Many are called, but few are Douthat

St. Ross, Pandit and Martyr. MockPaperScissors, August 2010.

Monsignor Ross Douthat, Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street, is shocked! shocked! to find that the Roman Catholic Church is not a democracy like the Muslim ummah in which it's OK to toss out takfiri accusations, as he's been doing in the direction of the Pope recently, sometimes subtly as in that column, sometimes pretty out there on Twitter:

@DouthatNYT Please be careful throwing around a word like "heresy." That is an extremely serious accusation and in this case unfounded.

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) October 23, 2015

Pretty comical, considering that his complaint seems to be that the church may be heading down a path that's not authoritarian enough in its approach to sinners such as the divorced. Now a brief letter from 55 distinguished Catholic theologians at US academic institutions has appeared complaining to the New York Times about the conduct of their ill-bred and untrained employee, and today's column is a lengthy reply to that:

I have great respect for your vocation. Let me try to explain mine.

He has a vocation! Isn't that special! He didn't just fall into opinionating, he was called to it.

I believe the Blessed Virgin appeared to him in a dream: "There are many ways of serving me, Ross; yours is to kvetch about the decadence and depravity of the times in The Times, on a weekly or biweekly basis."

Annals of derp: Canon balls

Giovanni Venanzi of Pesaro, 1688: King Solomon being led into idolatry by his wives. Via Wikipedia.

Monsignor Ross Douthat, Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street, demonstrates once again that he's just not that good at theology and canon law, in his allegations of a "conspiracy" on the part of old Francesco to "rewrite" Catholic doctrine with regard to the policy of allowing divorced-and-remarried Catholics to take communion:

Francis’s purpose is simple: He favors the proposal, put forward by the church’s liberal cardinals, that would allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion without having their first marriage declared null.

...if his purpose is clear, his path is decidedly murky. Procedurally, the pope’s powers are near-absolute: If Francis decided tomorrow to endorse communion for the remarried, there is no Catholic Supreme Court that could strike his ruling down.