This was sent to me and comes from the Huffington Post, my comments at the end! Sheldon and this skit pretty much sums up my feelings about the article below:
(RNS/ENInews) Influential church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch said he believes Christianity faces a bright future, but predicted the Roman Catholic Church will undergo a major schism over its moral and social teaching. "Christianity, the world's largest religion, is rapidly expanding -- by all indications, its future is very bright," said MacCulloch, 60, professor of church history at Oxford University and an Anglican deacon. His latest book, "Silence in Christian History," will be published in the fall by Penguin. MacCulloch said in an interview that "there are also many conflicts" within Christianity, "and these are particularly serious in the Roman Catholic church, which seems on the verge of a very great split over the Vatican's failure to listen to European Catholics." He predicted that Catholicism faces a division over attempts by popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI to "rewrite the story" of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council by portraying it as a "minor adjustment" in church governance, rather than as a "radical move to change the way authority is expressed." "Conflict in religion is inevitable and usually healthy -- a religion without conflict is a religion that will die, and I see no sign of this with Christianity," MacCulloch said. "But the stance of the popes has produced an angry reaction among those who want to see the council continue. No other church in history has ever made all its clergy celibate. It's a peculiarity of the Western Latin church, and it looks increasingly unrealistic." The Vatican's refusal to allow Roman Catholics to talk about married or female clergy was "not the reaction of a rational body," MacCulloch said. MacCulloch, a specialist in early modern history and a fellow of the British Academy, co-edits the Cambridge-based Journal of Ecclesiastical History and was knighted in early 2012 for services to scholarship. Among numerous awards, he was the 2010 recipient of the Cundill Prize in History from Montreal's McGill University for his 2009 book "A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years," which was accompanied by a BBC television series.
MY COMMENTS: The author of this blather is a deacon of the Church of England, which itself is in such decline due to its liberalizing reforms that one wonders if this author can be taken seriously when suggesting ways for the Roman Catholic Church to improve. We all know going the liberal way as Liberal Protestantism is wont to go is a disaster and has led to the near extinction of the liberal Protestantism and the Church of England and its American counterpart, the Episcopal Church aren't too far from total collapse.
The only Protestant Churches that are faring well and even growing are the Evangelical Conservative ones and the Mega non-Denominational Churches which are highly congregational and individualistic.
The Catholic Church has always had to deal with heresy and schism and has never resolved it, even in the Great Schism or the Protestant Reformation by giving in to heresy or schism. It won't happen now either although there may well be schism. The FSPX has the potential for it because it has such strong top down leadership, but I doubt it will happen in terms of left leaning liberal progressive Catholics who despise authority and have a contempt for top down leadership which means their schism is doomed to failure and multiples of fragmentation.
One cannot really take Deacon MacColloch thesis seriously, in fact given its source, it is to laugh and like Sheldon!
11 comments:
He can join the long list of other visionaries stretching back 2000 odd years who have made the same type predictions.
He can join the long list of dilletantes who can kiss...well, never mind.
Nonsense on stilts.
FrAJM, Perhaps you were thinking of this, from my personal favourite book of the Bible: "For they that eat his bread, are of a false tongue. How often, and how many will laugh him to scorn!" (Ecclesiasticus). But Samuel L. Jackson might have this to say: "And my hand shall be upon the prophets that see vain things, and that divine lies: they shall not be in the council of my people, nor shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord God."
They may deserve derision, but they are dangerous old fools, too.
"The Vatican's failure to listen to European Catholics"?
He should have written about the European Catholics failure to listen to the Vatican.
He could be right about ONE thing: There already IS a sort of schism over moral teaching. Vatican II has been sold in such a dishonest manner for so many decades now that many Catholics honestly believe that V2 was the great permission given to dive head first into moral relativism. To actually demand that Catholics follow the Church's teachings as they once did causes a knee-jerk outcry among these types that the "Dogmatic Dictatorship of the Pre-Conciliar Church" is over. Why do you think there are so many EFaphobes? There is a large body of Catholics who are self-hating inasmuch as they deny their patrimony and rebuke the authoritative teachings that we are called to follow. They are terrified that the Church might be ANYTHING at all like it was in the past. They talk about the past like it is a cuss word.
MacCulloch is a fine scholar, and although he was ordained deacon he fell out with the CofE over what he perceived as its negative attitude to homosexuality (he has been a gay activist since the 1970s) Shortly after the Pope's 2010 British visit he took part in a TV studio discussion along with the feminist "Catholic theologian" Tina Beattie, the Tory Catholic peer Lord Patten, and Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster. Beattie and MacCulloch, obviously miffed at the resounding success of the Pope's visit, proceeded to put the boot into ++Vincent over the Church's alleged hostility to women and gays. Vin was visibly rattled by this ambush and I have to say didn't acquit himself very well; instead of defending Church teachings he tried to change the subject.
You don't have to look far to discern the roots of MacCulloch's attitude to the Roman Church. That said, his TV series was not bad, especially when he was dealing with the ancient Syriac Churches. I learned a lot I didn't know before.
John that certainly fills in the blanks and indicates the agenda.
Why would anyone listen to Europe about anything? Oh, and are we talking about the Europe whose butt we kicked or about the Europe whose butt we saved? LOL!
@Gene W
There is more culture in the smallest European country than in the whole of the US of A. Why indeed should you listen to Rome about anything?
Ah, John, I have stepped on Euro toes, I see. Let's see, what has Europe given us recently...Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, the Euro, Socialism/Communism, a Church (for the most part)dominated by modernists/secularists, and...don't forget Vatican II. So called European culture is what the populace uses to distract themselves from the dismal state of their government and economy. And, God help us, the US cannot get over this insane Europhilia.
I will say that I am something of an Anglophile. I used to distinguish "England" from Europe as a whole because England still maintained an identity somewhat apart. That doesn't seem to be as true anymore. However, we cannot forget that England gave us Shakespeare, Dickens, and Winston Churchill. Churchill alone is atonement for any other sins England may have committed...
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