Bryan–Yes. And even more so with the ultra-conservative types that JPII and Ratzi the Nazi have been appointing. The pastoral types we used to get didn’t set quite such a store on their status as successors of the Apostles in their dioceses, but most of the new guys in fancy purple drag surely do! And yeah, priests also have a fair amount of leeway as long as they keep their heads down. They have to be concerned about the RCIA (not the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, or the mechanism by which adult converts are brought into the Church; I mean the Roman Catholic Intelligence Agency) sitting out in the pews with tape recorders or notepads. People seem a lot more willing to snitch to the bishop these days than they used to. I once heard a priest (newly ordained, so he may have been floundering in flopsweat, which is why I didn’t turn him in to the bish, but did mention it to his pastor) openly espouse heresy in one of his homilies (one of the Christological doctrines declared heretical somewhere back in the fifth century, though I no longer remember which one: might have been Docetism).
Jams–Yes, thanks be to God for “cafeteria Catholics” (which is pretty much all of us). The magisterium tells me I have to listen respectfully to the hierarchy, but also that I’m expected to use my own good judgement in determining the worth of what they say–and if they’re wrong, I’m not bound to obedience.
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