From: ewanco@MLO.DEC.COM (Eric James Ewanco)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Subject: Re: The Gospel
Date: 17 Nov 92 20:24:45 GMT
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Excerpts from christia: 17-Nov-92 Re: The Gospel Jesse@LSUVM.BITNET (308)

> Dear Eric ;

> One query : "If Rome was all THATupset over the liberal RCism in
> America, then WHY don't they just put America under the "Interdict"
> until the US gets into shape?"  Looks like Rome is tolerating it all
> pretty well in stride to me. I hear no threats at this time looming on
> the horizon.

Huh? What do you mean "put American under the 'Interdict'"?  It's not
that simple, because it is the laity and priests who are getting
corrupted, and not so much the bishops, although bishops have received
reprimands from Rome.

Nevertheless, you can really only reprimand someone for teaching what is
false, not for not teaching what is true.  That is, the church can't
discipline someone for boring, content-free sermons.  The church can
only take action when a clear and present dangerous doctrinal error
arises.  The Vatican has been more than stern regarding homosexuality,
abortion, female priests, and contraception.  The Vatican has also been
stern concerning liberation theology in South America.  Matthew Fox has
been reprimanded for his heresies.  And if you read what the Pope
writes, you'll find some very enlightening things, from condemnation of
materialistic excesses, to exhortations for the preservation of human
rights, to cautions regarding movies and television, and so forth.

I'd venture to say that you don't really keep up with what's coming out
of the Vatican. There is plenty of condemnation in general of modernism
and the attitude of the American church, but heresy is a squishy element
that is hard to eradicate.  First of all, most of the error comes from
the laity -- Rome has little direct control over the laity, nor should
it.  The priests are failing to stay in touch with what the laity really
believe in order to work to correct errors.  The next largest set of
errors come from the priests.  The priests are the bishop's
responsibility to reprimand, not Rome's.  Unfortunately the bishops
often enough don't have time to keep tabs on all the priests to find out
what they teach.  Imagine the time and effort it would take to monitor
the teaching of each and every priest in your diocese.  You would need
to have someone attend their sermons! So, often it's a case of the
bishops failing in their responsiblity to monitor the priests -- again
not really something Rome can condemn, because it's not heresy, just bad
pastoring.  (Few if any of the bishops would advocate heresy -- the
problem is that they aren't doing their job.)  Even if a bishop turned
heretic, he's smart.  No American bishop is going to be stupid enough to
publicly declare defiance to Rome. And when confronted, he's going to
equivocate and falsely recant or whatever. Besides that, reprimanding a
bishop is a serious matter which requires careful investigation.

If you think that the Vatican is so in control that it has the names and
address of every Protestant in a computer file, that it has bugs planted
in each and every church, and that it can control the whole church
bureaucracy by fiat, I'm afraid you're mistaken.  The matter is just
more complicated than you would suggest.

Eric
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