Father Joe O'Leary is at it again. St. Paul writes about gongs bonging and cymbals clashing. I don't think there is a better bonger or clasher than the good father.
I first learned about father Joe from reading the comment boxes of Phil Blosser's blog, Musings of a Pertinacious Papist.
Father Joe is, how shall we say this, a fixture there. He posts under the nom de plume of "Spirit of Vatican II". This should give you an idea about his basic bent, and bent he is. In a recent missive, father Joe states:
Last year I posted a piece here called “The Rise of the Neocaths”. It was widely reproduced, with outraged commentary, on various neocath websites.
Within weeks of the original hit piece, the link to it gave the classic "404 Error" (page not found). Seems the good father pulled the piece from general distribution after experiencing the outrage it engendered. In quoting this piece he wrote, I am faithfully reproducing it, in it's entirety for posterity. You'll be able to read the whole thing by clicking the read more link.
You can still read the original piece here. The words in the quoted areas are father Joe's, unedited and saved for posterity.
The aggrieved, narcissistic tone of these responses showed me that I had overestimated the strength of the neocaths; in reality they were a vulnerable, noisy minority, already showing signs of decline.
Many of the NeoCath sites can be identified by the badge that appears in my right hand sidebar. If you click on it you can see how you can get one on your site.
In his article, he links nine posts opposed to what he wrote, and one post in favor of it. Nine to one doesn't sound like much of a "minority" to me. For a more representative sample, you can check Google.
The good father is going to probably retreat to his fall back position of "the people who agree with me in vastly superior numbers don't have blogs and don't write in comment boxes".
First of all is their change of attitude toward Benedict XVI. They did not greet his Encyclical with any real enthusiasm and they have been complaining that he is not “nasty” enough (Michael Liccione), that his pontificate is shaping up as just a lull before the next storm, that he is not following through on the needed abolition of the “Novus Ordo” – the current liturgy of the Church, which many neocaths tend to see as heresy-ridden.
There has been no change in my attitude toward Papa Benedict. I loved him as Cardinal Ratzinger, and I love him as Pope Benedict. His first encyclical was brilliant, expanding on the work of his predecessor with regards to the proper use of our God-given sexuality. But father O'Leary has quite a big problem with that. He believes that when it comes to sex, any sex will do.
I understand that as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger had an entirely diffent role than he does now as Pope Benedict. Cardinal Ratzinger was somewhat of an "enforcer". Pope Benecict is the "pastor of the world".
Our pope is a shy and gentle man, supremely learned and intelligent, and understanding in the care one must take in making any kind of required changes (oh, would that Pope Paul VI have used that kind of care).
And there is no need to put the Novus Ordo Missae in "sneer quotes". I love the Novus Ordo (as promulgated). I love the Tridentine rite. However the Novus Ordo has been open to abuses made possible by the diabolic "spirit" of Vatican II. Our well loved papa is taking steps to exorcise that particuar "spirit" by firmly defining and locking down the wording of Church documents.
These extraordinary exercises, predicated on the alleged infallibility of “Humanae Vitae”, stand refuted by the clear facts of history...
I'd like to know what color the sky is on father O'Leary's home world. The prognostication that Paul VI made in Humanae Vitae have proven prophetic (ed.- unfriendly format warning).
In contrast, the neocaths cling desperately to fetid relics of a half-imaginary past. Hence their decline in energy and lucidity as they stumble toward phase three of their unhappy existence --- the Fall of the Neocaths.
Actually, children are rebelling against the "anything goes" form of Catholicism bequeathed to them by the kumbaya radicals of the 60's. "Free love" isn't free. There is a price to be paid and this generation's young adults are realizing that.
There is an awakening to the sacred. A flocking to devotions. An increase in vocations to the priesthood in diocese where the bishop is orthodox.
And the fall of the "RetroCaths", is going to be a whimper, as they contracept themselves out of existance. The vocations will come from large, Catholic, "Humamae Vitae" families, who will become pastors of parishes where they teach large, Catholic, Humanae Vitae values.
Michael Liccione puts it really well when he writes:
Judging from the trends in liturgy, catechesis, and higher education, the progs seemed to be taking over the Church. Priests and religious had been bolting in droves. Seminaries were not attracting many candidates—perhaps because, as I soon discovered firsthand, being heterosexual was in many quarters a disadvantage for applicants. I also found it curious that hardly anybody seemed interested, like me, in having the Mass celebrated as it was celebrated in Rome.
We have rosary every Sunday night at our church, and one of the intentions is for the peaceful reconciliation of our church.
How about praying this one with me:
Saint Michael, Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And you, Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and the other evil spirits who prowl the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.
(Click Read More to read father O'Leary's unedited commentary, just in case he gets the urge to pull this one too.)
Last year I posted a piece here called “The Rise of the Neocaths”. It was widely reproduced, with outraged commentary, on various neocath websites. The aggrieved, narcissistic tone of these responses showed me that I had overestimated the strength of the neocaths; in reality they were a vulnerable, noisy minority, already showing signs of decline.
Here is a sampling of the responses:
http://dailywashing.blogspot.com/2005_07_17_dailywashing_archive.html
http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=15353&sid=660fa2bab7bb72661733d3a8afd2f6b1
http://www.catholicpillowfight.com/neocath.php
http://darthbeckman.livejournal.com/518802.html
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2005_08_07_socrates58_archive.html
http://ressourcement.blogspot.com/2005/07/rise-of-neocaths.html
http://greggtheobscure.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_greggtheobscure_archive.html
http://northwesternwinds.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_northwesternwinds_archive.html
http://holyfool69.blogspot.com/2005/08/spirit-of-vatican-ii-bashing.html
There were favorable comments too: “It's basically what I deal with every day. But still a noteworthy, substantive synthesis.” ( http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_whispersintheloggia_archive.html )
What are the signs of the decline of neocathism that have emerged over the past year?
First of all is their change of attitude toward Benedict XVI. They did not greet his Encyclical with any real enthusiasm and they have been complaining that he is not “nasty” enough (Michael Liccione), that his pontificate is shaping up as just a lull before the next storm, that he is not following through on the needed abolition of the “Novus Ordo” – the current liturgy of the Church, which many neocaths tend to see as heresy-ridden.
Benedict’s gentle diplomacy in Spain, where he did not once attack gay marriage or criticize the Government, was the kind of let-down his fans are now used to. The rather cranky Cardinal of the early 1990s seems to have disappeared into a blander, kinder figure. Some neocaths tried to make much of the Pope’s sartorial elegance, but there is only so much excitement to be got out of fashionable slippers.
Benedict XVI has indeed fulfilled the neocath dream in one respect: it now looks as if the entire Curia has devoted itself to the “inquisitorial” task of ensuring orthodoxy. The Pope and his Secretary of State are the former Prefect and Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The CDF continues, under Cardinal Levada, to investigate and threaten theologians (Diarmuid O’Murchu is a current case), but the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Congregation for Catholic Education are involved in the same activities. They have even produced doctrinal utterances – an incredibly inept document on gay seminarians from Cardinal Grocholewski (Catholic Education) and a much-touted fifty-five page document from Cardinal Trujillo, which was made available only in the form of an Italian pamphlet that virtually no one has seen.
This massive investment in orthodoxy has had no effect whatever. It was once said that “the Kantian philosophy has pure hands – but it doesn’t have hands!” The pastoral inefficacy of the Vatican is only highlighted by these bureaucratic distractions.
The receding memory of John Paul II is a second factor in the decline of the neocaths. It already feels more old-fashioned to call oneself a “John Paul II youth” (Apolonio Latar) and to go on about “John Paul the Great” than to adopt the sobriquet “Spirit of Vatican II”. This is a delicious irony, given the way neocaths go on about the graying liberals of the 1960s and how the forces of youth are on their side.
Next is the discomfiting of many neocath icons, contemporaneous with the discrediting of neocons in the wider public sphere. Richard Neuhaus, for example, was demolished in a "Commonweal" editorial and has certainly lost some of his smarty-pants luster (http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1509). His support of the Iraq war had already dinted his image: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php?id_article=1032
Above all what marks decline is the increasing shrillness and extremism of the neocath voices, and their failure to attract any interest unless they indulge in such rhetoric. Along with this goes a failure to develop their thinking, which remains caught in the rut of their favorite obsessions.
They have taken on a distinctly sectarian cast, regularly calling into question the legitimacy of Vatican II, and pouring scorn on other Christian denominations and other religions in a manner not only incompatible with Vatican II but with the entire ecumenical labor of the Church over the last eighty years or so.
There was always a sympathy between the young neocath fogeys and the older traditionalists in the spirit of Evelyn Waugh, Dietrich von Hildebrand, the older Jacques Maritain. But now we increasingly see the neocaths reaching out to the lunatic fringe, finding their best friends in the Lefebvrite movement and other such disgruntled groups. See for example: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com. They are currently indignant that the Lefebvrites may be refused the "right to dissent" from Vatican II on ecumenism and religious freedom that they specify as a condition of their reconciliation with Rome ( http://www.newoxfordreview.org/note.jsp?did=0706-notes-intolerant; lauded at http://pblosser.blogspot.com, July 20, 2006); perhaps they do not realize that one of the motives of asking for that right to dissent is a visceral anti-Semitism (http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2005/08/guess-anti-semite.html)..
The sterility of the neocath mindset is seen in the prodigious labors they devote to showing that official Catholic doctrine has never contradicted itself. See especially: http://mliccione.blogspot.com/. These extraordinary exercises, predicated on the alleged infallibility of “Humanae Vitae”, stand refuted by the clear facts of history, as found for instance in Charles Curran, ed. “Changes in Official Catholic Moral Teachings”, Paulist Press, 2003. Cardinal Dulles, favorite neocath theologian, carries this Parmenideanism so far as to maintain that the Church today, as in 1866, upholds the compatibility of slavery with divine and natural law.
The neocaths used to present themselves as responsible thinkers on sexual ethics. But increasingly it has become apparent that the most primitive homophobia, based far more on Sodom’n’Gomorrah biblical fundamentalism than on any responsible consideration of Catholic tradition, is the bottom line in their sexual thinking.
One aspect of current neocath thinking that we can be grateful for is its silence on George Bush and the Iraq War. There are exceptions, of course – but they seem to be aware themselves that they are the last defenders of a lost cause: http://catholicjustwar.blogspot.com.
The leading neocath thinkers are converts from Anglicanism or Protestantism, who speak of their former denomination in tones borrowed, at their most charitable, from the quite out-dated polemic of Newman against Anglicanism; see especially http://catholica.pontifications.net. They bring to Roman Catholicism a testy, superior attitude, reminding me of an Anglo-Catholic preacher in Oxford whom I heard declare: “We need a Roman mission to Rome itself”. They really feel it is their mission to save the Roman Church from the evil “Protestantizing” influence of Vatican II.
Perhaps the strongest card of the neocaths in recent days has been the alleged collapse of the ECUSA. But to many Roman Catholics the debates of the General Convention and the election of Bishop Schori were a wake-up moment. Here we see a Church that is allowed to have open debates, and that, though relatively tiny, steals the world’s attention from the silenced, paralyzed behemoth of Rome. A Church that recognizes the charisms of women and of gays is surely one that points to the future.
In contrast, the neocaths cling desperately to fetid relics of a half-imaginary past. Hence their decline in energy and lucidity as they stumble toward phase three of their unhappy existence --- the Fall of the Neocaths.
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