Catholic Ragemonkey

How Heavy Rests the Miter

In Church history, there are lots of times, sad to say, when various clerics of the Church don't let their ontology show through. One can think back to Arian heresy when many bishops defected from the normative Faith to follow a substitute. Or, recall the flap in England over Henry VIII's claims to be head of the Church. Only one bishop didn't sign off on this proposition, St. John Fisher. The rest did and who remembers them? And there are several other notable events as well.

I bring this up because it is my firm belief that this is where the Church in the United States is headed. It is going to come down to a decision to either hold to the whole (the basic meaning of the word "catholic" i.e. according to the whole) or fake it and become the American Catholic Church and follow the trail currently being blazed by the Episcopalians. Here's a case in point that I found (okay, stole from Mark Shea's comments box) that illustrates what the fight might look like. Would Cardinal George deny Holy Communion to Bishop Pilla?

The story also makes me glad to be in the archdiocese of Oklahoma City.