Rorate Caeli

Evolutio

Well, well... We are evolutionists here at Rorate Cæli! For instance, we notice a clear evolution of Mr John Allen Jr. -- who barely a year ago considered the liberalization of the Traditional Mass by a personal act of the Pope as a kind of myth and now writes an Op-Ed piece about the document in The Aborti --oops, The New York Times.

Mr Allen's op-ed piece could be described as "realistic lite"; the myth is real, he does not like it, now he will explain to his fellow liberals how to receive the future document: not a big deal, or, in his words, or rather still, in his depiction of what he believes the Pope believes regarding the matter, "not earth-shattering". Typical Allen; as we have said about him twice here:

Allen is a fine fellow, but he is more a newsmaker than a news gatherer, in the best "tradition" of contemporary American Church reporters, such as Robert Blair Kaiser. He and his sources wish to influence events or to alter the way future decisions are perceived and interpreted, and that is how his words should be read.

Well, he lived up to it once again. His article could be summed up as: "Those terrible 'conservatives' will hype it as tremendous; those 'immoderate liberals' will despise it as retrograde; I, the establishment moderate liberal, representative of the enlightened Catholic 'Via Media of the 21st Century' annoint it 'not that big a deal'."

Who knows? Perhaps "Not a Big Deal" will be the name of the document...