Spiritual Harassment

As Pope Benedict said "many people now think the Church is a collection of prohibitions, but it is not."

The above is from an interview with Bishop John Buckley of Cork and Ross and is quoted in an article reproduced on the website of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP).

When I read the sentence, I didn't know whether to fall off my chair laughing or just feel that these ACP guys must have needed a lot of paste to keep that one from falling off the wall.

How many priests have now been silenced for attempting to discuss forbidden topics? How many nuns are being investigated by bishops for unorthodoxy? Nuns, who have put their lives on the line in taking the social justice agenda of the Second Vatican Council to some of the poorest areas in the world, being investigated by bishops, whose own orthodoxy has been to shuttle paedophile priests around parishes under their control, and for which orthodoxy they have neither been investigated nor punished.

You can get details of the above in another article on the same site and also find a link to the full investigation by the National Catholic Reporter of the attempts by the CDF to bludgeon American nuns into submission.

Prohibitus Loqui (in pectore)

Here's the deal.

Only the Pope knows; so the guy/gal ("dissident") carries on as before; the Pope knows, in his heart of hearts, that he's silenced him/her; so everyone is happy.

It is surely time to resurrect that fine Papal practice of doing things In Pectore now that we are back to the age of persecution, nihil obstat and imprimatur. The old system of censorship was very resource intensive with its huge Index Librorvm Prohibitorvm and all the clerks required to keep it up to date and everything.

The new old way would be better. Wouldn't cost a penny and would economise on scarce clerical resources ('scuse the pun) in these days of exponentially declining vocations and falling replacement ratios.

So what's with the picture, I hear you ask, as your febrile brain tries to make the connection? Well, I liked the tones in the painting; it is pertinent (and indeed, pert); and it is arguably less offensive than my original choice which was to put the Pope's head on a picture of the Sacred Heart. The logic would have been more apparent but the offence all the greater.

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