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Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

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    Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

    All it's going to take to reverse this decline is a belt of the crozier

    New Vatican campaign to clamp down on 'liberal opinion'

    By John Cooney
    Monday June 07 2010
    VATICAN investigators to Ireland appointed by Pope Benedict XVI are to clamp down on liberal secular opinion in an intensive drive to re-impose traditional respect for clergy, according to informed sources in the Catholic Church.

    The nine-member team led by two cardinals will be instructed by the Vatican to restore a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics for their priests, the Irish Independent has learned.

    Priests will be told not to question in public official church teaching on controversial issues such as the papal ban on birth control or the admission of divorced Catholics living with new partners to the sacraments -- especially Holy Communion.

    Theologians will be expected to teach traditional doctrine by constantly preaching to lay Catholics of attendance at Mass and to return to the practice of regular confession, which has been largely abandoned by adults since the 1960s.

    An emphasis will be placed on an evangelisation campaign to overcome the alienation of young people scandalised by the spate of sexual abuse of children and by later cover-ups of paedophile clerics by leaders of the institutional church.

    A major thrust of the Vatican investigation will be to counteract materialistic and secularist attitudes, which Pope Benedict believes have led many Irish Catholics to ignore church disciplines and become lax in following devotional practices such as going on pilgrimages and doing penance.

    Bishops and priests will be instructed to preach to their congregations the unchanging central message of Jesus Christ about love, healing and repentance.

    While the restoration of church discipline and pious practices such as praying to Our Lady and the saints will be welcomed by regular church-goers, the Vatican investigation is likely to face a backlash from liberal Catholics who want more accountability and democracy in church decision-making.

    Visitation

    Vatican officials are finalising the precise terms of the instructions for the investigators named last week by Pope Benedict, who initiated an 'Apostolic Visitation' last March in his pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland.

    The investigators are clearing their diaries to visit Ireland's four principal archdioceses, the national seminaries and study centres run by religious orders in the autumn.

    In the wake of the shocking Murphy report into clerical child abuse, the conservative Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, will examine the study courses conducted for trainee priests at the national seminaries in St Patrick's College, Maynooth, and the Pontifical Irish College in Rome.

    At a meeting held in Maynooth last month, Archbishop Dolan told a gathering of priests "to return to basics" and to ground their ministry in "prayer, humility and a rediscovery of identity".

    Archbishop Dolan's address, titled "God is the only treasure people desire to find in a priest", was the high point of the Irish church's celebration of The Year of the Priest, a campaign to encourage vocations to the priesthood.

    The hardline address was enthusiastically endorsed by Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh.

    This week, as part of the Vatican's rigorous restoration policy, a widely promoted rally will be staged in Rome to cap what Pope Benedict has called "The Year of the Priest".

    Thousands of priests from across the world, including from Ireland, are expected to attend the showcase event which is planned as a major spectacle trumpeting the special status of the priesthood.

    #2
    Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

    The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:

    This week, as part of the Vatican's rigorous restoration policy, a widely promoted rally will be staged in Rome to cap what Pope Benedict has called "The Year of the Priest".


    ?

    Edit. Sorry. "Year of the Priest".

    Duh!

    Comment


      #3
      Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

      Thing is, Pope Benedict has not called it "The Year of the Priest". If your reporter can't get something as elementary as the name of a year-long, high-profile campaign right, can the rest of the article be trusted?

      Comment


        #4
        Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

        OK, it is/was the "year for priests"

        I'd say that one counts as venal, G.

        Comment


          #5
          Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

          It's not quite so high-profile that I'd actually heard of it, mind.

          Comment


            #6
            Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

            Priests will be told not to question in public official church teaching on controversial issues such as the papal ban on birth control or the admission of divorced Catholics living with new partner
            Hooray!

            Comment


              #7
              Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

              Seeing as Ratzinger's pal Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna has publicly questioned the ban on Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, Irish priests inclined to object to that ban (that is, most priests) would probably not take instructions to keep quiet about it very seriously.

              It's not quite so high-profile that I'd actually heard of it, mind.
              You're not an active Catholic or writing as a specialist about Catholic subject matter though, Ton Ton. If you're either, it is high profile.

              Would you trust a football report in which the reporter gets elementary terminology wrong?

              Comment


                #8
                Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                Off the point, but worth sharing: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/07/catholic-magazine-cover-f_n_602992.html

                Comment


                  #9
                  Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                  Ha, that's a bizarre combination of innocent, ignorant and stupid.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                    G.Mandoza wrote:
                    Ha, that's a bizarre combination of innocent, ignorant and stupid.
                    A pretty good description of people who subscribe to Roman Catholicism, though.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                      Calvert, why be so disagreeable? So pointlessly, needlessly rude? I mean, I’m as godless as the next heathen, but can’t you find a better focus for your malady?

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                          Thank god the new presbyterian moderator doesn't subscribe to benny's plan to face the future by turning back the clock 200 years. This is the first really positive thing to come out of an irish churchman in ages. It's certainly one of the most positive things to come out of northern ireland in a decade.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                            Catholics have been saying that sort of thing for at least a couple of decades, TMK.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                              The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:
                              It's certainly one of the most positive things to come out of northern ireland in a decade
                              What absout Darkside Darron Gibson and Marc Wilson?

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Thick Benny, Thick, thick, thick Benny.

                                Catholics have been saying that sort of thing for at least a couple of decades, TMK.

                                Do you have any idea what kind of departure this is for the moderator of the presbyterian church in Ireland? he's trying to jump forward 250 years in an afternoon. I mean the presbyterian church in northern ireland is pretty much mostly about sectarianism and feeling persecuted.

                                It's like the religious leader of orthodox judaism in israel Saying that since no religion has a monopoly on wisdom, there should be a unitary secular state where muslim and jew can live side by side as equal children of the one god and everyone shares the holy sites equally.

                                Diarmuid martin would have to call for Brady and the pope to resign to make a splash like this.

                                Comment

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