Oh, no! The NeoCATHS are coming!

I am so glad I put Northwestern Winds in my blogroll, because when I saw he had something “new” up, I clicked and found Curt’s fisking of a really bilious bit of writing by one Joseph S. O’Leary, a fellow mightily offended that the incessant naval-gazing meddling of what he calls “educated baby boomers” were bypassed by JPII (whom he implies was a Monster of Ego) in favor of eternal truths. He is offended that all of these decades of deconstruction have not resulted in the complete Church-of-Englandization-Modernization of the Roman Church.

Mostly O’Leary seems to be offended because the kids – the “JPII generation”- are actually alright. That they’re not full to the brim with existential and sacramental angst, but rather are seeking to replace some of the babies that the boomers threw out with the bathwater after the Second Vatican Council – a Council which, it must be said, was heavily participated in by both Popes John Paul the Great and Benedict XVI.

And it cannot be said enough that both of those holy men have spent the last 30 years trying to get the boomers to actually read the VCII documents as they were written, rather then flit about “interpreting the SPIRIT of VCII.”

And his description of “uncharitable” neoCaths is…shall we say…rather uncharitable. Majorly.

Curt fisks it here:

Intellectuals like to play with ideas but when they operate in a faith structure, there is an obligation to play with ideas in a search for truth. The faith is not a set of tinker toys to bash together in a vain effort to make sparks. Why should theology be more free form that physics? This stuff affects how people live. Getting it wrong has the potential to hurt, and to kill. JPII as Mao – get real, dude….The kids are bad because they listen to the Pope and not to “educated baby boomers.” I see why that’s not good for boomers but utterly fail to see why it’s bad for the kids.

Heh. Read it all.

It certainly does seem like the Boomers, whether in fields of politics, education or religion, are getting pretty ticked off to find that this generation isn’t buying their nihilism, deconstructionism and cynicism. But really, after a while, it does get sort of old.

Rebecca at Doxology has more. And a nicely re-done site design, too.