www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Anti-Catholicism lies at the heart of Englishness

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What's changed?

The book's narrative concludes before present day, and so I used the past tense.

Now that I think about it, if anything's changed, many American Catholics probably now honestly believe that being a respectable American is the exact same thing as being a good Catholic, where before it took mental gymnastics to justify this position.

Booth

Certainly, most Catholic bishops do.

This has really been an interesting history lesson. Thanks!

I suggested one book of Father Andrew Greeley's, not the author himself. That said, it is better to treat him with kindness and charity, not with disdain.

Fr. Serge

It's nothing personal, just interdisciplinary rivalry. I'm sure Greeley feels the same way about historians.

Evey book and paper of Fr. Greeley's I've read has exhibited his heterodoxy. It seriously calls into question his thought processes, for, as a cleric to exhibit such heterodoxy in print shows a lack of good judgment. He's been a proponent of women's ordination, and of homosexual marriage. If, as a priest, he's in favor of such, it's a strong exhibition of a fundamentally flawed logic process.

People with that level of fallibility of logic generally do not have it limited to one field.

No, Aramis, it merely demonstrates the academic's ability to compartmentalize his thinking, which is what enables them to hold mutually contradictory beliefs simultaneously. Also, Greeley the Academic has an institutional conflict of interest with Greeley the cleric. The former wants to be respected in the faculty lounge, which means he has to back publicly positions that the latter ought to find abhorrent.

It's not too different from bishops who know they ought to condemn certain Catholic politicians for their words and actions, but who refrains because he still wants to be invited to the Al Smith Dinner.

His academic works show a lack of clarity, IMO. Then again, most sociologists do. And people think those of us in History are fuzzy...

I once heard it said of Andrew Greeley that he never had an unpublished thought. I tend to believe that every garden has weeds and that it is best to pull them before taking in the harvest. I am not sure he always does.

Like the doctrine of Jesus Christ being both God and Man?

Unfortunately, that's one the intellectuals have never been able to wrap their minds around, probably because it demands not compartmentalization, but a breakdown of compartments and categories to understand.