The Church of No Hard Sayings and Whether You Should Poke Dogs in the Eye With Pencils

Cardinal George is agin' it. (Okay, I'm just assuming he's against poking dogs with pencils, but the Church Of No Hard Sayings? He's definitely come out against that.)

The presider over the USCCB has a book debuting next week, The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion and Culture, and John Allen interviewed with him.

I think his Eminence nails the current situation "on the ground" as it were, and shows a pretty good awareness of how things are amongst those of us who don't live in the manse, or work at the chancery.Some bits and bites:

George argues that liberals too often function as “chaplains of the status quo,” taking their cues from the prevailing secular mindset, while conservatives often end up in a sectarian dead-end, clinging to a narrow and triumphalistic version of Catholic identity sealed off from the surrounding culture. [Amen]...
"If there are lacunae in the culture that is ours, which we all have to love, it’s a lack of appreciation for relationships that you can’t un-choose and that are constitutive of your identity, and also this ability to see the whole thing, to see it as global, to get outside the national parameters that define how we look at everything, including the church....

The church is strangled by putting its voice into a system of communication that doesn’t understand her, and doesn’t want to understand her....

Allen:you write that for modern American culture, everything is tolerated but nothing is forgiven, while for Christianity it’s exactly the reverse – many things aren’t tolerated, but everything can be forgiven. ...

bishops take on an importance that’s disproportionate. ...

Liberals are critical of [authority], although they’ll use it when they’re in power. Conservatives would tend to be less critical, but equally dependent upon it.

Consequently, when you get into the church, you get the conservatives unhappy because bishops aren’t using power the way they’re supposed to, the way they want them to. You get liberals who are unhappy because [the bishops] have any power at all. Both of them are defining themselves vis-à-vis the bishops rather than vis-à-vis Christ...
How can [the bishops] be related without controlling everything? This is what Americans don’t see, that you can be related even if you don’t control. Liberals say you have to be independent, because to be related is to be controlled. Conservatives say that because you are related, you must be in control, and if you’re not in control there’s something wrong...
The Second Vatican Council said we have to present the [C]hurch to the world... that you don’t have to worry about people who don’t believe... this is so beautiful that they will come along and accept it, but that’s not true. [emphasis supplied]You have people who weren’t catechized – not because they weren’t told the truth, but because they weren’t told ‘this is not the truth, and here’s why.’ That’s why I write about putting apologetics back into catechesis.

The bishops did that same thing for a while. They explained the documents of the council, they talked about the beautiful vision of a united world coming out of the council. They didn’t pay attention to the fact that a lot of people, in order to understand, have to know not only the truth, but they have to know what’s false. Now, the catechetical problem has been attended to, at least in theory, at our level … whether or not it’s the same at the level of teaching, I don’t know.

I imagine that's a diplomatic way of saying that it hasn't really been put into practice -- and he may be a little overly optimistic that all the Bishops of the world are on board with the the splendor of Truth.

But what really caught me was George's acknowledgment that you cannot teach without negatives.
Let me repeat that, you cannot teach without negatives.
I got in trouble once in a family situation because a child, (I think she was 3 at the time,) was jabbing a pencil into a dog.
The nearest adult, I cried out, "stop that!" and took the pencil, envisioning the little sweetie with half her face gone and the holiday evening spent in a hospital emergency waiting room.

I was warned off by a parent who came flying in from the next room, who whispered, horrified, "We NEVER talk to her that way, or say negative things! This is the way it should be done," and turning to the little sweetie, cooed, "Samantha may pet the nice doggie. Wouldn't Samantha like to pet the doggie?"



I'm not sayin' there're parallels here, I'm just sayin'...