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Mini-thread. Feeling frustrated again today. I think the issue is that many of us feel roughly the same things about what needs to happen in the Church, but know that we're powerless to make it so. So what do we do?
Why do I have to sit and argue with a prominent dominican like @PetriOP on Twitter (who I believe has me muted, since he never responded once to the discussion, which involved a number of other folks) about what is so obvious with the DP teaching change?
Why do I have to write yet another article holding everyone's hands and walking them through why this DP issue matters so much, how Francis works, and how to interpret what is happening?
I feel like I'm standing in front of the building shouting that it's on fire, & I've got some ppl saying no it's not, others saying, "Well technically, that's not fire, it's just rapid oxidation" & others just whistling by wondering why we're not nicer to gays & immigrants.
Does anyone know what it means to be Catholic in 2020? Does anyone know what we actually believe? Why do we have to pick and choose between what the pope says & what the Church has always said, with ppl on both sides just arguing? We go around and around in an infinite loop.
I don't have the faintest clue what it's going to take to begin even moving in the right direction, or whether (if it's possible at all) that any of us will see it in our lifetimes. Which is why all this "God wins in the end" sloganeering isn't particularly helpful.
We are not medieval peasants. We don't have the distraction of going back to our secluded agricultural lives in our little hamlets worried about our little quotidian issues & harvests & festivals & sorrows & all the rest.
We live in this technocratic, information-saturated world in which we sit in front of little screens all day reading about how everything is going to hell while technology keeps us alive for longer than ever so we have more time to obsess over it.
This will trigger the inevitable chorus of "get off the internet" but right now, I'm not too excited about wandering into the cities, where everyone has to wear a damn mask, nobody is allowed to sit near anyone else, & people are still rioting/looting 3 months later.
We can pretend things are normal, I guess, if we just sit in our back yards & stare up at the clouds. But things aren't. Maybe they won't be again any time soon.
I wonder what evolutionary psychologists like J Peterson would say about what all of this is doing to brains that developed to deal with very different sets of circumstances until quite recently. (Whoops, I mentioned evolution. Cue additional angry tweet responses).
Anyway, a bit of a ramble. I'm just thinking out loud. I look forward to the thoughtful comments, and less so to the inevitable virtue signaling responses.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
P.S. - Someone said to me today that the Eastern Orthodox, "have no Magisterium, but no heresy. We have a Vatican with an infallible Magisterium and seemingly limitless powers, but it's now all fudge and self-contradiction everywhere."
It's no wonder ppl want the simplicity.
It's no wonder ppl want the simplicity.
(And no, that's not me proselytizing for EO. Just thought it was a good observation.)
