London’s Daily Telegraph reports the idea that Brazilian bishops want Mass to be able to be celebrated online. Can somebody explain what this is all about? Shorely there is shome mishtake?
It reminds me of how the TV Evangelist Ernest Angeley used to scream, “Heal! Heal!” at the TV cameras and invite the listeners at home to place their affected body parts near the television screen. One has to curb the imagination here…
What is really disturbing about this, is the British press yet again making a headline out of nothing, and allowing people who don’t know what they’re talking about to write as if they do know what they’re talking about. The BBC is just as bad: I’ve just finished watching their tribute to Pope John Paul the Great on DVD (not that they called him that mind you)
They wheeled out all the usual suspects: Christina Odone, Peter Stanford, Michael Walsh…the same old weary liberal British Catholic chattering class ‘experts’. Dear me, how they drone on in their lofty, bemused and slightly wounded tones saying how “the majority of Catholics were ‘disappointed’ in John Paul’s leadership.” Stanford explaining Thomas Aquinas as “making lots and lots of rules for Catholics to obey.” and saying that the Catechism is “just thousands of rules for Catholics to lead a good life.” Then he gives us a patronising smile and says, “Really, that sort of thing is comforting for many people.”
I, for one, don’t find the moral demands and doctrinal demands of the Catholic faith particularly comforting. What I would find comforting is the sort of liberal cafeteria Catholicism in which I can do what I please.
I hope they got it wrong; the Holy Father has just made his views clear on this subject in Sacramentum Caritatis.
Catholicism shore ain’t for wusses.