Depressed

It is hard to watch the debacle going on at the formerly Catholic Notre Dame University. It has gotten to the point that if you do not want to make "accommodations" with the most extreme of pro-abortion agendas, well, the president of Notre Dame will call you a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nice.

I suppose I shouldn't be depressed by this turn of events. After all, it isn't as if I didn't predict them in a sense. In the second post I ever wrote for this blog I noted the following:

The object of this kind of writing, from... liberal Catholics... seems to be [the creation of] a Catholic church that will be safe for the party platform of the Democratic party. Indeed, it is hard to distinguish where the one ends and the other begins. This need to "update" the Catholic church so that it is nearly identical with this or that contemporary political ideology troubles me. I feel the church plays a much more important role as a counter-cultural force. The church is supposed to represent eternal truths, not this decades fashions. Historically the church has gotten itself into trouble by being too of its time, not too little. The sad history of popes as petty tyrants playing out their games of political power is not a pretty one. But it is a history that will be repeated if the church gets involved in remaking itself in the image of our contemporary political institutions. However, the drive that impels the [liberal Catholics] of this world is strong. Anyone who opposes their vision is for them, well, a Nazi.

And, in the short run, I think [they] will win. That is why I consider myself a "partial Catholic." The wind has been blowing cold for some time. The church will be fundamentally altered in my lifetime, and the post Vatican II church in all its successes and failings, will cease to exist. So I keep my distance. It would be too painful for me to be a full blown Catholic.

And, a little over two years ago I noted the following in a discussion about the troubles in the Episcopal church:

The reason I'm interested in this sad spectacle is I'm sure this is exactly how things will play out in the Catholic Church once the "progressives" reach the majority. This movement represents the complete politicization of religion. By that I mean, this is the strongest expression of the belief that political ideology, of the "correct" sort, is the preeminent "moral" principle by which every category of human existence must be measured. Therefore everything, including religious beliefs, must be made subservient to ideology. It was once said that the Catholic Church made philosophy the handmaiden of theology. Well, the Episcopal Church is now attempting to make theology, political ideology's bitch.

Could the sad spectacle going on in Indiana be viewed as anything else but the movement of such an ideology into the "mainstream" of "Catholic" thought? I really don't see how it could be viewed as anything else.

I knew it would happen.

Somehow it isn't comforting.