Credo!

by liberal japonicus

Former pope Benedict admits making false claim to child sexual abuse inquiry

“Tell me, Martin,” he said. “Weren’t some of the popes—of course, not our present man, or his predecessor, but some of the old popes—not exactly ... you know ... up to the knocker?”

There was a silence. Mr Cunningham said:

“O, of course, there were some bad lots.... But the astonishing thing is this. Not one of them, not the biggest drunkard, not the most ... out-and-out ruffian, not one of them ever preached ex cathedra a word of false doctrine. Now isn’t that an astonishing thing?”

“That is,” said Mr Kernan.

“Yes, because when the Pope speaks ex cathedra,” Mr Fogarty explained, “he is infallible.”

“Yes,” said Mr Cunningham.

“O, I know about the infallibility of the Pope. I remember I was younger then.... Or was it that——?”

Mr Fogarty interrupted. He took up the bottle and helped the others to a little more. Mr M’Coy, seeing that there was not enough to go round, pleaded that he had not finished his first measure. The others accepted under protest. The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.

“What’s that you were saying, Tom?” asked Mr M’Coy.

“Papal infallibility,” said Mr Cunningham, “that was the greatest scene in the whole history of the Church.”

“How was that, Martin?” asked Mr Power.

Mr Cunningham held up two thick fingers.

“In the sacred college, you know, of cardinals and archbishops and bishops there were two men who held out against it while the others were all for it. The whole conclave except these two was unanimous. No! They wouldn’t have it!”

“Ha!” said Mr M’Coy.

“And they were a German cardinal by the name of Dolling ... or Dowling ... or——”

“Dowling was no German, and that’s a sure five,” said Mr Power, laughing.

“Well, this great German cardinal, whatever his name was, was one; and the other was John MacHale.”

“What?” cried Mr Kernan. “Is it John of Tuam?”

“Are you sure of that now?” asked Mr Fogarty dubiously. “I thought it was some Italian or American.”

“John of Tuam,” repeated Mr Cunningham, “was the man.”

He drank and the other gentlemen followed his lead. Then he resumed:

“There they were at it, all the cardinals and bishops and archbishops from all the ends of the earth and these two fighting dog and devil until at last the Pope himself stood up and declared infallibility a dogma of the Church ex cathedra. On the very moment John MacHale, who had been arguing and arguing against it, stood up and shouted out with the voice of a lion: ‘Credo!’”

“I believe!” said Mr Fogarty.

“Credo!” said Mr Cunningham. “That showed the faith he had. He submitted the moment the Pope spoke.”

“And what about Dowling?” asked Mr M’Coy.

“The German cardinal wouldn’t submit. He left the church.”

Mr Cunningham’s words had built up the vast image of the church in the minds of his hearers. His deep raucous voice had thrilled them as it uttered the word of belief and submission. When Mrs Kernan came into the room drying her hands she came into a solemn company. She did not disturb the silence, but leaned over the rail at the foot of the bed.

Dubliners, by James Joyce

Comments

[wj]

Probably harder to be a sincere and believing Catholic these days than to be a Republican. After all, the Republican Party doesn't (yet) formally claim to be a font of infallible morality.

Definitely hard to see how, after all this time, the Catholic Church can clean up its act enough to recover any trace of moral authority.

[Pro Bono]

Non credo, but it's only in very rare circumstances that the pope asserts his infallibility.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Pope Benedict, Rod Dreher's favorite conservative Pope, besides a few from the Middle Ages who's favorite instrument of God's wrath was the gibbet and the pyre.

I guess it's not odd that lj on OBWI scooped Dreher and the conservative Catholic Amerocan Conservative on this news.

No, it's business as usual.

Specifically, the story "Grace" from Dubliners.

"Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.

But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank and say like a man:

'Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts'"

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

whose ... but who's counting?

[Hartmut]

I think it was pope John the 23rd who famously said, that he was not infallible because he'd never speak ex cathedra.

As for the church: a typical case of too big to fail. It has survived worse.

[wj]

This:
A pope complicit in covering up sex crimes can bid moral authority goodbye

Enlightened lay Catholics increasingly understand that looking to a priest, or a bishop, or even a pope for guidance and moral example has been a dangerous mistake. Generations of those men have brought the church to its greatest crisis in some 500 years — and they cannot solve the problem of credibility and accountability for one simple reason.

They are the problem.

It has reached the point where the salient question is: Who didn't know? If anyone in the whole Catholic hierarchy.
"It appears the reason Pope Francis has resisted calls for more accountability among bishops and archbishops is that too few leaders would survive transparency." [Emphasis added] How bad is that?

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

"Generations of those men have brought the church to its greatest crisis in some 500 years"

Funny how they are still getting away with their silent complicity in Nazi Germany's murdering of the Jews and that was a mere 80 years ago.

Say the name "Soros" to the Catholic fucks over at the American Conservative, not to mention their fellow jackbooted cucks in Hungary and our own House of Representatives, and you can hear the train whistles in the distance.

Conservatives only believe in transparency when it enables their Peeping Tom habits.

[Hartmut]

Oh, the church took care to get some martyrs out of the 3rd Reich, so they are obviously first class victims. Dodged a bullet there by catching some.
Of course, the main problem the church had with the Nazis was that the power sharing agreement they got with the other fascist states was not on offer in Germany and the alternative treaty (btw officially in force unaltered until German reunion when it got updated) was not honored in practice by the Nazis.
In the relevant social encyclical (quadragesimo anno of 1931) the pope defined fascism as more a less a revival of the medieval three estates with The Party replacing the nobility of old (in practice with many nobles in leading positions). The main criticism was that in his view the position of the church in that was not big enough and not guaranteed per se. In essence the message is: The basic idea is very much to our liking but the details need some work still (in particular: we do NOT want to see any godless secularists in leading positions. More intolerance please!).
The church always fared well with leaving the actual violence to the state to keep its own hands ostensibly clean. The internal moral rot has always been fought with omerta and letting the state deal with snitches and outside critics if need be by genocide (cf. Albigensian crusade).
Poland after the end of communism has been on a steady course back to that (the actual murderous state is not yet reached though but not for lack of trying).
Under Pope John Paul II a high Vatican offical publicly regretted that burning at the stake was not a legal option anymore (he was referring to women who had abortions btw).

My prediction: The RCC will go through another shrinking cycle and suffer accelerated losses in some Western countries. But in the medium to long term it will stabilize again at an only slightly lower level. With the re-emergence of ruling neo fascism or equivalents in many states it will recover some lost ground. In South America the feud with evangelical sects (that are as morally rotten inside but with their coat of paint still in a better shape) will go on. The current pope will have an arch-reactionary successor who will see a smaller but ideologically more rigid organisation as the base to rebuild on and will seek alliances with reactionary and/or neofascist regimes worldwide. Moral bankruptcy, as history tells us, does not kill that behemoth. Setbacks are no problem for an organisation that has seen numerous previous ones and always recovered. Too big to fail, as I said.