Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVIThe headline reads, "Leaders Welcome New Pope, Liberal Catholics Dismayed." I guess the liberal Catholics were hoping for a Pope that would abandon Church teaching and let them have some fun. The liberal Catholic mantra seems to be, "But the other religions get to do it, so why can't we?" The idea that if they want to be like the other religions they can simply convert doesn't seem to occur to them. They want their cake and to eat it too. They want the tradition and majesty and faithfulness of the Church without any of those inconvenient rules. The new Pope is unlikely to go along with their ideas. As one person complained, Cardinal Ratzinger actually had the nerve to (gasp!) fire a Catholic theologian who was teaching heresy at a Catholic university! "Ratzinger is not the Pope that we would ideally like," said Joelle Battestini, associate convener of the Australian group Ordination of Catholic Women. Yes, I bet that is true. But he is exactly the Pope that the Church needs.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tom,
[quote]
The idea that if they want to be like the other religions they can simply convert doesn't seem to occur to them.
[/quote]
I don't agree with this one as member of the catholic church.
Are you catholic? I think not. But you are defining what's correct catolicism and what's modern time heresy by liberals without any point of view except relativism.
Maybe this are just typical prejudices against catholicism.
I've allways thought that reading 10 pages of H. Eco is enough to get an idea that there allways have been, are and will be different povs about interpretation of catolicism by catholics themselves.

sorry for ranting

Axel

Tom P. said...

Actually, I am speaking against relativism. "Your opinion is just as good as my opinion" simply doesn't hold water if one of us agrees with 2,000 years of Church teaching and tradition and the other disagrees. It comes down to the infallibility of Church teaching which liberals don't believe. And for the record... I am Roman Catholic.

N said...

I totally agree with your point of view. I've read another article about the pope saying that the only way to go for the Church is to follow the Christ who said "I am the way". For a catholic, it sounded rather protestant!! (he did add Mary somewhere, though, but the basic idea was quite biblical). And pluralism in defenitly not the way to go. There is only ONE truth, and ONE way to get to it...

So, yes, I think he is the pope that the catholics need!

Anonymous said...

Sorry. I did not know that you are catholic.
On the other hand: Anybody who watches new pope with some little distrust is inside the 2000 year tradition. And there were allways room for changes and different views inside the 2000 years.
Actually. I empathize with new pope in the issue that relativism might have been a bit exagerated by certain groups in western societies in the last years. On the other hand, anti-relativism might be exagerated, too. For me, relativism isn't binary, but its question if too much or too narrow the borders.

Tom P. said...

Pope Benedict was never a Nazi. I don't think that anyone has questioned the values of the new Pope. In fact, the complaint has been that he holds the current values of the Church too strongly and isn't liberal enough.