There is a disturbing piece today on Damien Thompson's blog - Holy Smoke:Bishops support book attacking the Pope. He reports on a book published by Caritas Social Action called Catholic Social Justice: Theological and Practical Explorations.Thompson says that the book (which has a foreword by Bishop Budd) "systematically rubbishes Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est". The book includes an essay by Fr Tissa Balasuriya whose work "Mary and Human Liberation" was the subject of a notification by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Apparently, Fr Balasuriya believes that Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict have lived “in a world dominated by white racism” and were therefore unable to understand the developing world. Thompson also rightly draws attention to the disgraceful inverted commas in Balasuriya's description of the 9/11 massacre as a "terrorist" attack.
Caritas-Social Action describes itself as
[...] the umbrella organisation for Catholic social care organisations working within England and Wales. We are an agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and part of Caritas International.Caritas Social Action is the "home" partner of CAFOD which is the agency of the Bishops' conference that is concerned with overseas work. CAFOD and Caritas Social Action are two of the 162 Catholic agencies that enjoys the support of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum.
More than strange then, that the book's approach to Deus Caritas Est is so much at variance with that of Cor Unum which was largely responsible for the second half of Deus Caritas Est and organised a special press conference to present the encyclical.
As Damien Thompson points out, Caritas Social Action is funded by the lay Catholics of England and Wales who are invited each year to contribute to the "National Catholic Fund".
7 comments:
Why anyone would contribute anything to the National Catholic Fund (or indeed to anything emenating from the bureaucrats of Eccleston Sq ) is beyond me. These quangos should be had up under the Trades Description Act, because they certainly do not do anything positive for the Catholic Church.
While it is a disgrace that this book has been published, it is in fact a scandal if it has the support of a Catholic bishop. Things are far worse than we might have thought.
The bad news is that Budd's only 70. At least another five years to go, unless the Holy Father chooses to make an example of him.
He is currently "re-organising" his diocese, ordering priests to reduce the number of Masses (even where there are sufficient priests to say more) to force the whole parish to worship together and so promote fellowship.
From the sounds of it, there is much to be deeply worried about in this book, not least on an intellectual level.
Father Balasuriya is from Sri Lanka. Using the criteria he seems to have adopted himself it is reasonable to point out that he has little of value to say about racism and the lives of ethnic minorities in industrialised countries. He simply doesn't have the necessary experience. His words sound like those of an embittered, scorned man.
Still smarting that his magnum opus didn't meet with official, critical or popular acclaim he takes refuge in what is known and sniggered at in leftwing circles as infantile, or cretino-leftism. Hence his crude third-worldism, his sly imputation of racism on the part of his critics. He sounds like an excitable SWP paperselling neophyte, the kind of useful idiot who is privately giggled at by party fulltimers. With this, his reputation slides. Its very sad for him.
Philomena Cullen's words sound like superficial jargon-ridden rubbish which fail on two important counts: they seem to be at variance with Roman Catholic teaching and out of step with expert opinion on family structure and child development. Its worth comparing what she has written to the views expressed on the Mens Room Charity website (the charity recently produced a report calling for good male role models for young black men) which frankly admit the problems caused by fatherlessness.
Cullen is described on the Caritas website as focusing on "Family Support". But given what seem like considerable deficiencies in her knowledge of the subject its reasonable to ask whether she has the necessary expertise for the job.
Perhaps the CDF will order the pulping of this wretched book if it is produced by an agency of the Church?
Hmmm. The deanery where I live had a huge reduction in the number of Sunday Masses by order of the bishop. Apparently it was to enable priests to cover for each other for holidays and in case of illness. It doesn't work, of course - our PP struggles to get cover for weekends and manages about one weekend a year away. He has also dragged himself out to say Mass for us when he was clearly unwell. Thank God, he makes sure that we get daily Mass, even on what is supposed to be his day away.
I often wonder where all the people who used to go to early Mass in my parish go now. They certainly don't appear at the other Masses there. Oh...and the weekly offerings went down by around 20%.
Has anyone actually read the book or seen a copy ? apart from Damian T - not doubting his analysis of it but it would be good to hear a bit more of what it says. Any fightback will have more weight if we have read it. General upset can`t then be dismissed - we can quote chunks of it that are at odds with the Church and The Holy Father and rest our case.
Yes, I have the book. From looking particularly at the Balasuriya and Cullen articles, I would say that Damien's summary of it is quite fair. I'll be reading it all in due course and doing a proper review of the book.
In the meantime, I will post the abstract of the Cullen article with some quotes.
If Bishop Budd wants everyone to be 'buddies' by reducing (???) the number of Masses thereby promoting 'fellowship', why doesn't he join the Quackers, sorry - Quakers!
Scandalous behaviour from those concerned, Caritas, Balasuriya, Budd et al...
I just don't get it, probably because I'm simple minded, but why doesn't the Holy Father just fire these dissenters and heretics who appear to be just 'oh so proud' to parade their defiance of Church Teaching in the public domain!
I mean, to deny people the celebration of Holy Mass is like slamming the door into the face of Jesus. And this from a Bishop????
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