A few comments on this:
i) Of course he's a bishop, so he's going to stick up for his denomination. If he wasn't committed to his sect, he wouldn't be a Catholic priest, apologist, and bishop in the first place. It's just a partisan pep talk.
ii) He seems sincere. He may be sincere. But consider all the seemingly sincere bishops and cardinals who are sharks. Projecting sincerity is a job requirement for a successful conman. Some charlatan televangelists project piety, but that's just a mask. There's no presumption that spokesmen like Barron are for real. Almost the entire Catholic episcopate worldwide is morally compromised by the abuse scandal–all the way up to the current pope. Assuming he's sincere, it's the bona fides of a partisan fanatic who can't imagine he made a wrong turn. No different from Mormon apologists or Muslim apologists.
iii) What can the laity actually do? The Catholic church has an authoritarian, topdown polity. The hierarchy isn't answerable to the laity. Short of boycotting the denomination, members have no leverage.
iv) Imagine a diehard Marxist who castigated former Communists for "cutting and running". "You must stay and fight for the revolution! Don't use Communist atrocities as an excuse to quit. We have a duty to persevere with the Marxist experiment. Marxism hasn't failed–Marxists leaders have failed. But the failure of Marxist leaders can't discredit the ideology. Our cause is greater than imperfect individuals. Just because it flunks a bench test doesn't mean it's a flawed paradigm. We just need to get the bugs out."
v) Jesus didn't sign an exclusive contract with the church of Rome. Jesus doesn't belong to you. You don't have Jesus on a leash. You don't have a monopoly on saints.
You're the church of European royalty. The state religion. You got to be where you are through political patronage and palace intrigue. Kings and emperors imposed Catholicism on their subjects: Cuius regio, eius religio. That has nothing to do with Jesus or the Holy Spirit. The church of Rome is worldly from start to finish.
I’m gonna call BS on him. At around 7:00 he says:
ReplyDelete<1>“We’re not fighting primarily to save our institutions. I’m with my old mentor, Cardinal [Francis] George [of Chicago]. In the last talk he ever gave to all the priests of Chicago, he said ‘remember, at the beginning of The Church, there were no parishes, schools, hospitals, institutions... ’”
On the other hand, “The Church” today (“developed”, in its “fullness”) IS its hierarchical institutions. See Lumen Gentium 8 — I’ve cited this many times ...
Christ, the one Mediator, established and continually sustains here on earth His holy Church, the community of faith, hope and charity, as an entity with visible delineation through which He communicated truth and grace to all. But, the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and a human element. For this reason, by no weak analogy, it is compared to the mystery of the incarnate Word. As the assumed nature inseparably united to Him, serves the divine Word as a living organ of salvation, so, in a similar way, does the visible social structure of the Church serve the Spirit of Christ, who vivifies it, in the building up of the body.
The pre-Vatican II ecclesiology was more heavily dependent on the institution than this is.
As if the concept of an institutional church is dispensable to Roman Catholicism.
DeleteFor anybody who's interested in some examples of how corrupt the papacy and the Roman Catholic denomination have been in establishing and maintaining their influence in past generations, see here. That post is part of a series on apostolic succession.
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