99% pure [bunk]
By Phil Lawler | July 18, 2012
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=361
Speaking to the National Council of Priests of Australia, Father Timothy Radcliffe, the former worldwide head of the Dominican order, said that the Church should embrace the modern world [ www.standard.net.au/news/local/news/general/priest-says-catholic-church-needs-to-embrace-outside-world-not-fear-it/2627642.aspx ], enjoying such developments as the acceptance of homosexuals and the debate on women’s ordination. (He suggests, as a “starting point,” the ordination of women as deacons.)
Naturally, the popular speaker was expected to comment on one very unpopular recent development:
He said priests had been associated with an “image of false impurity” as a result of sex abuse scandals.
I beg to differ. The image may have been false, but the impurity was all too real.
But if what Father Radcliffe meant to say was that innocent priests have been falsely portrayed as impure, the remedy is surely a more conspicuous effort to protect and promote purity. Which, in a sex-saturated society, definitely does not mean a rush to embrace the popular culture.
If memory serves, Radcliffe is a successor to DiNoia as supreme poobah over what was- once upon a time and in an ecclesia far, far away – a great glory of the Church, the Ordinis Praedicorum.
While there remain exemplary Catholics in the Order, its ethos has been gravely debased. And, in extreme cases, sodomites have been held up as model citizens, with feminazis running a close second.
Nevertheless, look for an important post for Raddy, somewhere, some day, inside a little city state in sunny Nova Roma. He’d fit perfectly onto the short list of “irresistibly progressive” hermenutical bobbleheads on the way up in this pontificate!
Ciao, bella! And-a pass-a di valpolicella? Grazie!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRsoaDcyLDE
DiNoia was never the Master of the order; nor has he ever served as provincial. You may be thinking of a “Catholic World Report” article from a few years ago which mentioned that In 1997 DiNoia was elected as provincial and Radcliffe, at that time Master of the order, nullified the election.
Merci!
Fr. Radcliffe has been on his way down rather than up in the Domincans (as well as in the Church) since his single term as Master (head) of the order from 1992 until 2001. Archbishop DeNoia has never held that position in the order and most likely never will because of his advancement to the episcopacy and in the Vatican bureaucracy.
A recent putdown to Fr. Radcliffe:
Vatican stops Fr Timothy Radcliffe from speaking at Caritas meeting
By Deacon Nick, on May 24th, 2011
protectthepope.com/?p=3117
In a further move to re-assert the Catholic identity of Caritas Internationalis the Vatican has stopped Fr Timothy Radcliffe, the former General Secretary of the Dominicans, from speaking at the General Assembly of the Catholic development agencies. Fr Radcliffe is well known for his liberal positions on morality, including his public opposition to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.
According to The Tablet, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe was set to deliver the keynote opening address Monday and had already prepared his talk.
Instead of Fr Radcliffe, Cardianl Bertone, the Secretary of State of the Holy See, gave the key note speech in which he emphasized the importance of Catholic development agencies being true to their Catholic identity and morality in their charitable work:
‘A humanitarian assistance which would habitually prescind from its Christian identity, adapting a ‘neutral’ approach seeking to please everyone, would risk, even in cases where it obtained its immediate goals, failing to offer men and women a fine service consonant with their full dignity. Thus, even without wishing to do so, they would eventually foster in those whom they assist a materialistic mentality which the latter would then bring to other relationships and to their approach to social issues. In a word: the Church must not only practice charity, but practice it as Christ did.’
Protect the Pope comment: The banning of Fr Timothy Radcliffe, and his replacement by Cardinal Bertone, when seen in the context of the Holy See stopping the re-appointment of the ex-CAFOD liberal Mrs. Lesley-Anne Knight to the post of Caritas’ General Secretary shows how seriously the Vatican is taking the rampent,and often defiant, dissent among Catholic development agencies.
It is an open secret that CAFOD promotes the use of condoms and contraceptives in its development work, even though it is the official agency of the Bishop Conference of England and Wales. In the past CAFOD’s website also linked to a sexually explicit site that promoted and encouraged homosexual acts. For decades CAFOD has been pulling the wool over the eyes of ordinary Catholics in the pews by passing itself off as a Catholic development agency while at the same time deliberatly and arrogantly rejecting the sexual moral teaching of the Church.
This is a real shame, because othrwise CAFOD’s work with the poor around the world is excellent and a much needed example of Christian love. But they let themselves down by falling into the trap that so many middle-class liberals do, of thinking they know better than the magisterium of the Church, the bishops they are meant to be serving and representing.
CAFOD, and their sponsors the Bishops Conference of England and Wales, would be wise to take notice of the recent steps taken by the Holy See against dissent among the Development agencies. However,it’s more likely that they’ll take the default ‘English’ position of pretending that its got nothing to do with them, that the Holy See’s statements are about those ‘other’ Catholic development agencies.
www.lifesitenews.com/news/report-vatican-cancels-left-leaning-prelate-from-caritas-conference?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=96050c14c6-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines05_20_2011&utm_medium=email
www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=10393
Thank you, Tom, for the correction of my faulty memory. I was a tertiary, away back in the early 1990s, and did not make the final, lifelong promise to live as such after consulting with a very conservative retire diocesean priest who warned me about his own experience with off-the-reservation friars. Besides, the feministas were taking over and the EMs and charismania was getting pretty thick at Chapter Masses.
I recall that DiNoia was a major domo so it must have been as a Provincial. What turned me off was an article in which he described how much he enjoyed getting out of his Dominican habit and heading into town for a little diversion.
Anyway, the Dominican Nuns of the Perpetual Rosary in Buffalo, NY, are still most dear to me and I remain in contact with them periodically. They have allowed the NO to be in their convent but they are not OF the NO, so to speak. They are holy and magnificent religious who still chant parts of the Divine Office in Latin at the appropriate hours each day.
That said, my first couple years in the tertiary order held some fine moments but as I learned more about where the Order’s leadership was heading, it was obvious that it was not going to be anywhere I wanted to follow them.