23 December 2015

The Cretinous Doctor

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As ever, the Cigoña blog got it right here.  Whether Bishop Sanchez Sorondo should be described as a cretin, whether his comments should be described as rubbish, whether he is more of an imbecile than Fisichella, are questions of vocabulary and register, but the sentiment is right.

The Bishop is Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, so might be presumed to know a thing or two.  He especially might be expected to know a thing or two about global warming, and, as a fellow Argentine might have had a chat with the Pope before the latter made his recent comments about the sky falling in man-made global warming in Laudato Sii.  This isn't my argument.  What is, is the amazing comment he made, to a critic who said that the Pope's opinion was purely personal, and that the Church could not have a distinct point of view:

"Once the Pope has taken a position, it becomes part of the Magisterium of the Church, whether we like it or not. It is part of the Magisterium just as the fact that abortion is a grave sin is part of the Magisterium."

How very wrong this is: Steinbeck says somewhere something like: "you have to be very clever to be that stupid".  What happens when the Pope decides that diesel cars put far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than petrol ones: does that become part of the Magisterium? Does my Mondeo Estate become a mortal sin?

One effect of this very Latin American papacy is that the sort of carefully described and nuanced differences between the value and importance of papal statements has been thrown away, to be replaced by a sense in which they are simply what the Boss said, and therefore to be enforced by his enforcers. 

Either the Pope knows this sort of thing is going on and doesn't care, which would be scandalous; or he doesn't know, which would be scandalous.

God Help Rome, and all of us.
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3 comments:

Left-footer said...

I am not lost for words, but the words I am not lost for are not fit for print.

God bless, Tony, and a very blessed Christmas to you and yours.

Marc in Eugene said...

'... Questions of vocabulary and register, but the sentiment is right.' Yes indeed!

Merry Christmas!

Mike Cliffson said...

Be of good cheer!
"Read the script" in revelations, long term , the devil loses,God wins, so we're as it were watching the replay of THAT world cup match, emotional for those participating but you already know the good guys win after several cliffhangers.(German readers please excuse the instance chosen for communication, mostly)
For our own stirring times , if Fr Z is correct that the human reasoning reported of many cardinal electors , through whom and through whose reasoning the holy spirit can work , it's not opposites, was that thye wanted , maybe very rightly, a Pope who had already undergone trial by media.....
Correctly reported or not, right or wrong in itself, or not, , the above IS what we got, along with other qualities - We sang God bless our Pope, the great, the good, regardless.., dunno why we stopped.
Dive around internet a bit, and there's decades of it .nothing he said or did , or didnt or didn't say but that was twisted, biased, invented, thrown up in USA universities, un comissions, you name it.
My impression is that a sort of mental relay cuts off most of the mediashpere, period, from the Holy Fathers attention.I really do not know.
I don't know the Holy fathers's inner workings as a man,as argentine, a priest, jesuit , bishop, nor yet pope.
I just have an inkling of what this sort of daily yearly public grind might do to me.

Oh BTW
A very merry and blessed Xmas and Xmastide for you and yours