“Believe it or not, after the Second Vatican Council anticlericalism is a Catholic virtue. In elaborating a theology of laity, as many call it, and speaking of a hierarchy of service rather than of domination in the Church, Vatican II implicitly endorsed opposition to clericalism, which is a policy of maintaining or increasing the power of a religious hierarchy. Clearly, this sort of anticlericalism has nothing to do with the other anticlericalism.”

—  Leon Bertoletti

The A-Word http://www.hicsuntleones.co.uk/2008/10/a-word.html, Hic Sunt Leones, 22/10/2008

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Believe it or not, after the Second Vatican Council anticlericalism is a Catholic virtue. In elaborating a theology of …" by Leon Bertoletti?
Leon Bertoletti photo

Related quotes

Norman Vincent Peale photo

“It is inconceivable that a Roman Catholic president would not be under extreme pressure by the hierarchy of his church to accede to its policies with respect to foreign relations in matters, including representation to the Vatican.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Formal statement of the committee of 150 Protestant clergymen he represented, opposing the candidacy of ‪John F. Kennedy‬‎ for US President in September 1960, quoted in The Religious Issue: Hot and Getting Hotter in Newsweek (19 September 1960), and in ‪A Question of Character : A Life of John F. Kennedy‬ (1992) by Thomas C. Reeves, p. 191; though as a primary spokesman of the committee, he endorsed the statement, and it is likely he had major influence on its drafting, he was not cited as its author.
Misattributed

Kurien Kunnumpuram photo

“It [Vatican II] does not look upon the ‘religious’ as one dimension among other dimensions of human existence. The religious dimension intersects with other dimensions. That is why the Council could speak of ‘the supremely human character’ of the Church’s religious mission.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (2005) Towards a New Humanity: Reflections on the Church's Mission in India Today. Mumbai: St Pauls
On the Church

“The changes in the Catholic Church since Vatican II can certainly be scanned in terms of this long retreat from the sacred which has followed the inception of consciousness into the human species.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 6, p. 439
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Chen Chien-jen photo

“I firmly believe that the provisional agreement between the Vatican and (mainland) China on the appointment of bishops will help harmonize the Universal Church and the Catholic Church in (mainland) China.”

Chen Chien-jen (1951) Vice President of the Republic of China, Taiwanese epidemiologist and academic

Chen Chien-jen (2019) cited in " Holy See values relations with Taiwan: Vice President Chen http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201910120004.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 12 October 2019.

“Bob: Today the Vatican is a tremendous political and religious power. It has one billion citizens, and it controls the wealth of the world.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " Holocaust http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0054/0054_01.asp" (1984)

“Modern religious teachings have little or nothing to say about the place of prudence in life or in the hierarchy of virtues.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (1965)

“In the religious age, the religious hierarchy wields power; in the political age, the ruler, nobles and commoners; in the economic, the hierarchy of wealth. The development of Europe during the last six centuries has consisted in the progressive shifting of the hierarchy of power from one set of functions to another.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 132

“Historically, it may be useful to fancy playfulness and piety as being the respective residues of the aristocratic and priestly backgrounds of the intellectual function. The element of play seems to be rooted in the ethos of the leisure class, which has always been central in the history of creative imagination and humanistic learning. The element of piety is reminiscent of the priestly inheritance of the intellectuals: the quest for and the possession of truth was a holy office. As their legatee, the modern intellectual inherits the vulnerability of the aristocrat to the animus of Puritanism and egalitarianism and the vulnerability of the priest to anticlericalism and popular assaults upon hierarchy. We need not be surprised, then, if the intellectual’s position has rarely been comfortable in a country which is, above all others, the home of the democrat and the antinomian.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), pp. 32-33

Basil Hume photo

“[St. Josemaría’s] words, seventy years ago, anticipated the Vatican Council’s decree on the place and the role of the laity in the world.… It is my conviction that it’s only slowly that we’re coming to understand what the Spirit was trying to say to us through the Council. But the Spirit goes on calling.… And surely the Holy Spirit is calling us in our day to a greater degree of holiness, to deepen our spiritual lives. And it has been the role of the movements [and] of Opus Dei to provide support and guidance on that road to holiness.”

Basil Hume (1923–1999) Catholic cardinal

Basil Cardinal Hume, From a homily on October 2, 1998, at a Mass of thanksgiving in London to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of Opus Dei.

Andrea Dworkin photo

“Pornography is the essential sexuality of male power: of hate, of ownership, of hierarchy; of sadism, of dominance.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Related topics