Our Holy Father's address to the German Bishops is not without interest ... and is in some ways unexpected. Bumptious liberals, and traddies who get peculiar kicks out of pessimism, conspire together to assume that Pope Francis is in Cardinal Kasper's back-pocket ... or else, is Cardinal Marx's poodle ...
... whence, therefore all this very pointed stuff about the catastrophic collapse of the Church in formerly Catholic areas of Germany where, in the 1960s, everybody still went to Mass? Who drafted that for the Pope?
Ones mind turns immediately to Cardinal Mueller. Indeed. In the 1960s, he was a teenager in the Palatinate, which, I believe, is less than half Catholic. But, in the 1960s, a Fr Ratzinger was a young priest and theologian in his prime ... and the product of a very Catholic part of Bavaria ...
... er ... dunno what to think ... d'you? ... but is there ... could there be ... something of Ratzinger's deft and very faintly cheeky style of handling language in the way the writer slips in the term Pelagian ...
... could it just possibly be that ... er ....
Whatever be the truth, somebody has been doing their bit to ensure that the Holy Father is properly briefed about the true state of things in that particularly arrogant part of the Lord's vineyard.
Have I ever written a piece with as many ... er ... aposiopeses?
Thank you, Fr, for this most important Post.
ReplyDeleteOne, indeed, is dumbfounded at this apparent move by His Holiness to shore up a faltering German Catholic Church.
All one can say, I feel, is:
"The Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform".
Deo Gratias.
Or is this another example of all things to all men?
ReplyDeleteI still see a lack of clarity!
ps had to look up aposiopesis.