Thanks for sharing the outcome of this memo! Very helpful to read. Tangentially related: I feel if radical traditionalists were actually interested in tradition and the "root" of our faith, they would want to celebrate the Eucharist in Greek rather than Latin. I think digging deeper to that common language of Greek (the language of scripture) would be very beneficial ecumenically with the Eastern churches. I also think find it revealing that Catholics get offended by the idea that Catholicism can lead people to do violence, even though Catholicism is not a religion that promotes violence but have no problem believing that about Islam. And, to continue that line of thought, Catholics will often invoke "radical Islam's" subjugation of women as a strike against it, but are somehow blind to their own desire for a clerical, patriarchal ordering of the church, family, and society that supposedly honors women (and the Church!) as mothers but does not find in motherhood or womanhood any authority or power worth imitating or incarnating on a structural level.
Yes, if I expanded on the essay, I think the analogy with Islam is something I would want to explore. For example, this whole episode has to be seen against the background of how the FBI (and other agencies, like the NYPD) engaged in surveillance of the Muslim community in the US in the aftermath of 9/11, often in ways that did in fact reflect bias. So, the critics were not wrong to at the very least cast a suspicious eye toward the FBI in this case. But you raise a good question of whether those who were upset by what they believed the memo revealed would have been equally angered by the surveillance of Muslims. I wouldn't want to presume a double standard, but at least some in conservative media, for example, probably do have records that someone could go back and check.
Thanks for sharing the outcome of this memo! Very helpful to read. Tangentially related: I feel if radical traditionalists were actually interested in tradition and the "root" of our faith, they would want to celebrate the Eucharist in Greek rather than Latin. I think digging deeper to that common language of Greek (the language of scripture) would be very beneficial ecumenically with the Eastern churches. I also think find it revealing that Catholics get offended by the idea that Catholicism can lead people to do violence, even though Catholicism is not a religion that promotes violence but have no problem believing that about Islam. And, to continue that line of thought, Catholics will often invoke "radical Islam's" subjugation of women as a strike against it, but are somehow blind to their own desire for a clerical, patriarchal ordering of the church, family, and society that supposedly honors women (and the Church!) as mothers but does not find in motherhood or womanhood any authority or power worth imitating or incarnating on a structural level.
Yes, if I expanded on the essay, I think the analogy with Islam is something I would want to explore. For example, this whole episode has to be seen against the background of how the FBI (and other agencies, like the NYPD) engaged in surveillance of the Muslim community in the US in the aftermath of 9/11, often in ways that did in fact reflect bias. So, the critics were not wrong to at the very least cast a suspicious eye toward the FBI in this case. But you raise a good question of whether those who were upset by what they believed the memo revealed would have been equally angered by the surveillance of Muslims. I wouldn't want to presume a double standard, but at least some in conservative media, for example, probably do have records that someone could go back and check.