin and feel that they can do whatever they wish without considering or fearing the consequences.
For such people, the term "sin" has no meaning. Yet we know that sin is a terrible evil which all of us must come to understand and with which all of us must struggle. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, sin "is an offense against God as well as a fault against reason, truth and right conscience. Sin is a deliberate thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the eternal law of God" (1849, 1853). In other words, sin is willfully rejecting good and choosing evil. In judging the degree of sin, it is customary to distinguish between mortal and venial sins. "Mortal sin," the Catechism teaches, "destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law . . . Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it" (1855). (Refer to the Glossary on Mortal and Venial Sin at the end of the booklet.)”
“The Reform of the Reform is therefore doomed because it can no longer make healthy people feel unhealthy and unnecessary guilt about being human. That is why, when once asked why he convened Vatican II, Pope John XXIII replied not with a discourse on the sinful world but with perhaps the most Catholic sentence spoken by any pontiff in the 20th century: "To make the human sojourn on earth less sad."”
Logical fallacy: non sequitur. Your conclusions do not follow from your propositions.
I’m afraid that this article indicates ignorance of both your opponents arguments and your own. It is muddled and confused, and it neither rational nor logical. It is therefore invalid.