A Neocatholic Strikes Back — Part II

A response to Father Joseph O'Leary's The Rise of the Neocaths.
Continued from Part I.

Fr. O'Leary was saying:

John Paul II thus bypassed and reached over the heads of the educated baby boomers, influenced by Vatican II, in order to address an audience who were a tabula rasa, and to communicate to them a world view that the Vatican II generation would find problematic on many points. His tactic recalls that of Mao in China. At the same time critical theology was ruthlessly discouraged and suppressed throughout the Catholic world. Fr Chia's article tells how this was done in Asia. The fates of Kung, Drewermann, Leukel-Schmidt, Curran, McNeill, Boff, Lavinia Byrne and many others are a tip of the iceberg of the same process in Europe, the US and Latin America. The more warmly the youthful crowd applauded, the deeper the intellectual chill that fell on the Church.

This jewel of a paragraph may be described in various ways, let me tell you which: it is full of hubris, insulting both to the memory of the late Pope and to "neocaths," condescending, paternalistic, spiteful, elitist, pharisaic, and foolish. Let's review every single statement, one by one:

John Paul II thus bypassed and reached over the heads of the educated baby boomers… Implication: those of us who came after are not nearly as educated as our baby boom betters.

…baby boomers, influenced by Vatican II… Implication: and our generation was not influenced by Vatican II? We can't read its documents? Or, have we chosen not to read them? Or, perhaps, it is because we read them without the lenses or the guidance that Fr. O'Leary, Kung, Drewermann, Leukel-Schmidt, Curran, McNeill, Boff, Lavinia Byrne, would like us to utilize, where the problem really lies.

[Pope John Paul addressed] an audience who were a tabula rasa… Implication: Though Fr. O'Leary uses the term "tabula rasa" derogatorily, I choose to understand it in a more positive fashion. We're talking here about generation who is more aware, more sophisticated than the boomers in the things of the world; what for boomers was a groovy discovery, for us is a matter of ordinary life. We have little preconceptions of that past the "reforming" boomers were so successful in destroying. Educated boomers, as dreamed by Fr. O'Leary, expected their children—real or spiritual—to rebuild what they had destroyed according to the boomers' wise and "educated" specifications. They became disagreeably surprised when we didn't. We were free to re-conceive the world in our own terms without asking advice from hip priests, fakirs, gurus, and other spiritual guides held in awe by boomers. And then came Pope John Paul II. The rest, as they say, is history.

Continues on Part III.