Interesting couple of paragraphs from an interview with John Allen on Open Book. The whole interview is at Godspy but I haven’t read it–it’s mostly about his new (and interesting-sounding) book on Opus Dei. Here’s the key point on intra-Catholic divisions:
"When you look around at the Catholic scene, you see that you’ve got
your traditionalist-liturgical Catholics, your social justice
Catholics, your charismatic Catholics, your neo-conservative,
intellectual Catholics, your Church reform Catholics, and others. They
all speak their own language, go to their own meetings, read their own
publications, think their own thoughts. If they ever pop their head up
above the walls to look at somebody in another circle, it’s often not
with a genuine interest in the thought of the other. It’s with what you
might call a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’. ‘I’m not really sure where
this person is coming from and I’m not really sure if we’re on the same
team.’"
Now, I think there are in fact very good reasons underlying a lot of this, chiefly the presence of so many people, including people in authority, in the Church who pretty obviously don’t believe some of the core teachings. But it’s gotten way out of hand.
–Maclin Horton
You see it a lot in Catholic discussion forums on the web. People quote Bishop or Cardinal so-and-so as the leading authority on such-and-such, whether it’s about Medjugorje or an illicit Latin Mass or whatever, and the one doing the quoting acts as if this is from the mouth of God Himself. Academics spread misleading accounts of Church history or false teaching, as if it is merely understood as to “the way it is.” Does the Holy Father really speak out of both sides of his mouth? Because he doesn’t, which means this should never go on unchallenged for so long.
The post Vatican II Church is a gnostic church grounded in emotions where each cult, whether it be T.F.P. at one end of the spectrum or the NeoChatechumenal at the other end, sees themselves as the Way; and members who leave any one of these cults are virtually viewed and treated as apostates to the Faith.
Where as parishes were grounded in society at large, these cults are by nature insular. Pope John Paul II was an cult figure who drew people to the Faith through their emotions, that is through peoples lower appetites. Seeds which burn brightly is shallow soil of the emotions. And thus these cults are a natural outgrowth from the mass media culture we live in, as well as the modern post Vatican II Church.