Holy Week, When Authority Is the Villain - By Charles P. Pierce

[kpete]

Holy Week, When Authority Is the Villain
By Charles P. Pierce
at 4:50PM

Oh, lord, I see where the incumbent resident of the Chair of Peter is running his yap again:

Pope Benedict XVI has denounced priests who have questioned church teaching on celibacy and ordaining women, saying Thursday they were disobeying his authority to try to impose their own ideas on the church. Benedict made the rare and explicit criticism from the altar of St. Peter's Basilica in his homily on Holy Thursday, when priests recall the promises they made when ordained...In his homily, Benedict said the dissidents claim to be motivated by concern for the church. But he suggested that in reality they were just making "a desperate push to do something to change the church in accordance with (their) own preferences and ideas...We would like to believe that the authors of this summons are motivated by concern for the church, that they are convinced that the slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order to open up new paths and to bring the Church up to date," he said. "But is disobedience really a way to do this?"

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Authority is the villain during Holy Week. Secular authority, in the person of Pontius Pilate. Religious authority, in the institution of the Sanhedrin. What matters most throughout the season is the individual conscience. As Garry Wills never tires of pointing out, Christ did not make priests. He did not make a Church. And he sure as all hell didn't make a Pope, draped as the office is with the sad detritus of medieval royalty. What the pope said in his homily above has no basis in the gospels of the season. Christ does not ask his disciples to be "radically obedient." He washes their feet and tells them, according to the Gospel of John.

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What stands out in the Holy Week services is humility in the face of unreasoning authority. What stands out, ultimately, and whether you believe in the Resurrection or not, or think the whole thing is a bunch of hooey imported from the Egyptian mystery cults or somewhere, is that, in the story of Easter week, unreasoning authority loses. It loses badly. It makes a fool and a scandal of itself through the ages, so resoundingly that we eventually had ourselves a Reformation, and the secular explosion against unreasoning authority that came after it in Scotland, and France, and, most important to us, in the British colonies of North America.

Sometimes, I think I stay in the church just to be one of the stubborn people who say this stuff. Anyway, Happy Easter to y'all.


Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/holy-week-authority-7893248#ixzz1rMVr5Spm

[bemildred]

1. Authority is always the villain.

One thing the hippies had absolutely right.

[SharonAnn]

2. I pointed out to an aquaintance who "loves" conservatives and "hates" liberals

that he actually "loves" liberals.

I pointed out that:

In the American Revolution, it's the liberals who won our independence from the British. The conservatives were royalists.

In the movie "It's a Wonderful Life", Potter is the conservative and the Jimmy Stewart character is the liberal.

In the death of Christ, it's the conservatives (Romans and Sanhedrin) who get together to kill Christ. It's the liberals who are Christ, the apostles, and their followers.

It enraged him. I thought his mind was going to explode.

[bemildred]

3. Good work.

[Moostache]

4. Love it....thanks for sharing the story.

I usually make those kind of comparisons to my wing-nut brother-in-law when he starts railing about Obamacare, Democrats or Social Security.

Facts do not work on Repubs...they live in a fact-free bubble and are conditioned to see "liberal bias" whenever their beliefs are challenged.

However, emotions - especially ones that firmly place their cherished core beliefs in perspective and show the heartlessness and cold-blooded nature of them - DO work. Usually they become angered - which is the usual response from ALL emotionally immature people....when confronted with the hard truth, being defensive and angry is the reaction...followed by the silent treatment. But in the end, when you hit a Rethug in the face with their own hate, they are left quite bewildered...what we need is a mechanism to pull them out of the fact-free, reinforcing bubble and allow them to have to face the real light of day with their evilness and greed.