Morally speaking, I don't think that Tele's position passes the smell test. Legally speaking, I know it doesn't. Not even a minimal evidentiary standard for public airing of the matter has been met. The accuser—even were it retrospectively to be shown that he has been as pure as the driven snow in his motives and allegations—has no present entitlement to be considered legally or morally credible. He is an interested party in this affair, as literally everyone knows. Indeed, he is an aggrieved party, in that he appears to have been expelled from the seminary by the very priest he accuses of effectively subverting the Faith. (Yet even as to that, hard facts are as scarce as hen's teeth.)
Had a similar situation arisen in Spain in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the Inquisition would have told him what someone ought to tell Telesphorus and Neil and all too many others: "Since you are not a disinterested party in this matter, your charges require corroboration before any proceeding can be initiated, at the very least to prevent the appearance of a retaliatory prosecution. In the meantime, you make yourself liable to an action for slander or worse if you attempt to publicly blacken the reputation of a man solely because you allege that he has done you an injustice."
Everyone who has been braying about this matter has in effect been claiming the same exemption from moral norms: namely, "This is Fellay's SSPX we're talking about! What need have we of witnesses!" No one who claims such an exemption merits anything but the selfsame contempt that we Christians have accorded Caiphas for two millennia.
Note, too, that the "witness" to the accuser's grief—a snarky wiseass with zero credibility in my book—also expects everyone to buy the story on his unverified say-so. As the stench of dishonesty and dishonor grows almost by the hour, the number of people ready to deep-six the rudiments of commutative justice in order to get at someone who hasn't yet abandoned +Fellay is truly nauseating. Were any of these people to be condemned without corroboration by an accuser with a similar ax to grind, they'd make Abe Foxman look like Patience on a monument smiling at Grief!
Father Chazal's expressed position in this affair is, as I see it, literally the only morally licit one. What is more—I say this for the record—should it turn out (against the odds) that the accuser is right and the priest at the seminary is as bad as his accuser claims, I shall not have even the slightest regret at having taken the position I take. The end never justifies the means, and the means being taken to condemn the accused stink to high heaven.
________________________________
In closing, at the risk of introducing a bit of reality to this mess, I'd be curious to know the answers to several questions:
(1) Who amongst those who know better than the rector of the seminary what seminarians should be taught had ever heard of Rudolf Bultmann prior to June 10?
(2) Whatever the answer to (1), who has read anything actually written by Bultmann (minimum word count = 250)?
(3) Of those answering (2) affirmatively, who has read anything by Bultmann between the pages of a book; that is, in a medium not as inherently falsifiable as a website?
(4) Of those answering (3) affirmatively, who can provide a title, a publisher, and a summary of what he has read—specifically, a summary demonstrating at least a modicuм of understanding?
(5) Finally, of those answering (4) affirmatively, who can provide a reasoned argument why a priest-in-training should not be taught how to read this famous and articulate opponent of traditional Catholic exegesis in such a manner as to be equipped to refute or contest his claims in the interest of the salvation of souls?
Topic: IS SSPX Seminary Promoting Bultmann? (Read 8286 times)