We are funny creatures.

The late Pope just wanted a plain tomb with no embellishments, but since that doesn’t cover adding *extra* monuments ....

I love it lol.

I would gently push back against the idea such mix & match approaches are inherently bad.

There is a coherence which comes with a living community integrating different elements, which can exceed what many singular artistic or stylistic visions ever achieve.

Always was!

(As noted famously by Edmund Burke)

My view is the idea traditions need to be continuous & unconscious is misguided.

Tradition has always been conscious, contested and included revivals of long past practices both real / imagined - It is not less authentic for all that.

For this reason, any criticism of it as pastiche, tends to be a category error in my opinion.

Liturgical art & architecture, isn't properly the work of some genius auteur, but rather the collective outcome of an incarnate community of faith across history who:

"Bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old" (Matt 13:52).

Well their memory clearly fails them.

Because the guy who was saying these things all the way until his death? He was a flaming racist.

You can (and should) talk shit about JD Vance without trying to imply he is the way he is because he's a "recent convert".

Seven years is not a neophyte. I understand it's appealing to imagine he's just too new to get it, but that's really not the issue in play.

Nordic Bishops ‘concerned’ about German Church’s synodal path - Vatican News The Bishops of Scandinavia send an open letter to the Bishops’ Conference of Germany, and express their ‘fraternal concern’ over the direction and ...

Deacon Bauerschmidt is a good guy, kinda a 1950s liberal displaced in time (as I seem to remember him once describing himself), but Varden is an old fashion orthodox conservative with a pastor's manner.

With a long track record of his theological views to boot.

www.vaticannews.va/en/church/ne...

I don't think Bishop Varden is difficult to classify theologically.

www.commonwealmagazine.org/erik-varden-...

Two themes so far from the final Synod Study Group reports:

1. Someone else should really do the study they were tasked with.

2. Recommendations which basically match existing universal law & developed world praxis.

Hard to deny its been a fairly pointless exercise.

The answer of course, which this work points to but doesn't have the courage to say, is to accept deaconesses were what we'd now call an instituted lay ministry & restore them on that basis (with whatever role is decided to be useful).

I suppose we will get there eventually.

A Vatican synodal study group again calls for someone, anyone (who isn't them), to actually do some study which produces an outcome.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. Well not that shocked.
www.synod.va/content/dam/...

I'm a little bit the opposite.

When people try to slip the same idea in, just using in-group jargon I'm inclined to find more amenable, I get even more annoyed lol. They should know better!

Eh, its just one factions preferred jargon I think, probably no better when dressed up with other language which still ultimately means right believing.

All these groups tend to think they are right about stuff after all.

Pope Leo's message to anyone who tries to outsource their thinking to AI has never been more accurate or urgent.

To misquote the saying, the seamless garment has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

To be fair, the problem here seems to be the whole "only *my* preferred priorities matter" thing almost everyone with politics poisoning does, which is a somewhat broader annoyance.

Sadly this is probably the actual reason.

(The Sec State lifers are suckers for people pretending the Holy See has more diplomatic influence than it does, & totally would have fallen for this scam, without the outrageous demand for cash).

Why is it, everytime I log in here, it feels like a whole bunch of people locked in a room with Will Stancil trying to figure out how he keeps bodying them all lol.

Generational posting.

bring back black vestments and sad hymns. so much of the American Church (Catholic and protestant) has forgotten how to mourn

I more mean, as a resource the magisterium looks to, as it answers new questions in the future.

Balthasar popped up a few times in that role under Francjs, in sometimes (to me) surprising places, whereas Rahner ... less so.

Rahner is fine.

He will probably end up having less enduring relevance than say Balthasar, despise Balthasar personally seemingly being an objectively worse / more annoying person, but 🤷‍♂️. History is a bit random like that.

Since that reference was apparently more obvious than I intended, such that someone already DM'ed me guessing the right name lol, the guy I was thinking of was Maddison Reddie-Clifford.

The guy who actually came to mind studied down here in Australia, and has since left Christianity (and social media) entirely I believe, but I'm sure you know the type?

I borrowed the screenshot, and posted it here as well, but why would be it about you?

I just know the type of guys Ratzinger was referring to.

Those who are attracted to Rahner (& Origen) b/c they are clever, interesting & bold, but when they try to copy, can only pull off the last one.

I am torn between saying you can't blame Rahner for grad-student brained idiots, and finding Rahner at fault for being the kind of thinker who attracts grad-student brained idiots.

scholars, the output is almost inevitably going to be half-baked, and the value of the theology academy's output is going to drop to nil even faster than the funding is drying up.

Which seems bad!

you the respect of not being nice about your latest / greatest idea, but by ripping it to shreds, so you can rebuild it in a way which will survive contact with all the obvious objections it might be expected to encounter.

Since without that testing within a community of

thought through.

And maybe there is a good idea underneath, but the obvious errors destroy any confidence you might have in the author, so you write them off & move on.

But these things are supposed to be cleaned up before they ever see the light of day - By colleagues who give