Anti-modernists & Neo-cons

Eduardo Porter, in an article in the New York Times yesterday, wrote this about modernization in the Roman Catholic Church::

"Many traditionalists attribute the church’s decline to the weakening of its strictures. They believe it was damaged by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which tried to bring the church closer to the people, proclaimed religious freedom, embraced people of other Christian faiths and acknowledged truth in other religions."

This attitude is not new. The maintaining of medieval rigidity was propagated even inside the Vatican during the Council (1962-1965) (Some of us still have vivid recollections of folks like Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani.) Up until the council (actually until 1967), Catholic clergy had to take an "Oath Against Modernism," and the "Syllabus of Errors" proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1864 remained in force.

Today the ongoing movement in the church to restore the "good old days" before Vatican II is stronger than many people realize.

Sigh... My country largely co-opted by the Neo-cons, my church widely co-opted by the Restorationists. I do not believe Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth would go along with either of these surges. No way.