THE OFTEN CALLED HERETICAL generally considered ex-RC priest, John Dominic Crossan once said that for him to say he wasn't still a Catholic - though he held some deeply heterodox views from those of the official Roman Catholic Church - made about as much sense as saying he was no longer Irish. I understood what he meant, the influence of Catholic Christianity runs deep, deeper than mere belief. I have come to realize that for many Protestants their identification with the tradition they were raised in or adopted as adults can have as profoundly enduring a presence even after they have "left the church."
I never was excommunicated and if some bishop had done that to me I don't think I'd pay it any mind. There are some bishops that would bother me about more than others, some I'd be delighted to be excommunicated by because I have no respect for their Christianity or their "Catholicism." I don't think Benedict XVI doing it would bother me at all, though I don't think he much cared about what mere lay people did as long as it didn't impinge on the hierarchy that is what he really cared about. Or Women who were academic theologians, he and the JPII-BXVI crop of bishops had a thing about Women who did theology. But Catholicism doesn't belong to the bishops or even the popes, it doesn't even belong to a majority of Catholics, I don't know who it belongs to or what, exactly it is. Considering how many people it resides in I don't know how you could figure that out. I could say the same thing about what science is, though officially it is whatever scientists say it is at any given time these days anyone with a Facebook account or a position on Republican-fascist media seems to get lots of people believing being a scientist is not a requirement to get to do that.*
I'm still Catholic but I'm Catholic Plus any number of other influences over the years, Protestant, Orthodox Christian, a bit of the Syrian-Indian influence, even. Add to that Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, and a number of other religious traditions that are not "monotheistic" at least until you get beneath the surface. Rupert Sheldrake talking about the Christian Ashram in India where he lived pointed out that during mass they read from the Hindu scriptures as well as the Jewish-Christian scriptures. Asking the priest who started it how he could do that in Christian worship he answered that it was a Catholic Mass, "catholic" meaning universal you were keeping with the spirit of it by including content, I guess, instead of excluding it.
Mentioning Nostra Aetate in the post about the Chief Rabbi getting into a swivet over Pope Francis riffing off of Paul, it is just such an inclusive document noting that other religions have legitimate content to them and that it deserved the respect of Catholics, even as that document held that Catholicism was, in some ways superior - it was a huge step forward against the widespread Catholic superstition that outside of the Catholic Church there was no salvation. I don't know the extent to which that was ever really an official holding of the RC Church but lots of people believed it - and could they ever be annoying.
No. I expect if I ever have the chance of attending a Mass said by a Roman Catholic Woman Priest and if it got reported to the bishop I might be eligible for being "excommunicated" but I don't think that would ever stop me from doing it. John Dominic Crossan has, in fact, co-presided at such a mass, though I don't know what the consequences in that line were for him. The ordination of the RCWPs is as valid as that of any orthodox RC bishop, in line of apostolic succession - as they insist. It wouldn't bother me at all, I'd just keep on as I am wherever that takes me.
* The "free press" is going to get us all killed due to the enlightenment superstition that it, an artificial, human made entity, has rights such as natural creatures do, and the right to get hundreds of thousands, millions of people killed with complete freedom to do so and with complete impunity in perpetuity with the evidence that they are getting people killed being glaringly obvious and that that's a good thing because Jemmy Madison and Tommy Jefferson said so three centuries ago. The Catholic Church is faster to see its mistakes, at times, than the enlightenment. As I'll say again soon.
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