Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Cardinal Siri's banned forgotten book on ecumenism



















Our undercover corresponded we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city who knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, wired me the following telegram back on June 20, and the footman from the telegraph office in Reno, Nevada (of all places!), just arrived at my door with it this evening. Here's what he wrote:
[Cardinal Giuseppe] Siri! Talk about counter-Resourcement, or a name unlikely to be on any recent papal bedside reading stand. LOL. Forgotten in under a century, akin to Garrigou-Lagrange. His "Gethsemeni" appears available now only in French.
Actually, he is happily mistaken, though, unhappily, used copies of the bad English translation run between $65.98 and $284.62. Anyway, he continued:
I very much doubt I could persuade Ignatius Press to republish what is essentially a polite take down of Henri de Lubac. Despite the premium currently placed on dialog and diversity, people really want to hear just what they want to hear. Siri's common sense can't really be answered, so it will remain simply discredited by official disfavor versus any sustained theologizing. Reminds me to of Romano Amerio, whose Stat Veritas may we yet someday see in English. It's not that I enjoy insurgency so much as I enjoy Catholic theology and clear thinking.
Related: "Catholics and Ecumenism - considerations by Cardinal Siri" (RC, June 19, 2014).

[Hat tip to GN]

4 comments:

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dynamic Silence (google it) is an effective way of keeping information from those deemed too ignorant to handle it; the flummoxed faithful.

Were a man to hear about Siri or Amerio or Martinez, he might actually be curious and search out works by those authors and once he read them the ecumenical scales would fall from their eye and the shadow church is not anxious to bring into the light ideas that would rain on our great springtime in the new pentecost of the civilisation of love

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

I have a copy of Siri's book, which I bought for about half of the price quoted by PP. It is indeed badly translated (and could use an editor as well). Too bad. You would think that the voice of a prominent cardinal who participated in V2 but was somehow not transported by its "spirit" would be worth a decent translation and presentation by a Catholic press, especially seeing as we are now a pluralistic faith, a rainbow coalition, a coat of many colors, a player piano of many snappy tunes, etc. One would think those awful days of low-level inquisition, repression, suppression, quashing, quelling, squelching, stifling, detering, detaining, hindering, hampering, muffling, muzzling, bottling up, corking up, hushing up, shutting up, stamping out, and the ever-infamous Putting On of the Kibosh were still with us.

Anonymous Bosch said...

You are on a ROLL, again, Ralph. How long did it take you to think up that string of adjectives?

Knowing your record of commenting now pretty well, I would guess maybe 2 minutes max?

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

Depends on whether Rodale's Synonym Finder is within reach :)