Fr. McBrien and the Pope

I’ve removed the blog entry where I incorrectly equated the position of the apparently apostate priest Fr. McBrien concerning the meaning of the Mass with that of Vatican II and Pope John Paul II. Several correspondents pointed out that McBrien is a renegade and that his views are not representative of the Church. All the more shocking, then, that ABC used him as on-air commentator for the Pope’s funeral.

But even more shocking is that the fact that the Pope during his 26 year pontificate did nothing to rein in mavericks like McBrien. That a man who describes the Eucharist as a “sacrament of human community” remains a priest of the Catholic Church and remains free to appear on national television as an apparent representative of the Catholic Church is the fault of the bishops under whose authority he serves, and of the Pope under whose authority those bishops have served for the last quarter century. Various Catholics express their disgust with McBrien, while continuing to justify the Pope who allowed this state of affairs to exist. It’s the same attitude one finds in the supposedly traditionalist Catholic newspaper The Wanderer, which forever bemoans wayward U.S. dioceses while forever praising Pope John Paul II, as though he had had absolutely no responsibility for those dioceses being the way they are.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 13, 2005 09:50 AM | Send