Comments for The Shire and the City at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 8 out of 8 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:52:00 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-shire-and-the-city.html#comment-10927 "A Church preoccupied with its own sins and seemingly without a voice when its own liberty and that of other believers is at stake is not much of a witness at all." Bravo, Mr. Royal. For, this is also true of ourselves on an individual level: it is one thing for us to acknowledge that we are sinful, as we should. But how many times have our priests in Confession or our spiritual directors also told us, equally importantly, that to fixate on and be preoccupied with our own sinfulness is to forget God's mercy and is therefore its own form of pride? Mr. Manley, I concur that the Roman Catholic Church is a treasure. But she is a treasure not because she is pristine, but because she can, through her Sacraments and Divine mission, turn sinners into saints. One of the most effective ways in which we witness to the Truth of Catholic teaching is how Christ, through the Church, heals His Body on the macro and micro levels. Witnessing to the Truth in and out of season is part of the process of the Church being purified and her "getting her house in order." Because what is at issue here is the order actually at stake, else "getting her house in order" is absolutely meaningless. - WSquared Tue, 17 Apr 2012 06:06:12 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-shire-and-the-city.html#comment-10921 A fine article! I especially like the focus on balance between global and local - something that could be termed "glocal." In any case, the Church has a long history of attempting to balance its universal mission with its particular instantiation in various communities - a history that it should perhaps bring to the forefront in its efforts to communicate with broader society. The particular always stands before the universal, in my opinion - that is, the individual, local communities are prior to the more abstract (but still important) global or universal community - but I like the idea of a symbiotic relationship. - Scotty Ellis Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:01:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-shire-and-the-city.html#comment-10916 Trying to start a dialogue and team up with secularists is like joining forces with Satan. It's simply not possible to convince them to give up their wickedness. Every time we try we end up more wicked ourselves and bitter at our own coreligionists. Of course we can't all withdraw from the world but we also can't continue to pretend that these people want a future that is mutually beneficial for us all--no matter how much Christian compassion we show them they want us marginalized or preferably gone. Keep engaging with and challenging them, of course! Just don't pretend they won't stab you in the back if the end justifies the mean, which for them it always does. - Jacob Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:10:24 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-shire-and-the-city.html#comment-10913 In the quadrennial sham known as the election of a president, it's yet another choice between tweedledee and tweedledum. Unless Mr. Etch-A-Sketch erases his past, the differences between the two principal candidates will be a matter of style over substance. Obamacare and its little ancestor, Romneycare, are much the same in making government the overseer of health matters. Perhaps, holding my nose, I may vote for Mitt but only if I'm persuaded that there's really something to that magic underwear. - Grump Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:48:18 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-shire-and-the-city.html#comment-10912 Will, I take your overall point. Indeed, I endorse it. But from the beginning, TCT has been engaged in "public" Catholicism, as has the Church. And it cannot be otherwise if we're going to be faithful to the mission with which we've been entrusted. Many public questions are prudential judgments and as such are better left in the hands of civil authorities. The Church after Vatican II often went astray thinking it had some special insight into such detailed matters, which it does not. But some public questions are not so debatable. Some are so crucial that if the Church is silent the very stones would cry out. You might read the current situation the other way. A Church preoccupied with its own sins and seemingly without a voice when its own liberty and that of other believers is at stake is not much of a witness at all. Is the Church not supposed to be involved as a Church in calling for the protection of the unborn, the ill, the elderly, the marginalized? The protection of marriage? To some inside the Church and outside of it, this would amount to a very truncated vision and a very lukewarm witness. - Robert Royal Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:40:27 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-shire-and-the-city.html#comment-10911 In 2 Chronicles 7:14, God gives Soloman the answer to the inevitable problem of the Jews faithlessness and wickedness: "...If my people, who are called by my name will turn from their wicked ways, seek my face and pray, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." The problem is those called by God's name, we (Christians not pagan Americans) who are being wicked. We need to follow God's prescription for forgiveness and the healing of our land. As I have written in letters to our Cardinals and Bishops in the past, we need a truly urgent call from our clergy, a call to repentance, prayer and fasting to save us from destruction. We also need to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world which is Mr. Royal's point. Unfortunately, the USCCB seems to be caught up in the D.C. partisanship and go nattering on about matters for which they have no competence such as agricultural policy. Cardinal Dolan should close the USCCB office on the north side of town and move it to Wheeling West Virginia/Steubenville, Ohio. There are a few vacate foundry buildings with a nice view of the Ohio river there that they could get for a cheap price. - Jim O'Connor Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:21:00 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-shire-and-the-city.html#comment-10910 Between Dr. Royal's article and Will Manley's response, we are off to a good start! Dr. Royals, I want this year to be different, too; but I think it will not be, not when George Soros said at Davos that there's no real difference between Obama and Romney. And how could there be, when Romneycare was the model for Obamacare [and if people want to see what Obamacare will really cost, in terms of the ruin it will cause, look to the current state of healthcare in MA, where Romney runs from far behind]. Rick Santorum can yet play an important role: he made linkages between the economy, morality, and family that no other candidate dared to make. His candidacy was fatally flawed, however, as he confuses spontaneity with sincerity and preparation with compromise and guile, so while his now more-famous statements contained something germ of good ideas, had they been carefully developed and skillfully presented in the public forum, clumsy execution made him look like a piker and caused those who were with him in spirit to cringe and those who might have looked at him to run to Romney -- or worse, back to Obama. You don't just wing it into the White House, and a serious look at both Catholic and political histories shows that provisionality never works for the long haul: skilled execution of well-developed plans is what brings success and social change. All that said, his ability to pull in the right wing may be of value to Romney; and his messages, if not his messaging, may cause people to think more deeply than might otherwise be the cause -- though of that last proposition I am none too certain, given people's tendency to vote reactively and out of self-interest. Mr. Manley, while I am pessimistic about Sen. Santorum's role in the current campaign, I am not ready to renounce the duty of Catholics to participate in civic life, including politics, most especially when the bishops of the Church, including our Holy Father, are calling for Catholics to engage. Will the Church get burned? Hard to say: but it falls to the laity, not to "the Church," to engage in politics. Maybe the problem is that the hierarchy has been all too political and all too reliant upon the public purse to fund works of mercy that should rightly be paid by the faithful and not by the Federal Government. A little more independence would have preserved the value of the hierarchy's moral witness. The same point on the laity rather than "the Church" (read: the hierarchy) to your second point: "the Church's" job is to enunciate the principles, and the job of the Catholic laity is to find ways to enunciate those principles in public policy that truly fosters the common good, including the rights of non-Catholics. As to your third point, sorry, but it's a red herring and I would simply refer you back to Dr. Royals' observation on the matter in his article above. Fourth, the real problem with the Church's witness on human sexuality is that she hasn't been offering it: had the bishops, clergy and teaching religious of the pre-Vatican II Church accepted and taught Casti Connubi, Humanae Vitae would not have been necessary. As things now stand, they teach neither document, and so Catholic laity in the immense majority of cases, if the polls are to be believed, blithely ignore the documents. So how do your three points get you to say that the Roman Catholic Church is a treasure. She is, of course; but your assertion does not follow from all you had previously written and so looks like nothing more than wishful thinking. Let the bishops do their job: let them preach and teach the fulness of the faith, and please, oh please God, let them censure the faithless who teach in contradiction to it. Let the faithful do our job: hierarchy and laity living out the Gospel in the concrete circumstances of our lives. Let the lay faithful do our job, in the public square, battling, as everyone else does, for our view of things to be reflected in the ordering of politics, business, and every other secular realm. Will we be laughed at and scorned initially? Yes: so what? It was human respects that got us into this mess in the first place, and only a rejection of human respects will get us out. - Dave Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:08:58 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-shire-and-the-city.html#comment-10906 A couple of thoughts. First, engagement in public policy always disappoints. As Reagan said government is not the solution; it's the problem. The Church will only get burned if it persists in insisting in playing in the rough and tumble world of the political arena. Second, in terms of evangelization, non Christians invariably turn against the Church and religion when the Church brings its preaching voice into the political arena. Who was it who said that evangelization is a full time job and sometimes we use words? Third, what the non religious world is looking for from the Catholic Church are clear signs that it is getting its own house in order. All of the scandals have made our involvement in the political arena especially in the area of contraception, sexual morality, and natural law loom hypocritical and even laughable. The Roman Catholic Church is a treasure. It is our only hope for influencing a pre apocalyptic world to move toward a path of repentance, but it sacrifices its potential to do this when it becomes one more tainted political action committee. Thank you for allowing me to put forth what clearly is an against the wind point of view in this blog, which I felt was stronger when it dealt critically with the debilitating liberal trends within the Church rather than now when it feels somehow that that's not enough and that it must take on the whole world. Good luck. I think you are making a mistake. - will manley Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:29:07 +0100