You've found Father McKenzie. But are you really looking for Eleanor Rigby?

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

What Prots miss out on by not having a Magisterium

Now, normally when anyone named Miller starts writing about Vatican pronouncements on Catholic Social Teaching, I reach for my revolver and pop a few rounds of Guilfussian Priest Chasers through my monitor screen, like Elvis with his TV set. This particular posting, however, is amusing and worth reading (and savouring) in full.

That's in no way to deny, of course, that Protestant synods are capable of generating equally bad or worse sludge - one imagines the Unitingarians producing some dreadfully earnest "Year of Listening Communique", or suchlike, which exhorts all Christians to use one less sheet of toilet paper a day, and to make sure they leave the dunny seat up. But at least the Prot versions don't end with anathemata being thundered against whomsoever should take away the least jot or tittle from the document. You can disregard these decrease without going to Hell or some intermediate version thereof.

Next: "We therefore, in the most authentic exercise of our teaching Magisterium, entrusted to the Apostle Peter by Our Lord Jesus Christ, do pronounce it objectively necessary, and the dereliction thereof to be gravely illicit, that you - shall Wear Sunscreen."

"The Ten Commandments of... What?"

By Robert T Miller

Tuesday, July 3, 2007, 6:26 AM

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=789

I present to you a document of some forty pages entitled "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road <http://www.zenit.org/article-19915?l=english" prepared by a Vatican office known as the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People, which is under the supervision of Cardinal Renato Martino. "The outcome of a great endeavor entailing listening, reflection and insight," the document begins with a fascinatingly uninformative reflection on "The Phenomenon of Human Mobility":

"Moving from place to place, and transporting goods using different means, have characterised human behaviour since the beginning of history...

"The transportation of goods and people is increasing at a dizzy pace, sometimes taking place under difficult conditions and even putting life at risk...

"A modern phenomenon, full of consequences, which is part of this mobility, and the progress that derives from it, is traffic in general, and especially road traffic. Traffic has gradually increased...

"We only need to consider the many uneven roads travelled on by unsafe and overloaded means of transport, which constitute a grave danger for everyone, especially at night...

"Undoubtedly, road vehicles give us many advantages. They provide a rapid means of transport for people (getting to places of work and study, weekend outings with the family, going away on holiday, meetings with friends and relatives)... Means of transport are particularly useful when they enable sick and injured people to be rescued..."

So the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People informs us in writing that people drive in cars in order to go to work, that there's a lot of traffic nowadays, that goods are transported from place to place over the roads, that driving is more dangerous at night than during the day, and that it's really good that sick and injured people can be transported over the roads to hospital. Try, if you can, to write down five or six sentences as fatuously banal as each of these, and you'll find it's not easy. [...]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Im from Melbourne.

Isnt this "Magisterium" just another inherently godless self-possessed ego---full of the usual yes/no double minded ambiguities, and the stench of "holiness"?

And isnt Christianity supposed to be about Jesus rather than a propaganda driven (and grotesque) personality cult?----A cult that is first and foremost a worldly power (and an integral player in the western imperial project with its drive to total power and control) that manipulates the motivations and lifes of millions of human beings?

What has any of that got to do with Real God?

That having been said please check out these related references on Real God.

1. www.dabase.org/dht7.htm
2. www.dabase.org/broken.htm
3. www.dabase.org/tfrbkgil.htm
4. www.kneeoflistening.com

Plus critical essays on Christianity

1. www.dabase.org/proofch6.htm
2. www.dabase.org/2armP1.htm#ch2
3. www.beezone.com/AdiDa/jesusandme.html

Reference # 3 is specifically about the destructive delusions and consequences of popes, cardinals and bishops---and their stench of "holiness".

S said...

The third of these "critical essays" is very similar in tone to the satirical work of J. Swift, of whom I shall quote:

"GOLBASTO MOMAREN EVLAME GURDILO SHEFIN MULLY ULLY GUE, most Mighty Emperor of Lilliput, Delight and Terror of the Universe, whose Dominions extend five thousand Blustrugs (about twelve miles in circumference) to the Extremities of the Globe; Monarch of all Monarchs, taller than the Sons of Men; whose Feet press down to the Center, and whose Head strikes against the Sun: At whose Nod the Princes of the Earth shake their Knees; pleasant as the Spring, comfortable as the Summer, fruitful as Autumn, dreadful as Winter. His most sublime Majesty proposeth to the Man-Mountain, lately arrived to our Celestial Dominions, the following Articles, which by a solemn Oath he shall be obliged to perform."

Chapter 3