7/18/2025

 Friday, July 18, 2025

D+252/180/1281

1870 Pius IX and the First Vatican Council proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility

2024 I renewed my driver's license until 2032😱

In bed 10 after watching LO'D excoriate DJT over WSJ 'fake news' about DJT's ltr to JEpstein on his 50th birthday, up at 5:30, after a long, involved  dream set in St. Francis church with me, a new Black Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, and his young nephew.  It was like a long short story playing out in my head.    59°, high of 72°, mostly sunny, near perfect day?

TRULICITY DAY!  Injection at 7:45 a.m.  Morning meds at 8 a.m.

My FB post this morning: Today is the anniversary of the dogma of papal infallibility, proclaimed by the First Vatican Council in 1870.  I grew up with the dogma and with photographs of the dour Pope Pius XII on the walls of seemingly every Catholic classroom, rectory, convent, and diocesan office.  I'll relate a humorous story about it (to me, at least) in a moment, but first I note that perhaps what has been most persistent about this dogma have been the words in opposition to it penned by the British Lord Acton, one of the rare Catholic peers in the UK, in a letter to Archbishop Mandell Creighton:

       "I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility [that is, the later judgment of historians] has to make up for the want of legal responsibility [that is, legal consequences during the rulers' lifetimes]. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. "    

My humorous (to me) story:  My friend Katie McManus, another born-and-raised Irish Catholic, told me this tale.  She was at a party with other Catholics, and somehow the dogma of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven came up.  One of the friends said it was unbelievable.  Another pointed out that it was a dogma and belief was required of Church members, to which the sceptic replied: "Well, I may have to believe it, but I don't have to think about it."

Today I remember Katie and her sceptical friend but mostly I remember Lord Acton's "Great men are almost always bad men . . . .."  Was he too cynical, or a realist?

Le mot juste.  My eye was caught by this expression in a WaPo op-ed by Leo Hochstader, Will Pope Leo finally break the church’s cycle of denial? - A French priest, idolized for serving the poor, also victimized children. Pope Leo should take note:

". . . the depthless disgrace of priestly sexual abuse, the scandal from which the Catholic church has failed to extricate itself a quarter century after it erupted."

"Depthless disgrace."  Depthless denoting no bottom, connoting no end.  Le mot juste.  My comment in the WaPO:

PBosleySlogthrop

Today is the anniversary of the promulgation of the Church's dogma on papal infallibility by the First Vatican  Council in 1870.  It was vigorously opposed by the British Lord Acton, one of a handful of Catholic British peers.  It was he who wrote in a letter to an archbishop: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. "   

For many of 'the Faithful,' especially children, Catholic priests are men with authority, indeed absolute authority.  The are men with the power to miraculously convert bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus.  Indeed, they are surrogates of Jesus Himself at the Last Supper in the Consecration during the sacrifice of the Mass.  The Church can't stop trying to sanctify its human clergy.  As Pope Pius X wrote in his 1906 encyclical Vehementer Nos:

It follows that the church is by essence an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful. So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members toward that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors.

The most docile in flocks are the lambs, the children.  Until the Church abandons its theology and ecclesiology of the the priesthood, children and others will continue to be sexually abused by Catholic priests. 

I ran out of permitted space in the WaPo comments section or I would have added the following:  "The Church's existential problem is that it can't recast its sacerdotal doctrines without destroying itself.  Despite the Vatican II romanticism about "the Church" being "the people of God," in real life what separates "the Church" from all other forms of Christianity and indeed from all other religions is the priesthood and the hierarchy.  Take away the special divinely-appointed status of the priests, bishops, and popes and what is left of "the Chruch" with a capital C?  The popes and bishops all know this; they are the Church and they need to keep it that way or go out of business.  The role of the folks in the pews is simply to pray, pay, and obey.

CBS is killing Colbert's's Late Night show, claiming it is strictly a financial decision.  My hunch: it's a political decision connected with the merger needing FTC approval.  The new ownership entity wants to get out of the business of offending Trump and Trumpkins with late-night humor.  Coincidence?  The announcement comes 3 days after Colbert blasted CBS for paying a bribe to Trump in settling Trump's frivolous and malicious 60 Minutes suit.

Party Girl.  We watched this 1995 flick on MUBI last night.  Parker Posey last night.  It was set in the downtown NYC club scene in the 1990s and featured a lot of behavior that was far removed from my St. Leo parish norms, but I enjoyed it.  Mostly, I enjoyed watching Parker Posey's vim, vigor, and vitality (did I leave out vivacity?) playing the lead role.  Quite a performance.  She played a 23-year-old East Village party girl morphing into a librarian.  

Birthday exchange with CBG: Hi, Sweetie.  I believe it is the eve of your 67th birthday, and I once again write you in the selfish effort to be the first to wish you a Happy Birthday.  Each year as your birthday rolls around, I recall our first meeting in Bob’s office so many years ago when we were so much younger and our lives so very  different, and at a time when Bob, TSJ, WBG. WSR. and DSB were still with us.  And I inevitably remember the many lunches that we made a point of sharing at Goldman’s, etc., after we no longer shared the common workplace.  Those memories warm my old heart and fill it with gratitude for your friendship.  With so many of my family members and friends no longer in my life, I am especially thankful that you are.  A lot of life has passed between the meeting in Bob’s office and today, and a smidgen more will pass before dinner tomorrow.  I thank you for sharing all you have with me (and Geri) and  Happy Birthday.❤️

Thank you, Chuck. I love your message. It is hard to believe so much time has passed and I’m grateful to have shared these many years with you. And don’t forget our lunches at Hooligans, too! The memories warm my almost 67 year old heart also and the laughs were off the charts. He

"Wallowing in a bog of introspection": Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  I got to thinking today that this title of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic that I read (was surprised by, and thoroughly enjoyed) decades ago is pretty descriptive of me.  It describes two very different characters or personas in one body, Dr. Jekyll, the civil, well-met, well-adjusted guy, and Mr. Hyde, the contorted monster, a double or multiple personality.  I say multiple because I have a third character or persona: the guy writing this blog/journal.  These thoughts arise not only because of my mood swings, 'normal' one day, much more than 'subdued' the next, but because of my practice of keeping negative, moody, anxious, unhappy, complaining thoughts to myself, unexpressed, though deeply felt.  I'm often really miserable: feeling sorry for myself, living with pain (not severe, but distracting, limiting, and very unwelcome), living with discomfort, living with inabilities and diminished capacities, living with despair about the future, both personally(increasing decrepitude) and for the nation (dystopia), living with some real loneliness, living in the past with real regrets and in the inevitably-fearful future.  Like probably most males and more probably like most old Marines, I have little tolerance for whining, or even complaining (except about Trump.)  There are days in which I suppose that the " grin-and-bear-it approach is a good thing.  Who wants to have to listen to a constant complainer?  I remember PKR.  On the other hand, there are so many days when I really wish I could just die and 'get it over with,' 'be done with it,' days that I spend wishing I could lie down and never get up, but no one around me would know it.  On some of those days, I've been bothered by pain, discomfort, and decrepitude for days and can't see much point in 'living' like that.  On other days, I've been beset by regrets, thoughts of failure, pointlessness.  In any case, on those fairly frequent days, I take exception to the title of Bishop Fulton Sheen's old show, Life is Worth Living.  Sometimes I feel like the man in John Prine's song Hello, In There, sometimes like Richard Cory, in Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem.  CDC I is what people see day-to-day.  CDC II is what's going on inside me.  CDC III is what people read in this journal/blog or on Facebook, with rarely a reference to CDC II in the journal and never on Facebook.  Different people.   Not a healthy situation, but I can't see how to fix it.  CDC I and CDC II need to be better integrated.  It's something to work on.  I wonder just how neurotic, disordered, or unusual CDC II is for an old guy in my condition.  Am I just a hopeless wimp about old age, needing to SNAP OUT OF IT?  I know how I feel and it's not good, a bit schizzy actually with CDC II's frequent inner life of misery only hinted at by the quiet, uncommunicative CDC I and not at all by CDC III.