God as underachiever

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Oct 02, 2006

Dawn Eden caught Mass at St. Ignatius Loyola Church on Park Avenue yesterday. Younger Manhattanites tend to be rigid followers of the strict Vatican line, as you know, especially on matters pertaining to human sexuality. So how did the homilist "challenge" his congregation? How did he push them to look beyond their comfortable ultramontanist prejudices (it was Respect Life Sunday, remember)? Well, by confronting and shaking-up their notorious liberal yuppie bias in favor of Ordinatio sacerdotalis and the all-male priesthood.

Eden eviscerates Father's foppish theology:

The Jesuit then namechecked those priests who had influenced his call to the priesthood -- but another great influence upon him was his mother, he said, a point which led into a call for the ordination of women. Isn't it a tragedy, he suggested, when a woman who is called by the Holy Spirit has to leave her church in order to follow that call?

In other words, in Father Hallinan's view, the Holy Spirit calls certain women to leave the Church. Put another way, it calls the women to a vocation which it has not authorized those in the Vatican to enable. What a pathetic thing the Holy Spirit must be, in Father Hallinan's view, that it has only enough power to sway the odd female here and there -- and has such weak and occasional influence over the Magisterium.

Bull's eye.