The difference between real pastors…

…and the combox Inquisitors who appoint themselves as death-dealing shepherds of the flock is summed up in the difference between Cdl. George who goes on fighting the good fight and people who write things like this about him:

Oh, okay, so just because he has cancer (like millions of others…….who suffer in silence by the way) he is “gutsy”… He needs prayers but not because of cancer. Maybe God is giving him another chance to pay for his extreme neglect as a bishop. Well I am sorry he has cancer but I hope before he dies he publicly makes an effort to correct just one of the untold number of heresy in his diocese.

Can you imagine such a person actually being responsible for the pastoral care of suffering people? The whole combox contingent of self-appointed pseudo-bishops whose every response to every problem is to a) kick as many people as possible out of the Church, b) turn a deaf ear to human suffering, and c) bayonet their own wounded troops only serves as a sharp reminder of how just plain smart Christ was to create a magisterial and hierarchical Church.

We complain, and rightly so, about the sheer folly of the episcopacy in handling the Scandal. And yet look at the astounding stupidity and crudity of the sort of people most eager to vote themelves into the papacy from among us laity. If the Combox Inquisition were allowed to run the Church for a single year it would be a smoking ruin. I’m no clericalist. But neither do I think that we laity should be too smug about our supposed Wisdom of the Common Man. It was the Common Man who shouted “Give us Barabbas!” and pressed down upon the Sacred Head a crown of thorns. Sure we can produce simple shepherds and the honest ordinary folk that Christ blessed. But we also produce brutes and stupid mobs who can leap from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify!” with scarcely a movement of the gray matter. Cdl. George needs prayers, not this kind of brain-dead Inquisition.