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Authors: William X. Kienzle
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absolutes?
Carson had found heaven on earth, and as a result of a four-or five-year meeting in Rome it had been demolished.
Arnold Carson was not amused.
Indeed, he was fighting angry.
He could have taken several tacks. He could quit Catholicism by a simple act of will. Or he could join one of the organizations spawned by and because of Vatican II, organizations for conservatives upset by the council and determined to, in effect, save the Church from itself.
There was Catholics United for the Faith (CUF). Most of the members of this organization were reasonable people, though vigilant and active. They actually pretty much played by the rules set up by the hierarchy.
One program the Catholic Church has wrestled with for the past slightly more than one hundred years is what to do with an infallible Pope when he’s not being infallible. Which is most of the time. Infallibility was defined and adopted (some would say rigged) by the First Vatican Council in 1870. Since then, arguably, there has been only one infallible pronouncement, and that was Pius XII’s regarding Mary’s Assumption into heaven.
All the other thousands of pronouncements by Popes and Popes-with-bishops fall into the category of the ordinary magisterium, or ordinary teaching office of the Church. What to do with that?
Liberal Catholics tend to regard papal pronouncements as being extremely important messages from a unique and well informed source. Only for a most serious reason would such a Catholic eventually disagree with the Pope. But such disagreement is possible.
Not so in the eyes of CUF, or, for that matter, Church law. In effect, if a Catholic disagrees with the ordinary magisterium, he’s not excommunicated; he’s just wrong. And he is advised to go away and pray a while until he sees the light.
Arnold Carson gave CUF a shot and found it inadequate. All very well to write letters to newspapers, call radio talk shows, and argue at meetings. But Carson found such comparative inaction frustrating. He had always believed one had to hit something to get its attention.
So Carson joined the Tridentine Society, so-named for the Latin word for Trent, as in the Council of Trent, Catholicism’s legislative response to the Reformation. Trent ( A . D . 1545-1563) was the precursor to Vatican I.
The Tridentines were so much in sync with Carson’s makeup that in no time he became their leader. Under him they became, though small, yet, as they say in sports parlance, a force to be reckoned with.
Arnie Carson was not the type of general to position himself at the rear of the troops and send orders to the front. He was always in the vanguard—as he had been this evening at the funeral home.
On short notice, only Carson and his two most faithful lieutenants, Dwight Morgan and Angelo Luca, were able to assemble less than peaceably outside the Ubly Funeral Home, wherein Helen Donovan’s wake was to be held.
The Tridentines had carried hastily and crudely made signs communicating the general theme that the archdiocese of Detroit equated whores and nuns. And that Cardinal Boyle’s message to his flock was to “Live it up and whore.”
They had done their very best to be obnoxious to the clergy and religious, who tried without much success to ignore them. Father Cletus Bash had phoned his civic counterpart, the spokesman for Maynard Cobb, mayor of Detroit. That intercession had attracted several blue-and-white police cars whose officers had orders to find some lawful way of moving the troublemakers out.
Thus when the small contingent of hookers arrived and gave as good as they got, the Tridentines—mainly Carson—transformed picketing to a contact sport, in which the police joined. The result: Morgan and Luca heeded the police invitation to “Drag ass outta here!” Carson chose to challenge the order and thus capped the evening in Detroit Memorial Hospital with a banged-up cheek and a cut lip.
Carson had been stitched up and left in the cubicle
Carson had found heaven on earth, and as a result of a four-or five-year meeting in Rome it had been demolished.
Arnold Carson was not amused.
Indeed, he was fighting angry.
He could have taken several tacks. He could quit Catholicism by a simple act of will. Or he could join one of the organizations spawned by and because of Vatican II, organizations for conservatives upset by the council and determined to, in effect, save the Church from itself.
There was Catholics United for the Faith (CUF). Most of the members of this organization were reasonable people, though vigilant and active. They actually pretty much played by the rules set up by the hierarchy.
One program the Catholic Church has wrestled with for the past slightly more than one hundred years is what to do with an infallible Pope when he’s not being infallible. Which is most of the time. Infallibility was defined and adopted (some would say rigged) by the First Vatican Council in 1870. Since then, arguably, there has been only one infallible pronouncement, and that was Pius XII’s regarding Mary’s Assumption into heaven.
All the other thousands of pronouncements by Popes and Popes-with-bishops fall into the category of the ordinary magisterium, or ordinary teaching office of the Church. What to do with that?
Liberal Catholics tend to regard papal pronouncements as being extremely important messages from a unique and well informed source. Only for a most serious reason would such a Catholic eventually disagree with the Pope. But such disagreement is possible.
Not so in the eyes of CUF, or, for that matter, Church law. In effect, if a Catholic disagrees with the ordinary magisterium, he’s not excommunicated; he’s just wrong. And he is advised to go away and pray a while until he sees the light.
Arnold Carson gave CUF a shot and found it inadequate. All very well to write letters to newspapers, call radio talk shows, and argue at meetings. But Carson found such comparative inaction frustrating. He had always believed one had to hit something to get its attention.
So Carson joined the Tridentine Society, so-named for the Latin word for Trent, as in the Council of Trent, Catholicism’s legislative response to the Reformation. Trent ( A . D . 1545-1563) was the precursor to Vatican I.
The Tridentines were so much in sync with Carson’s makeup that in no time he became their leader. Under him they became, though small, yet, as they say in sports parlance, a force to be reckoned with.
Arnie Carson was not the type of general to position himself at the rear of the troops and send orders to the front. He was always in the vanguard—as he had been this evening at the funeral home.
On short notice, only Carson and his two most faithful lieutenants, Dwight Morgan and Angelo Luca, were able to assemble less than peaceably outside the Ubly Funeral Home, wherein Helen Donovan’s wake was to be held.
The Tridentines had carried hastily and crudely made signs communicating the general theme that the archdiocese of Detroit equated whores and nuns. And that Cardinal Boyle’s message to his flock was to “Live it up and whore.”
They had done their very best to be obnoxious to the clergy and religious, who tried without much success to ignore them. Father Cletus Bash had phoned his civic counterpart, the spokesman for Maynard Cobb, mayor of Detroit. That intercession had attracted several blue-and-white police cars whose officers had orders to find some lawful way of moving the troublemakers out.
Thus when the small contingent of hookers arrived and gave as good as they got, the Tridentines—mainly Carson—transformed picketing to a contact sport, in which the police joined. The result: Morgan and Luca heeded the police invitation to “Drag ass outta here!” Carson chose to challenge the order and thus capped the evening in Detroit Memorial Hospital with a banged-up cheek and a cut lip.
Carson had been stitched up and left in the cubicle
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