"The Rule of Benedict," is a good book to read if you are Catholic or into ecumenical activities. Clearly the book provides a positive view of what Benedict feels are the core values of the Church. His fight with the modern world will just drive a wedge between American Catholics who think for themselves instead of following blindly the guidance of someone brought up in the Nazi environment. The book clearly spells out the underpinnings of Benedict's thinking but leaves the South Americans, the Africans, and the US that do not share his background with the all of the baggage of his bias..
I have to wonder after reading the book why the pope is so worried about European participation in the Church when the growth and Church attendance in the Americas is thriving. Maybe it is the lost sheep parable?
The book leaves me a bit concerned that a smaller Church is not what I think "spreading the gospel" means. It will not last long, so we can wait and see what the next pope will do about women clergy, gays, and married priests and so on. We had a breath of fresh air with John the 23rd. Maybe John XXIII and his opening the door to the modern world and the recognition by John Paul that Church has failed mankind in the realm of science will have to await another time.
. . . when your position within the Catholic Church has been so marginalized by the last two pontificates as to be almost non-existent.
Nevertheless, the hard Left Catholics slog on, all Sturm und Drang, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Take David Gibson. His last book, The Coming Catholic Church, a jeremiad against the depredations of JPII, the Roman Curia, and anyone who hasn't rolled over in favor of gay marriage, women priests, and free condoms, proved to be not so prophetic after all. The Catholic Church of his fervid dreams seems no nearer materializing than a fata morgana.
Yet he presses on. Since the actual Catholic Church appears strangely resistant to his blandishments, Gibson, in this latest screed, is reduced to vague threats and more dire predictions that if she doesn't shape up and meet the radicals' demands, she may soon find herself bereft of them, a situation one struggles to find problematic. After all, there are numerous other ecclesial harbors that would welcome the hardcore dissidents, from the Unitarian Universalists to the Episcopal Church. I'm sure Gibson and his ilk would find a warm welcome among Jon Shelby Spong, for example.
Why don't they just leave? More fun, and, one supposes, more lucrative to bash the Church from the inside.
A favorite ploy of his is to trot out supposedly revelatory polls about lay persons' preferences--a symptom of his desire to transform a hierarchical Church into a liberal democracy. Well, lemme tell ya, Davy-boy: it ain't happenin'. Your project's doomed. I, for one, am thankful that the Catholic Church is constituted in such a way that progressivist rabble rousers like you can't hijack it, as has happened in numerous Protestant denominations that have caved in to radicals. As annoying as books like The Rule of Benedict are, their net effect, praise God, is practically zero.
Unreadable by anyone except those stuck in a '70s time warp, waiting for the illusive "spirit of Vatican II" to materialize.
