How sad that people can't rely on the Church's catalog of sins and must instead impose private judgment and allege our brothers' guilt on the basis of politically correct victimology instead. Where would we be without the
Lay Apostolic Magisterium™?
There's currently a storm of controversy going on amid the patheos blogs as the internet gurus level their rusty apologetic canon, not against error (or the Turk) as you might hope, but against fellow Catholics. Even Paul Sumo at
Americanist Catholic has to get into the fray to cast out, expurgate and revile the anti-Semite! Would it be too much to ask that if you're going to call someone's work into question that you at least be accurate and truthful?
These neo-Catholic wardens do this service not so much out of a desire for truth or even love of neighbor, but to demand conformity to some vague standards of political correctness when it comes to anti-Semitism, a term which has not only destroyed careers but has ended friendships and even gone so far as to cause unnecessary schisms among people who are allegedly on the same side. But since when has Shea done anything other than defend Old Catholic Bishops and attack those who expose or challenge their agendas? While a catalog of sins is listed, courtesy of Shea, it doesn't really amount to much more than guilt by association and eisogesis:
- whose all-explaining theory of everything blames Jews for every problem that Christendom has had over the past 2000 years; [You should read something Pre-Vatican II for a change]
- whose rhetoric has been condemned by both the Abp of Prague [And Cardinal Bernardin, no doubt] for his outreach to “political extremists, Lefebvrites, [Careful now...they're reconciling soon, much to your chagrin.] nationalists [You mean nationalists like Ronald Reagan or Menachem Begin, or Ariel Sharon surely] , anti-Semites, [A deliberately vague term of abuse which can be applied to anyone for any reason whether legitimate or not] Islamists and neo-Nazis. [I'm surprised you didn't mention Communists. Really Mark, you are quite paranoiod.]” and by the Catholic League for “outrageously blam[ing] the Jews themselves for the Holocaust and pogroms.” ;
- who has appeared on an Iranian TV show that endorses the Protocols of the Elders of Zion [Surely what Charels Coulombe calls the most prophetic forgery in modern times] as authentic and charges Jews with harvesting Gentile organs;
- who is BFF with Holocaust Denier’s like Willis Carto and moving in virulently anti-Semitic circles;
- who treats as a respected thinker Robert Sungenis (Sungenis, who is published multiple times by Jones’ Culture Wars, gives Jones’ [Guilt by association too?] an enthusiastic thumbs up, and is himself hot on the trail of the Jew conspirators with such hard hitting stories as
How is it that a major Catholic news source like Americanist Catholic can produce these schoolyard taunts and expect them to have any currency at all?
Mark Shea maintains that he doesn't like internet trials, but that hasn't stopped him from attacking E. Micheal Jones and Micheal Voris. He's never had much time for Micheal Voris, except to level irrelevant criticisms alleging a lack of respect for the hierarchy and uncharity. This time, however, Shea now has another weapon to use, the claim of anti-Semitism.
Shea might be willing to wage an internet Jihad against Judaism, but he's incapable of seeing anything except that as he commits errors in Catholic teaching to overly generous with things which don't really belong to him, and to assume an office upon himself he doesn't legitimately possess. As Fifth Column
notes, would-be Pastor Shea, frequently an unofficial mouth of America's Magic Circle Bishops, falls far from Catholic truth when it comes to his obligations to Christian charity and judgment.
So, Mark mistakes charism for sanctification, he mistakes judgement of soul for judgement of action, and he (ironically) canonizes someone who the Church herself has not got around to canonizing. I say that last bit is ironical, because he actually does judge this poor sodomite's soul - he judges it sound enough to enter Heaven immediately, even though he himself says that the man's sins are Not. His. Business. I believe that's called "willful blindness."
Maybe it's none of your business if a devoted Catholic who for all appearances leads a blameless life, since you're as eager to be generous with other's sins as you are to be stingy about the alleged sins of others?
Using the criteria with which many of the participants in this discussion are electronically lynching Voris and E. Micheal Jones, you'd expect them to declare almost immediately that they can't be Catholic any longer.
Many of the critics are often eager to give absolution and blessings to avowed gomorrists and strike a blow for the zeitgeist, but are they willing to direct their ire at the Church they claim to belong to?
E. Micheal Jones' comments about the Jews pale in comparison to what
Saints, even recently promoted ones like Blessed Cardinal Newman, have said about them.
"Let us pray for the Jewish People, that they will return to the Lord their God, whom they have crucified". From Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman
Ultimately, it's really none of Shea's business. If he's willing to look past sins of omission and active cohabitation on the part of a homosexual activist, he should be able to look past the dirty rose colored lenses he wears and the injudicious and outrageous claims of anti-semitism on the part of E. Micheal Jones, no?
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