London Newspaper Gets Pope Benedict Right!!!-radical

It is very tempting not to blog the rest of the day so that this article doesn't get lost in all my verbage today. The London Telegraph has an excellent story on Pope Benedict and what is truly going on. It is refreshing to see a secular newspaper do serious stories on religion. They actually inform their readers.

Go see Pope gets radical and woos the Anglicans. Here is just a part
"Two and a half years after the name "Josephum" came booming down from the balcony of St Peter's, making liberal Catholics weep with rage, Pope Benedict XVI is revealing his programme of reform. And it is breathtakingly ambitious.

The 80-year-old Pontiff is planning a purification of the Roman liturgy in which decades of trendy innovations will be swept away. This recovery of the sacred is intended to draw Catholics closer to the Orthodox and ultimately to heal the 1,000 year Great Schism. But it is also designed to attract vast numbers of conservative Anglicans, who will be offered the protection of the Holy Father if they covert en masse.
The liberal cardinals don't like the sound of it at all.

Ever since the shock of Benedict's election, they have been waiting for him to show his hand. Now that he has, the resistance has begun in earnest - and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, is in the thick of it.
"Pope Benedict is isolated," I was told when I visited Rome last week. "So many people, even in the Vatican, oppose him, and he feels the strain immensely." Yet he is ploughing ahead. He reminds me of another conservative revolutionary, Margaret Thatcher, who waited a couple of years before taking on the Cabinet "wets" sabotaging her reforms."

When I converted the liberal wing of the clergy and religious were still in full control. Though there were signs of weakness. This progressive wing spent much of their time trashing Pope John Paul the II and using the Liturgy(really abusing) to advance a progressive agenda. Often there was talk about how all Ecumenical this was. I often thought that was a crock. It certainly was not helping relations with Orthodoxy. Also despite trying to become more like the liberal wing of the American Anglican Church .the trampling of the liturgy was sure not to even attract that crew. Despite having women "priests" at least many Anglican services give the appearance of the sacred.

It is ironic but the "progressive" wing of the Church that was always proclaiming "openness" to the world was actually a active roadblock in Catholics rediscovery and reclaiming their Eastern Church heritage. This is largely contained in Eastern rite churches in Communion with Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy. For the the talk of being ecumenical it was largely and actively anti ecumenical.

Good Article