Whose Paradigm, Which Market?

Published on by D. G. Hart

Bryan Cross is apparently pleased with Time magazine’s choice of Pope Francis as Person of 2013. His approval raises a question about whether his repeated appeal to paradigm is selective. When Protestants fail to assent to his arguments about Roman Catholic teaching, Bryan says we are not using the correct paradigm. Now when Time magazine’s editors select a pope as man of the year, does Bryan raise any question about their paradigm? Last I checked, Time was not a Roman Catholic publication (and Kenneth Woodward hasn’t worked for Newsweek for some time).

One additional curiosity surrounding this story. If you click on the video that accompanies Time‘s story (at the link above), you will see an advertisement for Kia’s new luxury sedan, the K900. So much for the magazine paying any attention to Francis’ warnings about capitalism. His annual personhood will not obstruct the global economy.

49 thoughts on “Whose Paradigm, Which Market?”

  1. I think I should return to my mother now. Francis and I share the same RC paradigm, except he’s appreciative of the sisters, I’m damaged and coping well or poorly depending on the day. I could start a blog and name it; “Called to Vatican II, the Spirit beckons(or why nobody understands Latin anymore)”- a blog dedicated to calling the prot-catholic home.

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  2. Apparently he beat out other finalists such as “gay rights activist Edith Windsor and Miley Cyrus,” so I wouldn’t give much credit to this decision by Time. What is odd though is that the likes of Bryan would approve, since the pope is recognized for the changes he is bringing to the church.

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  3. Louis, since the Callers are fundamentally homers (as in root root root for the home team), and since they are not savvy about history and its mix of outcomes, I am not sure Bryan is up to evaluating this development. Protestantism? No problem.

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  4. When appealing to the paradigm is the paradigm, it’s vicious indeed, and turtles all the way down.

    I’ll be a little honest here, I like rooting for my home team, but part of lifting up my niners (who smoked the birds this weekend, just FYI…) doesn’t entail how every other team is necessarily inferior to mine. My team has to fight to the super bowl like every other team out there. Hence, I can’t click on links to BC’s hideout online.

    But hey, he’s a propogandist and advetiser extraordinaire, to the last. I’ll let the man adore his dear leader all he wants.

    Ciao.

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  5. A little context:

    “The former Jorge Bergoglio was selected from a short list of candidates including Syrian President Bashar Assad, Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, Obama, Cruz, gay rights activist Edith Windsor, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and entertainer Miley Cyrus, all of whom, for better or worse, made top headlines in 2013.” (Newsmax)

    Yes, much more entertaining than Miley Cyrus. But the most precious moment in there must be Sebelius watchng the Obamacare website crash.

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  6. Time is only sucking up to him because they believe he will soon overturn the role of women, the rules of clerical celibacy, and the thinly veiled policy on sodomy.

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  7. From Catholic Online we have info on another candidate:

    Sebelius is a rare breed of Catholic, she has been warned by her bishop against receiving communion for her participation and advocacy in encouraging and facilitating contraceptive use, sterilizations, abortifacients, and abortions. So she has already placed herself outside of the communion of the Church by her own actions under Canon law. Her next step may be a more formal excommunication if she persists to flagrantly act against the Church she claims to belong to in the name of advancing an evil, secular agenda.

    Unfortunately, Georgetown is not such a rare breed of Catholic university, infected with the evil of moral relativism, which is common it seems in public schools, but should be unheard of in Catholic.

    Georgetown announced Sebelius’s invitation on Friday afternoon via blog post. “This afternoon,” the post reads, “Georgetown announced the speakers for each school’s commencement address. Here is the list.” Sebelius appears as number 13 on a list of 15 speakers.

    The school later clarified that she would not be speaking at a commencement where degrees would be conferred, but rather at an awards ceremony.

    Burying her name on the list and diminishing the importance of her address does little to assuage the ire of faithful Catholics who find the invitation at best to be in poor taste, if not downright infuriating.

    Kathleen Sebelius has been under fire from the Church since her days as an anti-life governor of Kansas, and later as the Secretary of Health and Human Services for President Obama. In August, she announced that nearly all health care plans would be required to provide women with sterilizations, contraceptives, abortifacients, for free.

    Such an edict flies in the face of the First Amendment, religious freedom and good sense.

    Her edict made no exception for religious institutions and individuals (it still doesn’t) thus trampling underfoot the freedom of conscience of every American — even those that would support the move. It is also an amazing feat of Orwellian doublespeak that drugs and procedures that are explicitly anti-life would be made available for free and called “health care” when if the same woman needed medication or a genuine life-saving procedure there would be at least a co-pay involved.

    We have money to kill babies, but not to heal the sick. And the agent of this evil is awarded with a red-carpet platform at a Catholic university.

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  8. MM, I never really noticed the anti-abortion crusaders as an RC. It’s not that they weren’t there, but their rise seems to have been fairly simultaneous with it’s parallel in broader evangelicalism and Schaeffer’s influence. It’s interesting how prominent the conservative-liberal divide has become, at least in RC media, since the 90’s. You just didn’t see it that much before now. It seems to be in America it’s a liberal vs. conservative struggle, with the “liberals”(could be anything from a Novus Ordo adherent-Vat II to a functioning agnostic) far outnumbering the trads. Whereas, in Europe, their battling against complete abandonment of the RC church, never mind if one is a trad or Vat IIer.

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  9. I saw a piece on the news the other night about a planned 2018 ONE WAY expedition to Mars. Supposedly, over 200,000 have signed up for the opportunity. Only four will ultimately be selected to go.

    While I still haven’t been able to reconcile how anyone in their right mind would want to volunteer for such a suicidal endeavor, I began to wonder whether they wouldn’t be better off making the selection process an “election” instead, with the likes of some of those on that Time short list as candidates (and a few other unmentionables not on the list, as well, of course).

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  10. Sean: i recall (from reading 20 years ago) that Schaeffer placed the anti-abortion movement at about 98% RC at the time of Roe v Wade, and that Evangelicals did nothing at all until the Moral Majority political movement years later.

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  11. Speaking of Georgetown and pro-abortion crusaders, anybody remember Father Drinan? Not that there are divisions within Roman Catholicism or anything.

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  12. Just ran across an interesting op-ed piece suggesting that Francis adheres to a “Peronist” Liberation Theology. For some reason I have always been fascinated with liberation theology, probably because of its unapologetic marriage of Marxism with RCism (two things I am particularly not a fan of, to say the least).

    The link might be below, if I got the html tag right.


    http://www.forbes.com/sites/alejandrochafuen/2013/12/05/pope-francis-espousing-a-peronist-rather-than-a-marxist-liberation-theology/

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  13. Kent, I don’t think I’d disagree with that necessarily. It’s just that I don’t recall it’s centrality in our piety the way it seems to be now, at least among RC trads. And I think Francis echoes that sentiment, when he shows disdain for how RC piety seems to always revolve around these ‘smaller’ issues or has become anti-this or that.

    Francis:

    “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

    “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

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  15. Kent, it would be interesting to find out, at least in the American context, how many of the RC trads are actually converts from conservative evangelicalism.

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  16. Sean, there was a phase spent thinking about moving there, but I got to some sound teaching on the Reformed side. It is a very desperate time between packing it in on E and finding P&R…

    Lots in my life have quit entirely on their faith, I try my best to let them know something much better is out there.

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  17. Kent, I can imagine. I spent about three years heavily invested in the american evangelical world and it almost made me quit the faith too. I appreciated the sincerity of those committed to it, but pretty much came to loathe everything else. Loathe may be too harsh, but I was well on my way to becoming neurotic.

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  20. Look at the other candidates on that list. Is this “Time” or “The Onion”? Why in the world would anyone celebrate this?

    When I win the “Man of the Year” award over Charles Manson and Jerry Sandusky what’s the prize?

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  24. Eric – while that song is very apropos to the subject, is there any Steely Dan song that wouldn’t be considered “really good?”

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  27. Between this thread, and the drama of Obama’s selfie, I peronally am compelled to opine and say today is a good interweb day. Also means that it’s time to turn this off, gotta end on a high note..

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  28. Speaking of CTC and their paradigms (and syllogisms), is Weird Al Yankovic still actively composing? It’d be great if he could do a parody on their paradigms and some silliness on their syllogisms (alliteration anyone?). I’ll try to get in touch with him.

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  29. “… Between this thread, and the drama of Obama’s selfie, I peronally am compelled to opine and say today is a good interweb day. Also means that it’s time to turn this off, gotta end on a high note…”

    Nothing that Larry, Curly, and Moe ever produced can top that selfie.

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  30. Or the pics following the selfie, George. Drudge report has the link from the guardian. Too much for me to handle, yo!

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  31. George & Andrew, I like the expression on Michelle’s face. Being incessantly inclined to assume charitably, I like to think she’s a bit disgusted by the selfie.

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  32. Actually, it was CNN, where it shows the prez and Michelle having switched seats. Mikel, all I can say, it’s a good interweb day. My bad for the detour, back to your regularly scheudled programming. Later peeps.

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  33. Victim of the crises Sean,

    I didn’t realize you shared the same views as Pope Francis on Vatican 2. A couple of questions

    1. Do you also find Archbishop Agostino Marchetto to be the best ever interpreter of the council?

    2. Do you also embrace the hermeneutic of continuity?

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  34. Rolling stone Kenneth, I’m certain that along with pope Paul, JPII, Benedict and Francis that the holy spirit must be the best ever interpreter of the council, right? However, apparently, according to pope Paul, he’s been stumped by the wiles of satan since 1965. Secondly, since I’m not religiously invested in any RC wish fulfillment, and can read and comprehend, I am not convinced of the HOC.

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  35. Sean,

    Wait, you mean V2 needs interpretation? But I thought V2 was the authoritative interpretation that we Protestants lack?

    In the principled paradigm of pretentious papalism.

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  36. Robert, the holy spirit, he’s a dodgy character and easily bamboozled, allegedly. Our lady of fatima is apparently a surer bet.

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  37. Victim of the Crises Sean,

    What’s all this talk about this H.S. and our Lady? I thought you guys ditched both for Luther? Or was it Calvin?

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  40. Kenneth on his walkabout, the WCF doesn’t rise to that level and self-deprecatingly acknowledges such. It’s all about subordination and humility

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  42. Hugh, I wouldn’t discredit Time’s selection. Francis has been a phenomenon (no matter how much the press has helped). I don’t mind the choice. I do mind Bryan’s selectivity.

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  45. Kenneth,

    I wouldn’t poke Sean unless you want to get your finger chewed off and spit back in your face.

    People tasked with defending all you have to defend are in no position to be snarky. Better to take a Brian Crossity approach of saying as little as possible under duress.

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  48. Better to take a Brian Crossity approach of saying as little as possible under duress.

    Hey, as long as you can’t find an explicit disavowal of the papacy, that’s enough isn’t it?

    Ah, the clarity of the “Church Christ founded”…

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