You just might be a heretic if you get intense questioning from Stephen Colbert and then America Magazine writes:

Now it should be obvious to even the most casual Roman Catholic that Mr. Wills’s views are definitely heterodox and probably heretical.

Saying “probably heretical” is a bit of an understatement as the things Gary Wills speaks and writes on are often heretical. As Tom Piatak for Crisis Magazine notes:

By my count, Wills took positions anathematized by 14 different Canons of the Council of Trent in this brief interview

You just might be a heretic when Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter writes Garry Wills Please Go Away.

The longer you listen to Wills the higher the heresy counter rises. As a Catholic when Wills gets done with his caveats there isn’t very much left of the faith. Although there is a consistency to his madness as he started by attacking the pope, and then the Eucharist , the priesthood, and even books in the biblical canon fell with it. Don’t like the history of the Church’s teaching then invent a Great Apostasy to suit your needs. After all this method was good enough for Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses.

Remember the kerfluffel over the late William Buckley for having supposedly written “Mater si, Magistra no”? It was actually a quip of Gary Wills that Buckley had referenced. Nothing has changed in the decades since he had first made that quip  other than the expected result that underlines it .

References: The Strange World of Garry Wills

Aliens in This World often has interesting historical tidbits regarding the Church. Case in point:

From a thing that showed up in the very late Middle Ages, called the “Letter of Lentulus,” which was presented as being a report from a Roman official (with a known historical name) to Tiberius, about the appearance and habits of Jesus. The letter was taken as eyewitness testimony by many, and the letter in some versions described Jesus’ hair and beard as “fair” and his face as “the color of wheat.” (Although other versions described His hair and beard as “the color of a ripe hazelnut”, ie, those things on the Nutella jar that are light brown and not at all fair. They also described His complexion as “reddish,” which had the symbolic meaning of someone optimistic, energetic — and honest enough to be able to blush.) So it wasn’t racism, so much as popular scholarship and Biblical fanfic (aka “pseudoepigrapha”), that led to blonde Jesuses.

The appearance of blonde or white-haired Jesuses in previous Christian art had always represented the Jesus of the Book of Revelation, Apocalyptic Jesus, Whose hair represents Him as ancient and eternal, or transfigured in light, and Who is dressed for His office as the eternal High Priest. Also, scary and impressive. Either way, His Divinity becoming as visible as His Humanity, rather than how He looked in His life normally on earth.

Most Western art follows the tradition of a bearded, dark Jesus because that’s how the Mandylion of Edessa looked. Ditto the Shroud of Turin and the byssus veil thing. Pictures and relics should generally outweigh literary descriptions; but the Lentulus letter was popular in Germany, a fur piece over the mountains from the Shroud and the byssus veil.

Now I know who to blame. I really dislike blonde Jesus’ that seem to be so prevalent. Give me a Jewish looking Jesus any day. Now I don’t mind inculturation where religious images are adapted. If Mary can appear as Our Lady of Guadalupe, who am I to complain. So maybe blonde Jesus’ would not annoy me as much if I was to visit Scandinavia. Next on the list that annoys me about Crucifixes are sanitized Jesus’ that look like they must have carried around a bottle of Purell® before being Crucified. With this style Crucifix no wonder they asked Jesus to come off the cross since obviously he was totally uninjured. I tend more to Spanish realism regarding Crucifixes, but would be fine with ones that at least pointed to the suffering Jesus underwent. At the top of my list for anathemas of this type are blonde risen Christ’s that appear to be prancing around such as one parish I sometimes attend has.

Yet somehow I have managed to own a Crucifix that I really like except for the blonde hair. I have been tempted more than once to take a black marker to the hair.

I have long suspected E.J. Dionne Jr. of comedic abilities. This time he surpasses himself.

In giving up the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI was brave and bold. He did the unexpected for the good of the Catholic Church. And when it selects a new pope next month, the College of Cardinals should be equally brave and bold. It is time to elect a nun as the next pontiff.

Now, I know this hope of mine is the longest of long shots. I have great faith in the Holy Spirit to move papal conclaves, but I would concede that I may be running ahead of the Spirit on this one. Women, after all, are not yet able to become priests, and it is unlikely that traditionalists in the church will suddenly upend the all-male, celibate priesthood, let alone name a woman as the bishop of Rome. (source)

Well during the interregnum we will have none for pope, but not nun after it.

Well either comedic abilities or just typical progressive Catholic disconnection from reality and the true nature of the Church. Although wouldn’t it be a hoot if a nun was named such as Mother Angelica? That could be a great Conclave practical joke before they announced the real Pope. It would be hilarious to see the faces of those so wanting a women pope. As much as dissident Catholics love to proclaim their love of religious sisters, it is only love of religious sister of a certain stripe. They moan on and on about the treatment of “American nuns” and yet would treat religious women faithful to the magisterium as persona non grata.

During the time period when we all become Sede Vacantists it is a time of such dreamy hope and optimism for dissident Catholics. As if finally after over two millenniums the Church will finally go right. That all their pet sins will finally become virtues. The possibilities that come to their mind predict a Catholic Church that is finally in step with the world. Forgetting that as things become in step with the world they also fall out of step with it as all fads fade. The eternal temptation that instead of preparing ourselves for Heaven we make Earth our Heaven and bring it down to our level. After all when so many sins are excused, we make more excuses not to repent.

Dionne’s article goes on to basically conflate the Catholic Church as a social service whose only purpose concerns the poor and downtrodden. Salvation and sanctity are not part of his apparent vision of the Church. Once again a problem of not seeing the Church large enough and to try to make her mission a single bullet point. Our love for the poor is not a single dimension, but a necessary facet of our love of God and neighbor.

A sister as pope could also resolve what might seem a contradiction in Catholic theology. More than Protestants, Catholics are profoundly devoted to the Virgin Mary — and few were as devoted as the late Pope John Paul II, who declared that Mary “sustains the spiritual life of us all, and encourages us, even in suffering, to have faith and hope.” A church for which the Blessed Mother plays such an important role should certainly be comfortable with female leadership.

And yet Jesus did not make his mother an Apostle or priest. As Wordsworth wrote Mary was “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast” and Dione just doesn’t understand how the priesthood is nourished not only by Mary, but so many other saintly women. That so many women saints had a devotion to praying for priests as we saw for example considering St. Therese and Blessed Mother Teresa. That like the men who held up Moses’s hands, the same is true of so many women either consecrated or not.

He then goes on to pull the sex abuse scandal card as if it was a problem of an “all-male hierarchy” and not a sinful deletion of duty. Funny also how it is often notice that and “all-male hierarchy” was involved and not that fact that the victims were mostly males. Still last I checked in other institutions from public schools to other religious denominations without an “all-male hierarchy” have the same problem at a magnified level.

Now just when I thought Mr. Dionne couldn’t get any funnier he writes:

If the college were inspired to elect a woman, it could arrange for her consecration and leave the broader question of whether women should become priests — a change that I both hope and expect will happen someday — open for debate during her pontificate.

Typical liberal thinking, “Let’s go ahead and do it and think about the underlying parts later on.” Thus totally missing the connection between the papacy and the priesthood. He might as well say that anybody can be elected Pope. Why stop at nuns by this understanding? Maybe part of the typical dissident tension of demanding women priests while at the same time wiping out distinctions between the priesthood and the laity.

Still lets pretend for a second that the ordination of women was not as then-Cardinal Ratzinger responded “This teaching requires definitive assent …”. Pretend that this this was something that people could have differing opinions on. Let us look at the practical aspects of the College of Cardinals electing a women religious. Just on a practical level it would be a violation of Canon Law at the minimum Can. 1024. An election that violated Canon Law would be null. Mr. Dionne even mentioned this requirement, but not the outcome of it. Still when you see the Church as a human institution and not a Divine one it is easy to make many mistakes. A human instituted “church” can contradict itself and reverse itself over time. Only a human instituted church can do what Mr. Dionne and others want. They want a club more than a Church.

I do wonder if a thousand years from now what people will make of the Catholic Church? After all that time, and in fact to the end of the world, she is indefectible and will not change dogmas with the times. It is mostly within the last century that we have more fully seen the shattering of Christendom as Protestantism continues to fragment in so many directions. For now the Catholic Church just looks a bit out-of-place in the world and this lack of compromise with the false teachings of the world can just be put down to motives other than what is the real vitality of the Church. As time goes on it might become more of a wonder as her teachings remain the same while constantly adopting to how best to preach the good news of the Gospels. Jesus guaranteed that the gates of Hell will never prevail over the Church, not that she would be a Church growing larger over the course of time. A thousand years from now, if Jesus has not yet come, the Church might be small or large but the only aspect of her teachings that might have changed is that they will have come to a deeper understanding of them. No doubt future E.J. Dionne Jr’s will still be annoyed that there are no women priests or popes.