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 10:55 pm
Wow. What a dope. That's all I can say.
August 5, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Mike Malone, you've NAILED it. Good job.
August 6, 2011 at 2:43 pm
I love listening to the Revolutionaries sputter on and on about how 'dangerous' the counter-revolution is. Poor pew sitters, don't we realize that all this beauty and reverence will make us feel 'guilty', we will become too reliant on 'Father', and incense could give us asthma. Plus there are all those pesky children we're making because of our natural human feelings…
Traditional orders and traditional masses are full, the Ordinary form and its adherents are losing ground because the Extraordinary form is beautiful and brings people closer to God, rather than themselves…
The Holy Father is aggressively fighting corruption, cleaning house and thinking about ways to give young people what we need to stay in the Church (and it ain't pop music either…).
Sputter on, a change is gonna come…
August 7, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Mike Malone you are a troll. Interestingly Eugene Kennedy is correct that there is no neurotic guilt. That was a complete fabrication, from pre to post VII. The neuroses is about something different.
August 7, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Following up on Mike Malone's statistical offering, what does that reflect. You know what they say about statistics…Does it reflect, for example, weekly Mass attendees? Daily Mass attendees? What about age and other demographic indicators. And then of course as to fallen away Catholics, what would the correlation be indicative of, causation or result — that's the trouble with statistics they really don't say much at all do they and indeed do not reflect in any way spiritual growth. Still the Church considers it a bonus if someone who has fallen away or doubts through an entire lifetime comes to faith and is reconciled even at the very last moments of life. I guess you never read about that in a statistic.
And as to Mike Malone's very nasty description of Mass goers, of course decorum is on the upswing as anyone who attends weekly can tell you in many places and the large families, cheerios and all or whatever Mike Malone wishes to portray, are a tremendous gift and inspiration. Mike Malone's resentment of them in and of itself is telling.
At any rate Mike Malone I think you have a ways to go in terms of your research and interpretation of stats. Sometimes google, or a marketing degree or whatever it may be, doesn't provide all of the answers in life. We thank you in advance for exercising greater tolerance towards Catholics in future!
August 7, 2011 at 7:45 pm
Mike Malone the troll has got his own issues. Many important thinkers have remarked on the possibility of a smaller but more unified Catholicism. Institutions and the rest are nice but not really necessary. Mike Malone has to go back and read Acts and then check back with us. The kids who he seems to loathe are our future and therein lies his troll obsession. He can't deal with kids growing up in the faith and wishes to impose his trollery on the rest of the world because of his guilt ridden hang up. Got nothing to do with Catholicism that's for sure.
August 8, 2011 at 7:16 am
One of the most appalling things I've read in the NCR – and that's saying something.
Why stay part of a Church you hate so much?
August 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
It's really sad to hear how these individuals hate the faith of the fathers. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This man does not want to fear the Lord and that is why his words contain no wisdom.
August 8, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Meant "their fathers" but "the fathers" works good too I guess.
August 9, 2011 at 7:59 am
As Lt. Gen. Russel Honore once said:
"Don't get stuck on stupid, reporter[s]!!!!"