Breath-taking... (News Stories)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Wednesday, April 07, 2010, 12:13 (1142 days ago) @ Paul

Paul, this is breath-taking. I have long been suspicious of all the so-called New Movements encouraged by the late JPII. I suspect this is not the only New Movement that is going to eventually end up under intense scrutiny in that blinding light that history eventually sheds on the past. What is unfolding now even puts Benedict's reluctance to respond in an appropriate way in his Pastoral to the Irish People in a new light. This single article is another major turning point in the events of recent weeks. This is now not only about the Legionaries — it's about the behaviour of the men in very high places on the receiving end of Maciel's largesse. The comment from the Vatican's official excorcist a few weeks ago about the extent of corruption at the centre of the institution takes on a whole new meaning.

What I find breath-taking is these rich-as-all-get-out lay Catholics but as totally dumb-as-f*ck people who are taken in by all this and who over the centuries are the ones who fund this mess. I have long believed there is a culture of worship of mammon in the institution — even down at our sort of level. I've told the story in my own family of a bachelor uncle who left his entire estate to the institution and that secured the presence of an Archbishop at his funeral. His brother, my father, who was effectively head of the family, and who left $5,000 to the institution, didn't even get a letter of thanks and I struggled to find a priest to actually officiate at his funeral. That uncle had long been seen in my family as "the odd one" or the nutter, God rest his soul. None of the real 'saints' amongst my fathers' brothers and sisters are going to get an archbishop at their funerals.

Various groups around the world keep talking about a boycott of the collection plate. It ain't gunna work. Just look at the huge exit out of the pews in the last half century — which effectively amounts to a massive "boycott of the Sunday collection plate": Has it made the slightest of difference to those who run the institution? The answer is no. And the reason it is "no" is because of the massive inflow of funds down through the centuries from these really quite dumb lay people who have happened to be blessed with making a huge pile and who leave a substantial proportion of it to the institution. That's the "funding source" that needs to be cut off — not the Sunday collection (which largely goes to keeping the many good priests in their poverty — particularly those not blessed with large or wealthy congregations).

Just look around society, the accumulation of wealth does not necessarily operate in direct proportion to the amount of intelligence individuals have been blessed with. That is another of the paradoxes of life that Jesus Christ came into the world to teach us in the Parable of the Talents? Some seem to have forgotten this part of the lesson.

We are now witnessing, folks, a revolution on the scale of the French and American Revolutions or the collapse of the old Soviet Empire. We sure live in interesting times.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]