Pontiffs and pontificators

Maureen Mullarkey’s characteristically vivid comments on Pope Francis and the environment have drawn much attention from participants in the Internet Francis Wars. One big reason is that her comments sometimes go beyond the vivid to the caustic (“press toads,” “ideologue,” “meddlesome egoist,” “megalomania”). Another is that they were made on her blog at First ThingsMore ...

Another explanation of the Vatican II debacle

A correspondent forwards the following:

Another problem for which Vatican II was responsible is what one might call the gentrification of Catholic culture. The fact that Europe’s working classes had largely abandoned Catholicism by the late 1950s enabled Vatican II to concentrate on constructing an essentially middle-class model of what it is to be Catholc.

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