Karen Hall recently had two posts in which she expressed her frustration with the direction she perceives the Church and Pope Benedict appear to be going, and the lack of progress in dealing with the Church’s very visible problems of heterodoxy and dissent and liturgical abuse. The posts were “What kind of ‘kind’?”, with an extensive quote of a comment along those lines from the New Oxford Review, and “Pink elephants on parade,” in which she responds to some of the comments in the earlier post.
While I disagree with the tone and tenor of some reactions of some very rude responders to Karen’s plea, I did have some advice and comments that I thought I would share here. To get the whole context, read Karen’s first post first, then my first comment, then her second post, and then my second comment.
Here’s a bit of what she said after the NOR excerpt:
This is the conclusion I am beginning to reach myself. The pope is not who I thought he was, and he will not be who I hoped he would be. There aren’t going to be any sweeping, fundamental changes. Rome sees no ships. Or it sees all the ships, but has decided that the “kind” approach is to let them continue to unload their ammunition on us.
“Kind” to whom, I wonder, whenever I read articles and interviews about how “gentle” Benedict XVI is, or listen to Cardinal Arinze scold his worried audience with, “There are no jails at the Vatican” or “what do you want, a battalion of Swiss guards to come to your parish and make them do it right?”
Here was my first response:
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bk_keywords:Pope Benedict, liturgical reform.
