Monday, March 26, 2007
ST. BLOGS
Has made the pages of hard copy again. Tom Herron has an article in the current issue of "Culture Wars" that describes the politics of Catholic Blogdom, placing the players into their respective corners. He includes
* The split between Chris Ferrara and Thomas Woods over "Woods' libertarian dissent from Church moral teachings on economic questions as shown in THE CHURCH AND THE MARKET: A CATHOLIC DEFENSE OF THE FREE ECONOMY
* Sandra Miesel's Jewish roots and her family seders, on the subject of which Herron quotes
St. Thomas Aquinas, who would say Sandra Miesel is committing a mortal sin by observing the ritual of the Old Law, (SUMMA THEOLOGICA I, II, q. 103, Art. 4, "I answer that....just as it would be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of faith, to say that Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old said devoutly and truthfully; so too it would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity.")
* Bill Cork's authorship of a document titled "Anti-Semitism and the Catholic Right", of which Herron claims
It appears that for Dr. Cork the "sin against the Holy Ghost" for modern day Catholics is supercessionism, the belief that the Catholic Church replaces Judaism as the valid covenant between God and man.
He notes that Cardinal Kasper's public statements indicate
...that present-day Jews are, as a special case, exempted from the need to believe in Jesus Christ as this one mediator as the Jewish Covenant first made between Abraham and the Almighty is still in some way valid and effective of eternal salvation...
which seems to be adding to the confusion over dual covenant theory.
* The long-enduring saga of Stephen Hand's war with everybody in Catholic blogdom.
* The part played in all of this by the Southern Poverty Law Center which according to Herron states in its website:
...that they are partnered with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which is a part of Michael Chertoff's Department of Homeland Security, in providing training in hate crimes and extremist groups to police at all levels of government. With the widespread knowledge that groups like SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League regularly provide the FBI and local law enforcement unverified information on "extremists" whose originator would be blacked-out in a Freedom of Information Act release due to "privacy rights" of the denouncers, there may be consequences for the individuals and groups identified as Catholic "radical traditionalists" in these articles. If SPLC plays its ever helpful role to the local police whom they train through a federal program what will the policeman see who pulls over one of the Catholics named in the January 2007 issue of THE INTELLIGENCE REPORT? What will be in the data base when he does a license plate check on his squad car's computer? Will it cause him to pull out his revolver on very pacific individuals because there is an unsubstantiated notation that they are prone to violence and hate crimes?
Prompting me to wonder if it is bordering on illegal to subscribe to traditional Catholicism?
In any case the state of chaos in the Roman Catholic Church, and perhaps the hand of non-Catholics in creating this state of chaos, is clearly visible in Tom Herron's article titled "Morris Dees and the Catholic Bloggers: An Anatomy of Thought Control in Cyberspace".
