- Feb 5, 2002
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What is keeping the German bishops from leaving the Church? The Church, after all, will never change on the "pelvic issues" they care most about.
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.-Samuel Johnson
I have sometimes puzzled over that sentence—so portentously pronounced by perhaps the most earnest Englishman I can think of—and have asked myself why anyone would advise another to wait so long before becoming earnest. Shouldn’t we always be in earnest? Also, isn’t it a bit odd that if Dr. Johnson had taken his own advice, he’d never have lived long enough to observe it? He pegged out, as they say, at age 75, missing the mark by two years.
As for myself, I won’t be 77 for at least another year. Does that mean I am free to remain unserious until then? If so, I shall be in very good company, not a few bishops under seventy-seven having already cornered that particular market for some time now. Bishop Georg Bätzing, for instance, current Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, is only sixty-one, and what a strikingly unserious specimen he seems to be. Indeed, judging from remarks he recently made while in Rome with sixty or so fellow prelates for a chat with the pope, one might almost think the poor fellow had no faith at all.
Continued below.
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.-Samuel Johnson
I have sometimes puzzled over that sentence—so portentously pronounced by perhaps the most earnest Englishman I can think of—and have asked myself why anyone would advise another to wait so long before becoming earnest. Shouldn’t we always be in earnest? Also, isn’t it a bit odd that if Dr. Johnson had taken his own advice, he’d never have lived long enough to observe it? He pegged out, as they say, at age 75, missing the mark by two years.
As for myself, I won’t be 77 for at least another year. Does that mean I am free to remain unserious until then? If so, I shall be in very good company, not a few bishops under seventy-seven having already cornered that particular market for some time now. Bishop Georg Bätzing, for instance, current Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, is only sixty-one, and what a strikingly unserious specimen he seems to be. Indeed, judging from remarks he recently made while in Rome with sixty or so fellow prelates for a chat with the pope, one might almost think the poor fellow had no faith at all.
Continued below.
To the German Bishops: No, the Church Will Not Change – Crisis Magazine
www.crisismagazine.com