I used to quip, when I was in college, that I was going to give up my faith for Lent. Elie, who seems to be turning the weeping and gnashing of teeth over matters of faith into a cottage industry, apparently takes such a notion seriously. He is another Catholic who seems to suffer from historical amnesia (see Ho-hum …). Church history offers an abundance of examples of corruption, confusion, and mismanagement, to say nothing of downright demonic cruelty. Elie, and many others apparently, seem to think that the invention of some vaguely imagined ecclesiastical democracy will exert a salubrious influence over Church affairs. They forget that the Pope himself is merely a stand-in for the One Who really runs the institution, namely, God. The Church is what it is because God has let it be that way. Just as He lets you and me and everybody else be whoever it is we happen to be.
Elie's article is bizarre. He assumes that only he and Stephen Colbert (!) properly entertain their doubts; that Catholics know nothing about other religions; that Catholics are reluctant to leave; and that his own "calling" (which is so directionless that it runs the gamut from Islam to Episcopalianism, as if a guy who writes about faith for a living doesn't know what these other religions have to offer) should be the exemplar for the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteOf course, he knows his audience for that piece, and it ain't Catholics.