Confounded by Mercy

Truth is a person and faith can be abused. You cannot say you will remain faithful to the truth while speaking in contradiction to the body of the person who is Truth, reducing the See of Peter to a sort of one-man quota, filled or not filled, of no demand or consequence to one's faithfulness to truth (by which one has already changed what is meant by "faithfulness to truth"). That is, of no demand or consequence aside from being most useful for knocking about in the de rigueur pursuit of blogging for the faithful remnant. He is the head of the body, which presupposes unity, which presupposes co-dependency, which works conversely: the Pope depends in large measure upon the prayers of the flock and their good faith (public and private). This is the economy of mercy.

Intellectual punditry as the New Theology (we're the most perennialist and ancientest of the ancient church!) only ends up being really, really cheap punditry; more vicious and vulgar than supermarket tabloids, and more removed from reality. Even the most secularized victims of the MSM recognize the legitimacy of the Papal rule of Pope Francis. It's the rakish trad subculture of the know-it-all Catholic bloggers that can't even get out of the utterly weak-minded fantasy that we have a dual papacy, or leaves open the question of the legitimacy of Benedict's resignation. What a bunch of petty laggards and layabouts and bloodsuckers. The supposed vigour of their convictions is fueled by the most insipid self-loving pablum. They are completely confounded by mercy.

That is what people mean when they say that you cannot be holier than the Church. The statement is consciously redundant for a reason. It is not suggesting that that is what one may be seeking - to be holier than the Church. It is saying, in a manner that leaves it to the hearer to understand, were the hearer not confounded by the stupidity of his own intellectual pride, that one is, in fact, using a chain with hooks to tear apart the flesh of Jesus Christ.

Moreover, and more painfully, one is (in making one's intellectual ascendency) ignoring the place of derision and mockery that Christ took as King, as Bridegroom to his bride, when his holy head was pierced with thorns for a crown.

Not one prick of those thorns would one of these religiose handicraft bloggers sustain for more than a fraction of a second in the movements of their intellects, and yet they're convinced the entire cosmos has its operations and orientation within their minds - these faithful sons and daughters of the church, these good, solid, orthodox Catholics.