German Pope Ratzinger has come to Brasil, and Gleen has nothing to say about the phenomenon, preferring to engage in hermeneutics from a safe distance performed on sources as removed as possible from what they treat.
The LAT does, though:
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL  The pop-idol priest strides to the altar like the star that he is, a rock band pounding away to his right, cameras flashing to his left and the multitudes pulsating in this cavernous ex-factory that serves as a church.
“Hold the hand of Jesus!” Father Marcelo Rossi, a dynamic giant in a red cassock and billowing white sleeves, proclaims into the cordless mike, urging the faithful to hold hands. “God is tops! God is tops!”
Rossi is the kind of priest who just might be able to save the Roman Catholic Church here. Brazil has more believers than any other country, but the church has been steadily losing members to evangelical denominations.
Rossi is also just the kind of priest that Pope Benedict XVI, who arrives here Wednesday, is likely to frown upon.
Benedict is making his first papal trip to the Americas, home to half the planet’s Catholics, and will face a church replete with competing visions of how to retain the faithful and win back those who have left. The five-day Brazil visit also will serve as an important test of whether a pope seen as a rigid, Europe-focused intellectual, who stresses traditional dogma over creative worship, can reach and influence today’s Latin America.
Why? Why would Benedict, witness to the incredible charisma of John Paul II, frown on this?
How would anyone possibly get the idea that Benedict, who has critiqued and found wanting the idea of Limbo, and who has questioned the doctrine of Papal infallibility (if you don’t understand the circumstances attaching, please don’t yawp about this), get the idea that this is a dogmatic Pope? Probably the same media morons who seem startled that the Holy Father might hold firm against abortion? The same who seem to conflate the Pope’s criticism of the Marxist elements of Liberation Theology with some kind of desire to squelch individualism?
C’mon, man. Give it up! If Tarantino’s movies teach us anything, it’s that nobody’s life is that indispensible.
An important test, I would say, of whether the His Holiness can focus attention on his moral authority in the face of the insipid blandishments of the MSM is what I think you mean. You dumbasses.
The LAT is like a mayfly offering commentary on the irresponsible leisure of a bristlecone pine, and wondering why it is ignored.
Because he’s <whisper> Catholic. </whisper>
Rossi is the kind of priest who just might be able to save the Roman Catholic Church here. Brazil has more believers than any other country, but the church has been steadily losing members to evangelical denominations.
I particularly enjoy the LAT’s insistence on viewing the Church as a corporation, competing for market share against its rival Pepsi, I mean, evangelical denominations. They just can’t seem to understand that no, the Pope doesn’t plan on changing religious doctrine in order to “attract new members”. It ain’t the latest in hi-def TVs; it’s the Word of God.
Creative worship? What’s that?
Wait a minute…the Pope “stresses traditional dogma”? Stop the presses!
Here’s a news flash; traditional Protestant Denominations are losing membership at an steady rate.
To suggest that here or elsewhere the problem can be defined by generalized terms like “creative worship” constitutes lazy journalism, a practice all too common in religious reporting in general and Cathilic reporting in particular. The challenges are far more complex and, in some ways, far more simple.
The whys are deeply rooted in the individual. Some gravitate towards non-denominational churches due to issues of dogma, whether they’ve rejected the liturgical and hierarchical structures of Catholicism or the perceived falling away from essential tenets and the common emotionless nature of mainstream protestant worship. Some people are drawn to “worship entertainment” where the bands are smokin’ and the priest/pastor jumps and leaps and raises the rhetorical flourishes to Jacksonian levels.
It is patently unfair (I write this as a former Catholic) that the Catholic Church gets singled out for this sort of “dogma crisis” when the question has been asked for hundreds of years by all manner of Christian believers. What many on the left and most of the MSM fail to understand is that the Catholic church is not monolithic in its membership. There are individuals and various groups within the church. The last time I checked, despite some outcries from the fringes, the church hasn’t been wholesale condemning as heretics Catholics Pro Life or any number of other organizations in opposition to the churche’s stated doctrines. Dogma is just one of the elements. Too many “Da Vinci Codes” and other mass media creations have fed the myth of the Catholic Church as some kind of serpentine organization continuously engaged in intrigues and machinations designed to extend its power over all!
You see, no one would accept the idea of a “shadowy Presbyterians” secret society, unless they were Masons.
BWAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Oddly enough, almost as fast as they abandon traditional Protestant Doctrines, much as the Episcoplians are trying to become the C of E light, while the C of E is apparently trying to become, well, not a Church anymore…
Which is exactly the narrative that the MSM is not interested in writing. There has been a significant movement of Reform Christians away from traditional denominations to unaffiliated, conservative (dare I say fundamentalist for fear of being labeled a “theocrat”?) fellowships that stress essential tenets and non-traditional worship. The style may draw some but many others are changing to seek the traditional Christian doctrines that they see are under scrutiny or outright attack within the “name” protestant churches.
It is the meme of the press to provide a paradox in the hope that we won’t notice. They would have you believe that church membership is down precisely because more “enlightened” individuals are rejecting organized religion while, at the same time, would declare a clarion call about the rise in scary “right wing evangelicals” who wish to religisize the country Taliban style.
Catholics tend to work within their denomination because of their traditional acceptance of the church’s role, even if they have specific complaints about particular doctrines (abortion, females in the priesthood, etc.) The events in Brazil seem to me a logical progression of increased Reform missionary work in that country, not necassarily a wholesale condemnation of doctrine or style.
but that opinion doesn’t fit the narrative of a church in crisis lead by an unblinking idealogue with Nazi roots. Sensationalism trumps critical reporting once again.
The Epsicopalian leadership is a political pressure group interested in social justice (whatever that is) rather than actual religion.
Mikey NTH;
They are not alone. I spent an excrutiating 15 minutes sitting through a presentation on Global Warming from a woman who was bravely holding back tears and begging churches to hold community screenings of the Goracle’s movie. This was at a regional Presbyterian meeting. Yup, she was on the agenda, categorized under “Social Justice.”
During the wailing I asked my pastor to take my wallet and be prepared to jam it between my teeth in case I had a Grand Mal seizure. Then the guy next to him talked up the delights of “barbequed penguin.” We collapsed into giggles which, being as we were seated in the front row, was quite rude.
It’s entirely possible the presenter is not praying for us…
Some Catholics postulate that Pope Benedict’s enthusiastic, public support of the “Classical” – otherwise popularly known as the Tridentine – Mass will refresh the sense of sacred that the dried-up, quasi-Protestant Novus Ordo removed from the liturgical life of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, which suffered no similar reforms, has an elaborate liturgy that beautifully celebrates the mystery of the Divine Presense in the Blessed Sacrament. There are a number of new Eastern Orthodox dioceses in the U.S. and they are growing. EO teachings do not diverge significantly from RC doctrines, save one or two biggies.
By the way the Roman Catholic Church is growing, stateside, though slowly.
How dare the Pope have a different view of the role of the Church than the writers at the LA Times ?! Oh, the humanity.
And don’t get me started on Greenwald/Elleson/puppet …
Wait… we aren’t?
Damn. And here I was all excited about being part of a group with murderous albino monks.
(Actually, Lileks said it best in just a brief aside: the media, it seems, is appalled that the Pope is actually acting like a Catholic.)
“God is tops! God is tops!â€Â
GOD = DOG
TOPS = SPOT
So, after all these years I realize that “See Spot Run” was a christianist attempt to subvert my elementary school education and indoctinate me.
Separation of Church and State indeed!
early68; more likely late in ‘64.
estaban:
Now.You.Must.Die.
(heh)
Send in the albino monks.
Ninja albino Templar monks.
You never see them because they are so good.
Then how do you know they’re albino?
feh! is there any other kind?
Shhh!
Um, because they, um, shed that white hair doing the ninja moves! Yeah, that’s it! Tonsure schmonsure–they’re going bald!
S