
Into the Deep Sea of History | Editorial | George Neumayr | Catholic World Report |
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The release of Anglicanorum CoetibusAccording to his critics, Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy would alienate, not attract, be rigid, not flexible. But as he presides over an imaginative papacy of growing Christian unity, their predictions fall away. Unable to compute that disaffected Anglicans had approached Pope
Benedict and asked for entry into the Church, they cast his apostolic
constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus as an act of aggressive evangelization. The coverage contained an implicit assumption: that the Catholic Church is a man-made sect which steals members from other man-made sects. Were that assumption true, were the Catholic Church a grasping human organization among others, the negative spin on Anglicanorum Coetibus might be understandable. But the assumption is false. The Church comes from Jesus Christ, and the Pope and her bishops are called to be “fishers of men,” as he told the disciples. True, Pope Benedict’s accommodation of disaffected Anglicans in Anglicanorum Coetibus is not “ecumenical,” as defined by modern liberals. But it is apostolic, and that’s what matters. He is not, after all, the world’s ecumenical coordinator but the Vicar of Christ. |
You know, if it weren't for the fact that so many Catholics take so much of their perception of the Church from the secular media, I wouldn't give a diddely for what the NYT thinks about B16.
I don't know how one trains an entire generation (make that, two generations) of Catholics to COMPLETELY ignore (on the grounds of its sheer incompetence, if not its animus) what the secular media says, but that's what we need to do.
I mean, if you're reading this blog, I don't need to tell you that a single featured author here, eg George Neumayr, can tell you truly more about, say, the Anglican ordinariates, than 50 secular news reports.
It's just so utterly obvious.
Posted by: Ed Peters | Tuesday, December 01, 2009 at 07:40 AM