Saturday, April 03, 2010

Modern Popes Held In Suspicion By Other Catholics

"[Pope] Pius X soon established a secret society to check for orthodoxy; among those denounced was an obscure church historian named Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the future [Pope] John XXIII. [Pope] Benedict XV, Pius's successor, found among the papal papers a secret denunciation of himself....He [the future Pope John XXIII] taught church history at the Bergamo seminary, where he found himself suspect of heresy by the secret society Pius X had established to check on orthodoxy....He [Giovanni Batista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI] served as an assistant to Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the papal secretary of state, and remained close to him after he became Pius XII. A man who liked to see both sides, Montini was not rigorous enough for Pius's other associates. When he defended a suspect French theologian, 'the inevitable happened. The Pope's mind was poisoned against Montini by a whispering campaign, and he was dismissed from his Vatican post and kicked upstairs to be archbishop of Milan. This post invariably carried with it a cardinal's hat, but Pius XII signaled his displeasure by withholding it. In this way, Montini, who was increasingly being seen as the inevitable choice for the next pope, was deliberately excluded from the succession' (Duffy, Saints, 268)." (Joseph Kelly, The Ecumenical Councils Of The Catholic Church [Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2009], pp. 175, 182, 190)

11 comments:

  1. Continuing Protestant fascination/preoccupation with Catholicism or is there some value in this effort?

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  2. Dozie originally posted his comments above in the thread below this one, a thread about the resurrection and some related issues. Much of what I wrote in response there is relevant here as well.

    And notice that Dozie makes no effort to interact with what Saint and Sinner wrote in response to him in the other thread (Saint and Sinner’s comments were posted before Dozie deleted his own post there). Instead, he reposts his one-sentence comment here, without any further explanation of what he’s arguing or why we should agree with his view. He’s been behaving like that for years, even after having had many people point out to him how unconvincing and counterproductive his approach is. Saying that Protestants are “fascinated” with Catholicism isn’t much of a response to what I wrote. If I said that Dozie is fascinated with Protestantism, would he consider that a sufficient response to his posts? What would Dozie think if a Protestant went to a Catholic forum and behaved the way he does here?

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  3. "If I said that Dozie is fascinated with Protestantism, would he consider that a sufficient response to his posts?"

    If you said that you would know you were wrong because you would have nothing to show for that kind of assertion. On the hand, Triablogue is approximately 90% about Catholicism and your own comments are exclusively about the Catholic Church. If that is not preoccupation with Catholicism, I don’t know what else comes close to it.

    “He’s been behaving like that for years, even after having had many people point out to him how unconvincing and counterproductive his approach is”.

    If Dozie is out to convince you or any other Protestant, you would have a point. Perhaps, Dozie is happy to let you wallow in whatever you have immersed yourself in. After all, Protestants affirm that God sometimes lets arrogant and un-teachable persons have their way.

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  4. Dozie has been banned, but he leaves us with another example of how unreasonable he is:

    “Triablogue is approximately 90% about Catholicism and your own comments are exclusively about the Catholic Church.”

    In a recent response to Dozie, I reminded him that I’ve written many hundreds of pages of material on intelligent design, the resurrection of Christ, and other topics besides Catholicism. So, does Dozie adjust his response to me accordingly? Or does he interact with what Saint and Sinner wrote in response to him or what I wrote in response to him on other points? No, instead he goes even further in the wrong direction. He makes claims so false that anybody with a memory of what I wrote in my first post this morning would know that he’s wrong.

    John Loftus used to criticize us for responding to his web site so much. Critics of Calvinism claim that we write too much about that subject. Dozie claims that 90% of our material is on Catholicism, and he claims that all of what I write is on that subject. He should get together with the other critics of this blog and try to work out a consistent criticism. If 90% of our material is about Catholicism, and 100% of mine is, then Dozie’s must be about 400% on Protestantism.

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  5. And here I thought 90% of Triablogue was about Donatism. Man did I miss the boat.

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  6. So what is the correct percentage of coverage that should be devoted to Catholicism? 100%?

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  7. "Dozie has been banned..."

    Frankly, it is a great favor to me. Talking to Protestants of a certain stripe always is a waste of time.

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  8. I don't understand the "banning" of an individual if you then go on to interpret the person's response / posting that culminated in the "banning." It's your blog, so ban away. It would just be interesting to at at least leave the "trigger" post up so we could see, rather than relying on your presentation.

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  9. "As usual, you make little effort to be coherent or to argue for your position, and we’re left trying to figure out what you mean and why we’re supposed to agree with your unsupported opinion. You’ve been doing that for years."

    I take it back. If you have "years" experience to-and-fro with Dozie then fine. Guess I am new to these exchanges..

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  10. Off-Topic:

    Steve, I have been reading your blog for some time. Some adjectives that come to mind; intrigue, fascination, admiration, etc. Point being there is enough here for the Joe-average Christian to both cling to and to question. My own feeling is that this blog gives it straight, regardless.

    Here is my dilemma - I had a great talk with my two girls regarding the Easter story. One is 15, the other is 12. After discussing the ramifications, they both seemed to take an Arminian perspective to salvation - yet my oldest daughter has enough biblical knowledge to question God's hand in it all. She asked if God really "chooses" who He will save, vrs. my youngest daughter who appeals to the "fairness" of it all.

    I am not boring you with all of the details, just found it quite interesting. Hope at some point you can give your opinion.

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  11. cramdon wrote:

    "It would just be interesting to at at least leave the 'trigger' post up so we could see, rather than relying on your presentation."

    Blogger doesn't allow us to hide some posts while not hiding others. And the hidden posts can still be viewed. Besides, it's not as though we have a record of dishonesty that would give people reason to question what we say about why we ban people. In the case of Dozie, he's been putting up posts of the nature I described since at least 2006. As you can see above, he posted again even after being told that he was banned. That's a reflection of the sort of character he demonstrated before the ban as well.

    Even if Blogger allowed us to do what you suggest above, it wouldn't make sense to do it. There are more factors involved than allowing other people to more easily see posts they're interested in. For example, if you assure a person who's misbehaving that his next post will remain up for everybody to see, no matter how he behaves, then you're allowing him to do whatever he wants with that post. If somebody is posting links to pornography, do you leave the links up, so that people can "see, rather than relying on our presentation"? Why should we even be expected to give an explanation for why we manage our blog as we do? We get new readers on a regular basis. How long do we have to leave something up? Should we never delete (or hide) anything? There are trade-offs no matter what approach you take, but Dozie's posts are of a low enough quality that there isn't much lost by banning him and hiding his posts.

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