… or, "When I decided to move on with my life."
John Allen, Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, mentions in his weekly "Word from Rome" column (July 29) a story on which he is working that discusses where the "We Are Church" movement is ten years after its founding in April 1995 in the kitchen of a high school religion teacher:
"I was in Innsbruck, Austria, this week, for a story concerning the 10th anniversary of the ‘We Are Church’ movement, the most serious effort at a liberal Catholic reform movement in recent memory. It was born in April 1995 in the Innsbruck kitchen of a high school religion teacher named Thomas Plankensteiner, who went on to become the public face of the campaign.
"Today Plankensteiner is a schools inspector in the Tyrol region of Austria, disengaged from church activism. His story offers a metaphor for why ecclesiastical insurgencies so often lose steam — Plankensteiner grew weary of waiting for things to happen, and decided to get on with his life."
Would that all those agitating for "reforms" that the Church has declared to be impossible (e.g., women’s ordination, artificial birth control) would give in, give up, and get on with their lives.
Terribly sad, isn’t it, how many people are so wedded to their pet movements that when they finally realize there is naught but dust, they keep on with their movement because they don’t know any differently.
The Holy Father, as Card. Ratzinger, said (and I paraphrase here) that saints reformed the Church not by building newer and bigger structures, or by devising new schemes and programs and committees, but rather they reformed the Church by reforming themselves in holiness and piety, and by their example they brought greater change than if they had tried on their own.
It was a long wait for the Church to condemn capital punishment, slavery, torture, racism, etc., etc. I doubt we will have to wait centuries for the Church to recognize that declining to ordain women, the condemnation of “artifical” methods of birth control, etc., etc. was based on a mistakes of fact (and therefore, as the Church teaches, not infallible).
The Church has condemned capital punishment?
It was a long wait for the Church to condemn…racism…
Boy I know what you mean. When St. Paul rebuked St. Peter for not eating with the gentiles and told him that in the Church there were neither Jew nor Greek but that all were one in Christ, that must have been, like, almost two decades after the Lord established his new covenant. This was a truly unconscionable delay.
Billy, don’t forget Paul also said there is neither male nor female, but don’t feel bad, the Church forgot that part too.
Apparently Patrick himself is ignoring the fact that St Paul also said, to put it briefly, that women should shut up when in church and all the Church leaders have to be men. Also, the Church has condemned slavery time and again. Capital punishment is permitted under certain conditions. And what do you mean by putting artificial in scare quotes? External devices are used in artificial birth control, hence the adjective artificial. And everyone knows that the pill is an abortifacient. There are no mistakes of fact in what the Church teaches regarding the ordination of women, artificial birth control methods or sodomy.
Lady Lurker (what does that mean?) should distinguish between proto (those written by Paul) and deutro Pauline writings (those written by his latter followers, an accepted practice at the time) and recognize interpolations, as do many if not most main line commentaries. What, pray tell, does “abortifacient” mean? As to mistakes of fact, one must be omnisicent to know there are none. The Church accepts the fact that some “infallible” statements were based on mistakes of fact, ergo, not infalliable.
The Church accepts the fact that some “infallible” statements were based on mistakes of fact, ergo, not infalliable.
Can you name some?
Please keep in mind that the Church defination of infalliblity includes something taught by all the bishops and the Pope. All statements based on the historicity, but not the theology, of the first eleven chapters of Genesis have ceased to be considered infallible.