Good Friday reflections later.
Friday, March 29
What is the point of having visitors to a parish introduce themselves? To help them feel "welcome," I suppose. To "build community." Yech. What it does is disrupt and force a false enthusiasm into the liturgy: "Oh..you're from Butte? Fabulous! Over from Terre Haute? Welcome! Wow - from Orlando, huh? Did you bring any sunshine with you?"
Gag, gag, gag. And not just because I'm an introvert.
Do you know what binds us together at Mass and as Church in general? Christ in Eucharist. That's it. No matter what we say or do, He is the one who unites us. Not facile exchanges of greetings and forced expressions of delight at a visitor's place of origin.
Crocker's successful in accomplishing what he sets out to do: produce a corrective to accounts of RC Church history that serve "liberal" agendas. In the process, however, he minimizes problems - for example, he sets the record straight on Martin Luther, who was no saint, as Catholic religious educators try to tell their students, but he seriously minimizes the very real corruption in the church of the time.
In short, he does what all apologists for Catholic sins do: he seeks to set all the questionable Catholic matters "in context", but then doesn't treat the church's opponents the same way.
It's an interesting and knotty problem, one about which I've started writing several times, but never been able to tie up: Honesty compels us to see the events of the past in their context - we can't condemn people in the past for not living up to modern standards. But then we have to ask...if the Inquisition is going to be "explained" and excused by all sorts of contextual factors related to culture, does that not leave us in the curious position of having to answer the question: Our contemporary culture says all sorts of things are correct, from artificial contraception to non-marital sex, and so on. Would not our acceptance of those behaviors as moral be nothing more than an appropriate reaction within the "context"?
In other words, if you want to excuse the Church's involvement in violence and coercion because, well..those were violent times... then what's to stop the Church from enshrining sexual irresponsiblity as moral since....well...these are sexually irresponsible times....
My other huge problem with Crocker's book is that it's primarily political - a history of the decision-makers in the institution. There's not a word about the sacramental life of the Church, very little about spirituality or anything else that's not related to guys in big robes standing up to other guys in big robes.