I certainly never heard a better description of liberalism than what Fr Kennedy rudely said of the Church's lawful authority that has now suspended him: "corrupt, irrelevant and ruthless". Indeed, he damns himself out of his own mouth with this apt conjunction of adjectives: for his priestly ministry is corrupt, he is irrelevant, and by his rebellion against all doctrine, morals and legal norms has proved himself ruthless. As the proverb has it, Scratch a liberal, find a fascist.
(The amusing thing is that Rome has had to goad Bathersby, that do-nothing liberal himself, into acting as he should have decades ago...)
What a dirty low fellow this renegade is, blasphemously denying Our Lord's Divinity, amongst much else; time was he would have been regarded with horror by all Christians, and in earlier ages the State itself, inflamed by his pernicious crimes, would have burnt him at the stake. Remember always, Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.
I assume that all fellow-travelling liberals will be moaning and groaning about how it's all so unfair; a little more dialogue and supine inanition, and he would have become Archbishop of Brisbane himself, there to ring in the millennium by deifying President Obama as the new, better, inclusive Christ. After all, isn't such utter compromise with the world, a wholesale surrender to secular/leftist dogmas and morals, just what liberals really want?
I can assure you that among priests he is not particularly well liked. He was not a nice man to deal with in his younger years in the ministry.
ReplyDeleteNothing new.
What you say is true. We do often condemn ourselves.
I was amused to hear the president of the South Brisbane branch of the ALP, opposing Anna Bligh's privatisation plans, fulminate about how joining an organisation meat observing its principles and rules. I can only assume he isn't part of the Kennedy conventicle at the TLC.
ReplyDeleteQuasi is right about self-styled inclusivistas: they can be the most intolerant of all. An acquaintance of mine, a classically trained musician, was nearly tarred and feathered by them when she, very gently, tried to introduce some of the classical music of the Roman rite into her parish's liturgy.
By the was, please go easy on using terms such as secular/leftist as a general-purpose insult. It is perfectly possible to be a faithful Catholic without regarding the Pentagon, the New York Stock Exchange and the right wing of the US Republican Party as God's chosen instruments on earth!
Your last point is well taken - I certainly wouldn't endorse every act of the three abovementioned institutions, though neither would I denounce them per se.
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