A tidbit of synchronicity...

On the same internet odyssey, ("in" the same odyssey? what preposition do you use for "odyssey"?) I came across, also via Charlotte Was Both, a link to a review of a older novel by an author... of whom I have never heard.
Okay, but that's not the important part.
This description of a character in the novel, from the review:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952763,00.html
Something is wrong with the crucifix. Hanging in the tiny church in a Virginia country town, it distresses the new pastor. The wooden corpus, Monsignor Vincent Shepherd observes, has "square, unsuffering eyes" that symbolize to the priest so much that is wrong with his church and his world. The sense of crucifixion is gone. Instead, he reflects, "it was as if Christ had never really suffered and died, but had only had the Last Supper, with twelve smiling men of social commitment and three folk guitarists, and then knocked the stone away from the tomb."
And then this snarkily offered (by Uncle Di at Off the Record on CWN, who has made snark a sacramental,) link to an interview in the Tablet, (Brit prog Catholic periodical,) with Belgium's Cdl Daneels.
I ask him to explain the significance of his modern-looking pectoral cross with its image of the risen Christ. "It is a risen Lord, not the dying Lord," he points out. And it is "very cheap ... something like half a euro in Rome", he says. But this is not because he lacks taste. On the contrary. Cardinal Danneels, in the best Belgium tradition, is a man of high culture and a patron of the arts, though he is not above relaxing to the Dixie sounds of New Orleans jazz. "But I like it very much because it is Christ who is rising on the Cross. It is typical Johannine," he stresses. "If you look at the Cross with the crucified Jesus it is exactly correct. But you look at what we have before the Resurrection. We are [living] after the Resurrection ... and for a long time already," he says, his voice rising slightly as if to suggest that perhaps too many people have forgotten that part.
Hmmm.....
Of course, we travel in different circles, His Excellency ('zat the term of address for a cardinal?) but I would, if indeed that what what his inflection was meant to suggest, disagree as to which part of Salvation History is most often given short shrift by modern humanity.
Oh, and this bit of condescension:
Cardinal Danneels, though he is open-minded and respectful, is distressed that there are not brighter men in the Church hierarchy. This point comes up as we speak about the Synod of Bishops. He has attended every assembly since 1980. "When I look at the synod assembly, so many good people are there with really pastoral hearts. They are good shepherds. But from time to time I think it would be good if 5 per cent [emphasis mine] of them were also thinkers, that don't lack hearts. We need among the bishops and cardinals some really intelligent people."
I cannot but agree with the Cardinal.
Thinkers would be a very good thing indeed, very handy for the Church.
It would be nice if some of Her shepherds were thinkers, were intellectually gifted thinkers enough to, oh, I dunno... think that the fact that only about (coincidentally!) 5% of their flock was practicing their putative Faith was problematic.