Bethune Catholic

A friend loaned me their copy of "The Restoration of Christian Culture" by John Senior (Roman Catholic Books). I have heard of it, seen it quoted, and now am looking forward to reading it. (Actually I couldn't wait and started it last night...)

This interview with John Allen on his new book about Opus Dei is getting alot of play around St. Blogs. The particular section getting the most comments is this one:

At the same time, I think we're still far too divided. Perhaps the more sociologically accurate thing to say is that we've got multiple, co-existing "catholicisms". When you look around at the Catholic scene, you see that you've got your traditionalist-liturgical Catholics, your social justice Catholics, your charismatic Catholics, your neo-conservative, intellectual Catholics, your Church reform Catholics, and others. They all speak their own language, go to their own meetings, read their own publications, think their own thoughts. If they ever pop their head up above the walls to look at somebody in another circle, it's often not with a genuine interest in the thought of the other. It's with what you might call a "hermeneutic of suspicion". "I'm not really sure where this person is coming from and I'm not really sure if we're on the same team."

It's tragic that American Catholics spent the first part of the 20th century crawling out of the ghetto imposed on us by a hostile Protestant majority, but that now we've constructed our own ghettos. They're defined not by denominational boundaries, but by ideological ones. This isn't just distasteful on an aesthetic level, but ecclesiologically it's deeply unsatisfactory. We're supposed to be a community of communities—that's what communio ecclesiology is, to which John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been so valiantly trying to call us.

Caelum et Terra takes the view: "Now, I think there are in fact very good reasons underlying a lot of this, chiefly the presence of so many people, including people in authority, in the Church who pretty obviously don't believe some of the core teachings. But it's gotten way out of hand."

Over at Amy Welborn's site there are 130 comments and counting.

I could comment on all this, but to what end? I believe Caelum et Terra has a great point (both that there are good reasons and that it is out of hand). Hopefully with respect to Opus Dei, Mr. Allen's book will take away some of the bigotry and suspicion in this case.

Hopefully more to come later-I have an appointment with Someone important....