The Difference Between Deaf And Selectively Deaf

Bishop Williamson says Vatican-SSPX talks “dialogue of the deaf”
Reuters - Jan 19, 2010 - 17:51 EST

Bishop Richard Williamson, the ultra-traditionalist prelate whose denial of the extent of the Holocaust created an uproar in the Catholic Church and with Jews early last year, has said the discussions at the Vatican to rehabilitate his Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) are a “dialogue of the deaf.” Williamson, one of the four SSPX bishops whose bans of excommunication were lifted by Pope Benedict only days after his controversial views were aired on Swedish television, said the two sides had “absolutely irreconcilable” positions.

In a 15-minute interview posted on the French video-sharing website Dailymotion, Williamson discussed a number of issues with a man identified by the Paris Catholic daily La Croix as a minor French far-right politician named Pierre Panet. When asked about the negotiation under way at the Vatican to reintegrate the once-shunned SSPX into the Roman church, he said in fluent French:

“I think that will end up as a dialogue of the deaf. The two positions are absolutely irreconcilable. 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 are irreconcilable. Either those who say 2+2=4 renounce the truth and agree that 2+2=5 — that is, the SSPX abandons the truth, which God forbids us to do — or those who say 2+2=5 convert and return to the truth. Or the two meet halfway and say that 2+2=4-1/2. That’s wrong. Either the SSPX becomes a traitor or Rome converts or it’s a dialogue of the deaf.”

Williamson’s negationist views of the Holocaust caused such an uproar early last year that the head of the SSPX, Bishop Bernard Fellay, issued a gag order for him. It was so embarrassing for Benedict that he had to issue a letter to Catholic bishops around the world explaining his decision. Williamson was quickly removed from his post as head of the SSPX seminary in Argentina and sent home to Britain, where he lives in an SSPX home in the Wimbledon section of London. Asked about his life there, he said with dry British humour: “This is an unexpected but quite agreeable sabbatical year.”

Asked how he spends his days, he said: “Dormir et manger” (sleeping and eating), as well as writing his blog Dinoscopus, which was quickly turned into a private blog after the controversy last year.

When Panet asked for his views about Israel, Williamson said: “Many people think this state is legitimate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is.”

La Croix quoted a Rev. Jacques Masson, a former member of the SSPX, as saying of Williamson: “He belonged to the group that was the most intransigent with Rome. I suspect that they pushed (SSPX founder) Archbishop (Marcel) Lefebvre to harden his line and finally go into schism.” The SSPX, which rejects the Second Vatican Council and the Catholic Church’s reconciliation with the Jews, broke from Rome in 1988 when Lefebvre disobeyed Pope John Paul and consecrated four bishops, including Williamson. Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications in 2009 and the negotiations with the Vatican aim at finding a way to reintegrate these traditionalists into the Church.

Pope Benedict recently said he hoped to reestablish full communion with the SSPX.

********************************************

I've written a great deal lately about spiritual intelligence and spiritual maturity and why this is such an important concept. I posted the above article on Bishop Williamson because it demonstrates how difficult it is to penetrate stage I spiritual thinking. Williamson's use of simple math to illustrate his thinking is almost too perfect. Unfortunately for Williamson spiritual relationships work far more like the never ending Pi ratio than they do 2+2=4.

Here's another take on this same theme of spiritual maturity. In some respects this is one of the shortest and best explanations I have read in a long while. It's a reflection on the Irish abuse crisis.

GERARD CASEY Professor of philosophy, University College Dublin

“I can’t understand people losing faith because of scandals. I’m not making light of what happened, but for me it’s not where faith comes from. Religion and morality are not the same thing, but for most Irish Catholics the two are one and the same. When you tell them the moral code associated with Catholicism is pretty much the same as in any religion, they find it hard to believe. (The hierarchy has lately been bending over backwards to 'help' us think that Catholic morality and Catholic spirituality are exactly the same thing.)

"You have to get morality from reason – morals are either a set of conventions in a utilitarian way or a real code to live by. The problem with utilitarianism is that morality only survives when the going is good, otherwise it’s every man for himself. There is nothing specifically Catholic about natural law. When you look at what human beings are, you see they have needs and that means we know the kind of actions that are [morally] destructive. (We are currently seeing this played out by some groups in Haiti. As survival needs become imperative, morality becomes very frangible.)

“A classic way of looking at morality is from Confucian philosophy. “There are four concentric circles. The innermost circle is the basic, natural state where we individually are the centre of the universe. We understand this in children and find it quite cute, but it would be sinister in an adult. The next circle is the utilitarian level: we still want things for ourselves, but have to at least simulate an interest in others. (Some would say this is the current philosophy of the Democratic party and most other politicians.)

“The breakthrough comes at the next moral level – this is when you recognise that other human beings are exactly like you: each has hopes, dreams and fears. There can be a sense of shock when we realise this.

“The final circle is the transcendent, where the human world is understood in a larger context. Traditionally this has been religious, but it can be other things, such as politics, for example – anything that says there is a dimension above us.

“The key for us as individuals is to match up the emotional and the intellectual sides of our lives. It’s a developmental process and, to some degree, a pattern of habituation.” (One could also use the term enculturation as well as habituation.)

These four stages also mirror neurological development, which is why they are most frequently described in terms of chronological development. The problems in maturation develop generally because habituation or enculturation preclude more development, or just as frequently, by the amount of trauma experienced in earlier stages of neural development. This is why it is paramount that we 'match up the emotional and the intellectual sides of our lives." As Terence Weldon wrote recently on his own blog, quoting theologian Fr. John McNeil "it is not possible to separate sound theology from sound psychology". In theory, that is.

Bishop Williamson is still functioning from a world view encased in the first circle. For him all issues come down to the concrete notion that they will reduce to the simplicity of 2+2=4. Most of us move out of that kind of thinking by the time we reach puberty and experience the fact that not everything boils down so easily.

There was another example of William's type thinking on the web this morning. It was part of a story on the Mexican hierarchy and their reasons for desiring to deny gays the ability to adopt children. The article cited the website of a Canadian woman as proof of their concerns of the damage gay parents do to children.

This woman had a very difficult upbringing, but the problem is her experiences are hardly unique to children of gay men. The fact is they are far far more likely to occur to children of parents in heterosexual relationships, especially in those relationships in which chemical dependency is a factor. The fact the Mexican bishops can call for social policy legislation on a data point of one, ignoring all other data points, is not indicative of higher reasoning processes. In fact those same reasoning processes, based on millions of data points, would be to deny adoption and marriage to divorced heterosexual men. To advocate for this position would also conform to Church sexual morality.

The fact the Mexican bishops are not calling for this kind of blanket ban on marriage and adoption for divorced heterosexual males tells us that their essentially childish reasoning only applies to gays, not heterosexuals. This would put these bishops into the outskirts of the second concentric circle, in that it is a suspiciously utilitarian reasoning. It also demonstrates just how selectively deaf they are to the arguments of the third and fourth circles. In this case 2+2=4 for gays, but something else for heterosexuals.

Or maybe the logic is based on the equally simple equation peg A must fit into slot B where slot B has little or no choice and the well being of the = C part of the equation is left totally to chance factors. That would very much be circle one thinking.