To comprehend fully the gross folly into which our US bishops have led the #Catholic Church, sit on the Feast of #ChristTheKing in a mostly empty sanctuary listening to the embarrassingly flowery language of the 2011 Roman Missal.

The absurd collision of the...
...triumphally sacral vernacular with so many empty pews, the energy level that rivals chair aerobics at Casa Tranquila while we 'glory in obedience to the commands of Christ, the King of the universe,' is a lot of dissonance to process.

This is a result of choices, mostly...
...choices like the Missal that stepped back from renewing the #Catholic church after #Vatican2 and deliberately took the church out of our lived experience (except when it's time to remember our true King insists we vote GOP).

We have clarified that we should refrain from...
...calling lay ministers "ministers" as we have certainly made sure that options for Sunday worship without a priest will be postponed for as long as possible.

In every way we have sought to freeze the clock in 1965, insist everything is fine and nothing needs to...
..change—not even the things that the Council changed.

But sit and listen and look around the sanctuary.

It's infuriating, what is and what could have been.

Douthat is wrong. A church alienated from the world, deliberately resisting the fact that it has a foot planted...
...firmly in the world where we live, among us, is a church for aesthetes and antiquarians.

Not only is that not most people, but it's surely not enough people. There's very little to give life to most of us.

And if I seem stewed abt it tonight, it's because I am.

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More from @stevenpmillies

Nov 8
1/ Here is an #ElectionDay thread about #Catholics and #democracy. You should read it all but here is the TLDR headline: Catholics have done our part to bring US politics to this point, and we need to fix it.

Let's begin with a long view.
2/ The #CatholicChurch spent 1900 years avoiding #democracy, quite comfortable with empire and monarchy. The closest the church ever got was the Council of Basel (1431-1449) that followed something like democratic procedure to challenge papal supremacy, suggested a conciliar...
3/ ...approach to the governance of the church. It did not succeed.

A century earlier Marsiglio of Padua had praised ideas very close to popular sovereignty & he remained "the accursed Marsiglio" into the 19th century.

Very little in Catholicism has pointed to #democracy.
Read 20 tweets
Nov 6
1/ I've responded 2x today to #Catholics whose shared premise seems to be that outward performance & practice is a good measure of the #CatholicChurch's success.

And I think this pathology sits deep in the church—



2/ 'If people fulfill their obligation & show up, the #CatholicChurch is successful.'

I think this approach to inner spiritual conversion as a factory production problem needs serious, sustained attention.

So much of our #Catholic life is built to produce this attitude.
3/ All the incentives & structures of diocesan churches point that way—Oct counts, collection totals, school headcounts, etc. are perceived measures of vitality.

They're not.

They leave wholly unconsidered the question of whether #Catholics are converted by the Gospel.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 23
1/ Ok. Serious question. Now that #abortion has been returned firmly to the status quo ante #RoeVsWade, to its status before the grave, urgent situation that mobilized #Catholics into a #ProLife mvmt, why was this article written?

ncregister.com/news/downplayi…
2/ And, I lied. That's not a serious question. I already know the answer. (I suspect @Pontifex does too.) I wrote it here 3yrs ago-americamagazine.org/politics-socie…

The answer is plain. "[D]ecades of binary cultural and political argument means that reversing Roe is no longer enough"
3/ We have been doing this so long, we simply don't know how to stop.

Don't believe me? Ask some serious people what the goal of the #ProLife mvmt is now. Their reply? I kid you not--

"A firm commitment to end #abortion"

Seriously.
Read 10 tweets
Jul 5
"Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost" ~Leonard Cohen

“[W]hat happened, is happening and will happen to us all, from the very beginning until the end of human life upon this earth.” ~John Cowper Powys, on The Iliad

1/ I'm signing off for a while.
2/ I've come to realize I've spent 30yrs with faith what's happened could be prevented—our divisions could be healed before they break us beyond repair, the #CatholicChurch could end its antagonism w/the world before it destroyed its own ability to witness to the public square.
3/ I've come to feel convinced we've recently passed a point of no return. What is lost can't be regained before it all collapses, and now the collapse seems certain to me.

It won't be like a movie. It won't happen like it's happened before. But it will happen.
Read 13 tweets
Jul 2
Dear @POTUS @JoeBiden @WhiteHouse,

1/ I've been an admirer since the 1980s when I would've identified as @GOP. Joe Biden always seemed like one of our smartest and most decent public servants. You were my 1st choice in 2008 & I was very happy when you were chosen as VP.
2/ Obv I supported you in 2020 & was able to help advance that campaign in small ways. Having a good person for the nominee was a happy bonus. But overall it was a crisis that called all-hands-on-deck. I would've helped anybody.

That crisis still is here. It hasn't gone away.
3/ Now as we near the halfway mark of the #BidenAdministration & #Midterms2022 the crisis actually has worsened. Things have gotten worse, not better in #Biden years. Now is an urgent, maybe last chance to muster the nation to meet the crisis.

I'm worried you're not doing that.
Read 14 tweets
May 20
SHORT 🧵

1/ #Catholicism is not an identity. There is no "#Catholic identity."

Catholicism is the proclamation of an encompassing message of transformation suited to all times & places.

Identity is a #postmodern preoccupation.
2/ As #Catholicism is suited to all times & places that's fine. But the assertion of #Catholic identity rarely (if ever) intends to embrace #postmodernism (or even modernity).
3/ Identity comes from the Latin "idem" for "same," which a casual historical exploration would tell us #Catholicism never is. It has had countless historical and cultural expressions.

At the most obvious level, today the #CatholicChurch is 23 rites.
Read 5 tweets

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