He doubts business people will pay the document much heed, in part because of its "turgid" prose and the archaic way the Vatican disseminates such missives.
"For the most part, the Catholic social teachings of the church have not gotten the forum in the business community that I think they deserve," said Laczniak.
I'll try to post if the encyclical gets discussed in our Archdiocesan newspaper beyond the initial wire service report, or in any homilies at my parish.
Don't hold your breath!
ReplyDeleteGiven the diocesan --> parish structure of the Church, you'd think that there's a very efficient system in place for the quick dissemination of this kind of information, right down to the parish level.
ReplyDeleteGiven the kind of formation and leadership our clergy have had until very recently in this archdiocese, it's not surprising that a thing like an encyclical would be largely ignored. Case in point: last summer's motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum. 99% of our enlightened clergy were so opposed to its charitable, balanced, and reasoned message that they stonewalled it by simply never mentioning it. I'd be willing to bet that a vast majority of Milwaukee-area Catholics never heard a word about it from their pastors.
The recent encyclical is a brilliant document. Again, given their rather mediocre formation, I'm going to hazard a guess that it's beyond many pastors' ability to digest and summarize for the faithful. After all, we have trouble even with words like "ineffable." So, the attitude will probably be one that wilfully ignores the thing, the public reason given being, "We have more important things to worry about than what comes out of Rome."
Fortunately, Catholics have access to things like the Internet, where they can read it for themselves. Still, the lack of guidance and initiative by their shepherds is breathtaking.
I find it curious that the encyclical is getting so little attention in local "conservative" Catholic orientated blogs that are usually highly "ultra monatist" in orientation.
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