I really want to believe this is true. Based on a Toronto Star article, Lifesite is reporting that the Ontario Bishops will be scolded at their Ad Limina visit to Rome next month. The Ad Limina visit is a trip bishops take periodically to give news to the Pope and to receive a message from him.
It's hard not to be jaded when you're an orthodox Catholic. I thought with the election of Pope Benedict XVI, there'd be some serious butt kicked in the Church. Well, I was so very wrong.
The Star cited Pope Benedict’s admonition to the Atlantic bishops in the spring during their ad limina, about the need to evangelize and the dangers of rampant Canadian secularism, a statement which was taken in the press as a public dressing down.
Some adominition! It's the same old Vatican-style platitudes. When is someone in this Church going to tell it straight? Madonna stages a stunt, and she gets threatened with excommunication, the bishops don't preach Catholic doctrine and they get a limp-wristed "admonition?"
Here's another good little tidbit:
Canada's liberal Church establishment is exceptionally skilled at playing the game with Rome. They know how to lie low and say the right things and make the right public statements to convince the Curia that things aren't really so bad in Canada. They are also very adept--networking with certain Curial officials of like mind in Rome--in getting their own kind to be appointed new bishops to perpetuate the liberal, dissident hegemony in Canada.
That about sums it up. How is it that bishops in Canada are red in the face at all the abominations going on? I'm talking among the faithful!
Still, Pope Benedict has given new hope that the Catholic Church in Canada may finally be saved from its self-inflicted death spiral due mostly to the negligence, lack of courage, chronic dissent, or in many cases, serious corruption of its leaders.
Wishful thinking. The best predictor of future results is past results. If what he said to the Atlantic Bishops amounts to an "admonition", forget it. It's the same old crap that went on during Pope John Paul's papacy.
Some have unfortunately responded to bishops’ negligence or complicity with counterproductive, knee-jerk, angry communications which only entrench bad leadership attitudes
Who? Who is angry? Who is being "counter-productive"? Who is speaking up at all?
I wish the Pope would hear us and kick some ass. I really would. A good shepherd bongs his sheep on the head when they go astray.
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