Various versions of the following commentary have appeared elsewhere. What is common to them is the looking in from the outside quality of them. While a common lament is that the Church liberalized, there is more going on than meets the eye. In the wake of Vatican II, a New York prelate was heard to have told an underling, “Now you implement it,” signaling his exasperation at the council. As many traditionalists abandoned the interior of the Church for greener pastures, the vacuum was filled as all vacuums tend to be. As has been apparent for at least a decade now, the liberals who have abandoned their leadership roles in Church theorizing that it was moving too slow or would never go far enough have had the vacuum they’ve left filled by a new generation. This ebb has resulted in some ‘ordaining’ women on riverboats or convention centers in open recognition that they are outside the Church. Likewise those who advocate for the normalization of homosexuality are finding less receptivity in the Church that will manifest itself in areas like confrontations in parochial schools on the treatment of children from homosexual couples. As with most cases of dissent, the argument is alleged to be over prudence:
The problem with Humanae Vitae is rigidity. The pontiff was correct in seeing what strange fruits the revolution would produce, but his cure was as bad or worse than the disease.
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