Leo XIII condemned Americanism as a heresy. It is alive and well. You want to keep referring to all these other writers and to social, political and historical issues for which I have written nothing. In fact, I have not truly revealed my true personal opinions on much in any of my writings. I have interviewed many people, including bishops and priests and have written what they have said. I am speaking of the Americanist heresy, which is alive and well with most of the NeoCons I have read and spoken with. "America is God's own ordained great nation! Hurrah!!"
And by the way, I am quite certain that Cardinal Hoyos, Cardinal Medina and Archbishop Ranjith are all taking specific orders and messages from the current Pope himself. You might not like it, but I am quite certain that is what is happening.
Why you want to posit this as them "disobeying" Pope John Paul II, I am not certain.
And by the way, I didn't know he had been named "Great" yet. I must have missed that news.
What I am attempting to do is to pick the pieces of the remnant of Catholic culture that is available to me, be open to life, love my wife and children, and provide them with an education and formation that is not available in the United States today that puts the Faith first. That is what I am attempting to do--as well as show the Pope's plan for restoration of the liturgy and bringing estranged traditionalists into the heart of the Church like has already happened in Campos and in Bordeaux, France, most recently.
Perhaps if my family eventually moves to Rockford, we will meet one day...
Perhaps...
BTW, from Rochelle, Illinois...
*Pope Benedict has publicly called him "Great" at least twice. The first time was at his Funeral.
And I am the one who, supposedly, doesn't know what is going on?
We have a first rate school (K-12) in Rockford, created and run by parents (no interference by diocesan poobah generically known as Sr. Krupskaya Pantsuit) who preferred educating their kids in the Faith and in all other respects rather than fight with educrats, secular or diocesan. Latin starts in grammar school and proceeds from there to using the Jesuit prep school highschool texts of Fr. Robert Henle that I used in the 1960s (still in print after all these years since first published during WW II), Saxon Math, theology by the Tridentine Mass priests of the Oratory and St. Patrick's, First Fridays every month at the Oratory, organized activity protesting weekly (and not weakly) in uniform outside the Rockford abortion mill, American history using the Samuel Eliot Morrison text in high school and junior high (better than texts used in my college history courses as a history major), English literature utilizing twelve novels/year in junior high, such as Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe and the like with challenging analyses expected, Sacred Music competently taught to choir standards, serious sacramental preparation, high objective test scores (California, Iowa, Stanford) without cherrypicking in admissions. Class size, generally small, often <6 per class. Parents welcome at any time to audit. Tuition: downward sliding scale: $2800 or so for first kid each year, 3/4 tuition for second kid simultaneously enrolled, 1/2 for third kid, 1/4 for 4th kid, 5th kid and more simultaneously enrolled, God bless you as great Catholic parents and those additional kids are free. We expect parents to volunteer. Welcome back home, if you decide to return. If you do, the school awaits you as does the Oratory and St. Patrick's and TAN Books and Publishers and Bishop Doran and a lot of supportive homschoolers and homeschooling institutions (if you prefer) and a lot more.
Now back to business.
The Americanist heresy has to do with Church governance and not with the anti-American fantasies of the John Raos and the Solange Hertzes and their paleopantywaist psychophants. It is not for nothing that our ohhhhhh soooooo sophisticated Euroweenie critics find so much at fault in America. No country such as ours which has sat still for nearly 50 million dead innocent babies under "the Rule of Law" or which has generalized "no fault" divorce or whch is in the process of making believe that those who have erroneous opinions as go which body parts belong where, is describable as "God's own ordained great nation." No objective observer can deny that this nation has also done much good for many people, not our own, at great price. Of course, the paleos are not objective observers.
On the other hand, the ritual misuse of the term "neocons" to give paleopantywaists some sort of standing that they have not earned, avails nothing whatever. The New Right, the conservative movement, is what you and Buchanan and Sobran call "neocons." Note that neither Buchanan nor Sobran were ever involved other than as speakers with the New Right. To conservative political movement people, the very use of the term "neocons" to mislabel the New Right and the conservative movement, speaks volumes and much more than you may think.
David Frum outlined the history of the pathetically unpresentable crew of "paleos" in an April, 2004 article in National Review. The paleos are policy wannabes (heretical in political terms) who are not socially ready for primetime and are not likely to become ready. It took their little platoon about six years to figure that Ronaldus Maximus was NOT going to embarrass himself, the GOP or the nation by allowing most of them to be credentialed in his administration. [They have fared no better under either Bush.] They then erupted in collective rage at a Mont Pelerin Society gathering and effectively conceded that they were never conservatives as that term is generally understood in the US. They then needed a way to call themselves the "real conservatives." The New Republic and the Nation were only too happy to cooperate. Since the actual "neoconservatives" were basically getting to be dead or octogenarian or nonogenarian (Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Daniel Bell, Sidney Hook, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and a handful of others, mostly CCNY students of the 1930s), the paleos and the left misappropriated the term "neocon" in a surely impossible attempt to hijack the name conservative and turn it into code for cowardice in international affairs instead of the quite traditional interventionism. When they fail, they then claim that interventionists are, somehow, internationalists of the Woodrow Wilson stripe. The conservatives have NEVER been internationalists.
In the event that the two cardinals and the bishop would be doing B-XVI's bidding in welcoming the SSPXers back, that is too bad. There is a term for it. It is called "prudential error." Just as many have noted the disasters that followed on the "spirit of Vatican II" enthusiasms, there will probably be analogous regrets as to any prudential mistake made in good will to again bring the SSPX under legitimate and actually Catholic pastoral care. Then again, B-XVI, in such an event, may well be right. Then again, like the rumors of Mark Twain's death years before the actual event, the rumored actions of B-XVI may well be greatly exaggerated. We shall see what we shall see but this Catholic will wait for B-XVI to act. Whether he does act directly contrary to my preferences or otherwise, he will have my automatic submission to his authority and that of every actual Catholic. After all, he IS pope. Meanwhile, the bureaucratic hired help ought not act as termites against the wisdom of John Paul the Great unless and until B-XVI does actually act.
Speaking of which term, one may recall that the term Immaculate Conception was applied by the laity to the conception of the BVM long before Lourdes or the dogmatic definition of Blessed Pius IX. Also Theotokos and many other doctrines. I have little doubt that he is John Paul the Great, that he will be known as John Paul the Great (among other things for declaring SSPX a schism and for summarily excommunicating its adherents and leaders). People may disagree. So, shoot me.
I posit the actions of Hoyos, Medina and Ranjith as disobedience of John Paul the Great because, absent formal action by B-XVI regarding Ecclesia Dei Afflicta, they are, ummmm, disobedient to John Paul the Great. This is hard to understand because.....?????
If you were to return to Rochelle which also has a St. Patrick's (modernist space station architecture but Fr. Peck, prolife director for Doran, as pastor), you would probably want to attend St. Patrick's in Rockford or the Oratory.