There was a sackload of comments today. On the last lot (on the Caritas Social Action book), after reading them all, I selected all and pressed ... reject. Sorry about that - just a slip of the mouse. Feel free to repost them if you are not too annoyed with me!
Incidentally, regarding "course of action", first of all I intend to read the book carefully (should come from Amazon within a day or two). Then I'll do a review here. Any of you who have the stamina for this might do the same. This is a case of "unleash the power of the blog."
And yes, send letters to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Lots of them.
7 comments:
np father, perhaps it's better for our charity that they were lost...lot of irate people out there...
Father, you will find that much of the content of the book is mediocre; but much else is so hostile to the Church as to be actually anti-Catholic.
I wrote a second post on my Telegraph blog today quoting some of the Marxist drivel from the book - and also a particularly nasty passage attacking anti-abortion campaigners. The Church's teaching on the male priesthood is dismissed, as is the "ideology" of the nuclear family, which we are told reinforces the injustices of capitalism. The implication in one essay that the 9/11 murders were not an act of terrorism is wicked.
The point to bear in mind is that this book was read by Bishop Budd of Plymouth before its publication; he then decided to recommend it warmly. The Bishops' Conference website contains a press release advertising the book.
I do not understand why the Bishops' Conference is free to behave as if it belonged to a different denomination from Pope Benedict.
Damian Thompson
Haha. Glad I'm not the only one who does things like that!
I don't understand how a little girl like Phil Cullen, from a huge irish family; one who spent her whole childhood belonging to every religious organisation/group she could get into ; could turn on everything that brought her up. I've known her since she was five and am so mad with her I spent an hour bawling her out yesterday for her treachery - but the thing that makes me most angry is her allowing the quotation marks for terrorism, one of our fellow students at school was a victim of the 7/7/ bus bombing. How she can do this is beyond me...
When you've read the book, Father, I'd be grateful for your advice as to whether one should read it as well before complaining about it, or whether it's fairly enough represented on Damian's blogs to make it Ok to base a complaint on that. I don't really like complaining about things I haven't read, but I don't want to boost their royaltiees either! Thanks.
I am worried now about giving money to Cafod. Are they tarred with the same brush as Caritas Social Action?
On the side of the angels, I'm afraid its easily understood. Ms Cullen doesn't know how lucky she is. She has had the immense privilege to have been brought up in a stable, bourgeois family and probably hasn't had much meaningful contact with people from less-privileged backgrounds. She doesn't know the sordid grind of poverty, the humiliation of the single mother having to drag money out of the CSA, the hell of the abandoned spouse who will probably lose her family home and has to itemise every petty cost for a divorce court to determine what her 'reasonable needs' are.
She very probably doesn't appreciate the extent to which her stable family background enabled her to achieve her full potential.
To paraphrase Ayan Hirsi Ali: she has freedom so she can spit on it.
A lot of other people aren't so lucky. It behoves those like her who have been so favoured by fate, not to belittle the experience of those who haven't been with irresponsible rubbish about the "ideology of the nuclear family".
On another note, its also pretty easy to work out how such unorthodox documents slip through the episcopal net. As charitable bodies become increasingly influential, they act as a magnet for those with political agendas. Agencies run by the Bishops Conference are no different.
Damien Thompson refers to "the lobby of Leftist activists who have seized control of the machinery of the Catholic Church in this country".
He's not wrong - though I would quibble with the term 'leftist' for the people who churn out this flimsy nonsense. Infantile or cretino leftism seems to be the sum of it.
But there must be a suspicion that something akin to entry-tactics are being used to stack people with certain agendas in key positions. Once enough of them are in place they act as an influential bloc. They'll have access to the bishops that ordinary lay people don't so pretty much have carte blanche to do what they want and see to it that the story doesn't get touched in certain publications.
The joke is that if they do come under any sustained criticism they'll claim to be representative of the ordinary Catholics, "opening up debate" and victims of a right-wing witchhunt. Its all so so predictable.
The thing is that if these kind of abuses aren't nipped in the bud at a sufficiently early stage, they'll spread even wider and we could find ourselves in a similar state to the poor old Anglican Communion: torn limb from limb.
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