A Plea for Some Discernment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Clueless, discernment-free, folk hero worshipping, Church-ignoring Catholics, should really listen to Bishops like Ratko Peric, who has denounced\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2013\/01\/a-plea-for-some-discernment.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Plea for Some Discernment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Clueless, discernment-free, folk hero worshipping, Church-ignoring Catholics, should really listen to Bishops like Ratko Peric, who has denounced\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2013\/01\/a-plea-for-some-discernment.html\" \/>\n<meta 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{"id":41018,"date":"2013-01-11T00:30:57","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T07:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=41018"},"modified":"2014-12-30T02:48:54","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T09:48:54","slug":"a-plea-for-some-discernment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2013\/01\/a-plea-for-some-discernment.html","title":{"rendered":"A Plea for Some Discernment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Clueless, discernment-free, folk hero worshipping, Church-ignoring Catholics<\/a>, should really listen to Bishops like Ratko Peric, who has denounced Medjugorje saying the alleged messages contain \u201ccontradictions, falsehoods and banalities.\u201d Because you are soon going to have to listen to Rome or continue your clueless, discernment-free, folk hero worshipping, Church-ignoring cult in the teeth of her teaching. One good start is to listen to common sense <\/a>and not the rubbish of the UK media.<\/p>\n

We got lied to by Maciel and rushed to defend him. Fair enough. \u201cFool me once, shame on you.\u201d But to watch so many (though not all) \u201cfaithful conservative Catholics[TM]\u201d continue exactly the same discernment-free pattern again and again and again with Euteneuer, Corapi, Voris and above all the massive fraud of Medjugorje, endlessly treating as Folk Heroes and Anointed and Unquestionable Prophets people who range from \u201cfeet of clay\u201d to \u201cout and out frauds\u201d is just amazing to me. \u201cFool me a dozen<\/em> times, shame on me.\u201d No, not all these figures are crooks and liars (as the \u201cseers\u201d are). Some such as Euteneuer were mere men with feet of clay who\u00a0have done due diligence in submitting to their superiors after their sin. Others, such as Corapi, have betrayed their vows and abused their flock with no sign of repentance. Some, such as Voris, are not crooks, but demagogues who poison the faithful against perfectly good Catholics and fine bishops and gather a cult of personality around themselves while sowing discord and destructive party spirit (a work of the flesh, sez St. Paul).<\/p>\n

The common denominator is not that that all these unreliable Folk Heros are all committing the same sins, it\u2019s that \u201cfaithful Conservative Catholic[TM]\u201d folk hero worshippers <\/em>respond in *exactly* the same way every time one of their folk heros is very legitimately criticized: by circling the wagons and making the same stupid accusations against the critic as though he is an enemy of the faith. So we were told that critics of Maciel were enemies of the faith\u2013and then told the same things again about those who warned of the dangers of Euteneuer and Corapi.<\/p>\n

Euteneuer, we were told, was being persecuted for being a prolife Catholic.\u00a0 Turned out, not so much.<\/p>\n

Corapi was a brave truthteller baselessly persecuted by human devils bent on destroying\u00a0 a living saint.\u00a0 Actually, turned out he was a fraud who grifted his flock while inventing tales of his Green Beret\/Special Forces heroism, then betrayed his vows and held a fire sale on his priesthood when the truth closed in.<\/p>\n

Now we hear the same \u201cLiving Saint Persecuted by Forces of Evil\u201d about those who warn of Voris\u2019 McCarthyesque demagoguery as he does things like tar the bishop of Corpus Christi as a member of a gay cabal for disciplining Corapi, or tars people who receive communion in the hand with heresy, or tars the Knights of Columbus, or EWTN or the Register or Catholic News Agency as somehow being enemies of the Faith. In short, his bread and butter is not attacking progressive dissenters. It is attacking faithful Catholics and calling them<\/em> progressive dissenters<\/a>\u2013when in fact they are disobedient to no precept of Holy Church\u2013and teaching his followers to do the same.\u00a0 The focal point becomes in each case, not the Faith, but faithfulness to the Folk Hero\u2013in this case, Voris.<\/p>\n

And in exactly the same way, we are constantly instructed by Medjugorje partisans that critics of Medjugorje \u201chate our Lady\u201d (not that they hate religious charlatanism practiced in her name). The reckless and unreliable Fr. Gabriele Amorth, who is himself treated with a complete lack of discernment by his fans, despite a long history of popping off with demonstrably false and absurd claims declares that those who don\u2019t buy Medjugorje are \u201cfools\u201d<\/a> and skepticism toward this is treated, not as common sense discernment, but as dissent from the Creed by the partisans of Medjugorje. The amazing regularity with which \u201cfaithful conservative Catholics\u201d (again, not all, but an absurdly large representative sample on the Internet) keep on repeatedly exercising a sort of anti-charism of discernment in anointing Folk Heros and manage to not see the bleedin\u2019 obvious amazes me.\u00a0 We gotta do better than this and I refuse to believe we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"