Okay, I take it as a given that there are reactionaries in the Catholic Church, particularly in the bowels of the Vatican, who would only happy if the clock was rolled back to, say, AD 1450 or so. About the time the individuals in question swore their vows of chastity.
And I also take it for granted that you’re always going to get nutso bizarrities in early draft working proposals on policy from anyone. That’s why they’re drafts, and proposals.
Still, the leaked draft proposals coming out of the Vatican offices on doctrine and liturgy on acceptable guidelines for Mass is conservative to the point of petrification.
A heated battle has been joined in the Vatican between moderates and conservatives over a directive, called for by the Pope, that would bar altar girls and stop millions of Roman Catholics around the world dancing, or even clapping, in their churches.
The document would also clamp down on adult, lay pastoral assistants. It would forbid priests during sermons quoting from ethical texts other than the Gospels. And it would rank services jointly celebrated with Protestant ministers or Orthodox priests alongside black masses as one of the four “most serious” abuses.
[…] The draft text states that priests should only allow girls to help them at mass if they have a special dispensation from their bishop and there is “just cause”, which Italian commentators took to mean an absence of boys. According to the leaked draft, priests ought “never to feel themselves obliged to recruit girls”.
In developing countries, where the Catholic church now has most of its members, the most controversial injunction will be the one banning “applause and dance within the place of worship, even outside the celebration of [mass]”.
Even though the draft was basically tabled in June after coming under intense internal criticism (and rightfully so), it’s fascinating that it was leaked now — and dismaying that it was drafted in the first place.
Even if it was just a draft.
Yeesh.
(via Ipse Dixit)
The Roman Church astonishes me.
Can you image Jesus Christ forbidding women serving at his table?! How is this a matter even for debate?
Oy.
Charismatic churches are making huge inroads in Latin America. This will only accelerate that.
It’s ironic that they’ve come up (in, I hasten to add, a draft proposal that’s been tabled because it’s so damned stupid) with something that would offend both conservative Third World and liberal First World congregations. It’s a miracle.
This stuff makes me laugh. We’re in the middle of a huge scandal. The bishops are basically telling the parishioners in the US to piss off, we know what we’re doing.
There are so few men entering the church to serve as priests that some churches are doing without!
So…how do we act? Well, we’ll sweep the scandal under the rug (more or less). We’ll continue to ignore the people, while telling them “you are the church”. And, we’ll do even more to destroy Vatican II, one of the few forward moves the church has made.
Oh yes. And people wonder why I have increasing difficulty retaining my temper when I discuss this!
There seems to be a distinct group within the Vatican that truly believes that if only the clock could be turned back about a century in Church policy, then the world would follow, and then all would be well with the Church. That attitude is, alas, doing a lot to alienate at least the Catholic church in America; simple obedience is not, if it ever was, an option.