It is impossible to do for the rest of us. She makes it look very easy. She is getting paid to tell us how hard it is.
She is imitating Hermes from “Futurama”.
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I sometimes like to think about the Roman Catholic Church as being similar to any other large international corporation. And I think that fits here.
You’ve got the CEO (or Pope) at the top, and an Executive Vice President (or Bishop) in some region who isn’t following the CEO’s plans for the organization, and being publicly vocal about that disagreement with the CEO. The EVP is given the opportunity to resign and save some face - making future job prospects better. But if they don’t take the opportunity pretty quickly, they will instead be fired.
In a healthy organization, disagreements from leadership just outside the executive suite are encouraged and considered. But when that disagreement is decided by the CEO, the lower level leadership needs to get behind the chosen direction or get out.
That’s pretty much what happened here. The disagreement was made known, considered and rejected. The CEO has selected a different path for the future. Bishop Strickland needed to get behind the Pope’s choice of direction or he needed to be removed from his position.
In the words of the Knight Templar in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, “He chose poorly.”
–Peter
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Sticks in my mind there has been a severely reactionary faction in the Catholic church for a number of years. Med Gibson’s father being among them.
Of course, history is full of groups that broke away from “the church” for one reason or another. As Mark Twain said “Americans are the people with the true religion…several of them”.
Doesn’t matter how many factions there are, as long as one faction does not have the power of the state behind it, hence the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Steve…still has the Bible inscribed to him by the Baptist lodge in Kalamazoo, in 1958. It might come in handy
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Yes, there have been a number of small schismatic movements during the 20th into the 21st century. The crux for claiming “we are the true Roman Catholic Church” is possessing a duly ordained apostolic bishop with legitimate power to ordain apostolic priests. When the schismatic bishop dies the schism basically die off, because the unstated claim is that God will Preserve this Bishop until a Pope acknowledges that the Bishop is correct, because otherwise the one true eternal church has died and that is not possible.
The Texas bishop will most likely do quiet electioneering, awaiting the election of the next Pope, before going full schismatic.
david fb
Strickland isn’t a Cardinal of the Church, so he doesn’t have a vote on the next Pope.
intercst
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Noooo! You are exactly correct. Many of the Cardinals who might have backed Strickland have died or are aged out under recent reforms. But there are still a significant percentage of the college of cardinals still of voting age who were appointed by Benedict and John Paul II to maintain uncertainty as to doctrinal outcomes.
Francis is going to hang on as long as he can because he cares deeply about succession, and every year old Cardinals die or age out of voting status, and Francis can continue to appoint reformers.
The guys I know who analyze this ancient and powerful electorate think that in this last year the balance of the College of Cardinals shifted from slightly probable reform supporters to very probably reform supporters.
david fb
(Yes, I would actually like to affiliate with and support the ancient Roman Catholic church)
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