Turning back the clock

Because of the winter weather I've had a bit more time on my hands than usual. Youjae (babies dad) is a painter and if the temperature falls too low the paint won't key, and if it's too damp, it won't dry. The last two weeks have been a combination of both factors, so he's become an honorary Grandparent and taken over much of Sujins routine. This leaves me free to, well - free, which as you will see from my last few postings, has given me time to catch up on world news.

Perhaps the most interesting story I've unearthed this week, as it was not a lead story anywhere, concerned Pope Benedict. As you may recall he managed, single handed to put the Church off-side with the entire Muslim world very early in his pontificate. He did however, God bless him, have the grace to
apologise (saying he was misunderstood) but this week, as he left his Vatican office for a two week summer holiday in the Italian mountains, he dropped another series of clangers. These however were much better than the Muslim one. In one or two short statements he managed to estrange himself from Catholics, Protestants, the Jewish community and 'liberal Catholic feminists' (I use the term in jest): Not bad for a weeks work.

Here's how it happened. Catholics, it seems, were upset by his approving, against the advice of his own Bishops, a return to the Latin (Tridentine Rite) mass, Protestants by him issuing a statement that Jesus Christ came not to save all, (the post Vatican II belief of the church) but simply, many, the pre 1960's position that only Catholics were saved, and Jews by the attitude the Good Friday Tridentine liturgy has to their involvement in Jesus death. Catholic women were quick too to notice the newly revised Roman Missal banning attributing any feminine characteristics/qualities to God either in the liturgy or in the choice of hymns.

Rolling back the clock on the Churches ecumenical and interfaith commitments is one thing, but the question in my mind is this. Will modern day First World Catholics, follow him back to model of church that denied their involvement as anything more than simply a passive audience to something set in a cultural climate of the 1940.s - 50's, or will this be the crack that will eventually split the dam?

As I heard it put earlier this week, 'nothing we can do will ever change the past, but everything we do will effect the future.