Michael Sean Winters at America magazine's blog, about the kerfuffle in Connecticut regarding a bill to mandate lay involvement in ecclesiastical decision-making in parishes:MacDonald’s statement said "this bill was proposed and written by a group of faithful Catholic parishioners from Fairfield County who asked the Judiciary Committee to consider giving the subject a public hearing." I wonder what criterion he used before deciding to affix the adjective "faithful" and if he thinks he is competent to make such a judgment (here).
Ah, but that statement cuts another way, doesn't it? "I wonder what criterion he used before deciding to affix the adjective 'faithful' and if he thinks he is competent to make such a judgment."
It's clearly a judgment that Winters and other centrist American Catholic bloggers think they are competent to make--and which they do make all the time, writing off millions of brothers and sisters as unfaithful. And in this instance, writing off Voice of the Faithful, for God's sake!
I wonder what criterion they're using in making such a cruel judgment. And if they are competent to make it. And if they think it serves the church well to do so. And if they think that it doesn't undermine their pontifications about catholicity and love and justice and what "we" all believe.
Addendum: I'm just now seeing Colleen Kochivar-Baker's posting at Enlightened Catholicism yesterday, re: the Connecticut legislation. It's highly insightful, as ever, and I recommend it as a complement to this posting (here).
