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	Unholy War As George Pell Pelts Priest The Australian April 13, 2011 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/unholy-war-as-george-pell-pelts-priest/story-e6frg6nf-1226038150414 AUSTRALIA'S Cardinal George Pell has hit back at a radical Catholic priest who branded the church's bishops "low on creativity, leadership, education and even intelligence". On the eve of Holy Week, Australia's Catholic priests are witness to a major row unfolding in The Swag, the magazine of the National Council of Priests. It began in January when retired Melbourne priest Eric Hodgens wrote an article in which he slammed the direction of the church under the Pope as a "reversal" of the second Vatican Council of the 1960s. The article, which drew letters from priests around Australia, shocked many Catholics. Father Hodgens claimed former pope John Paul II, who will be beatified next month, had a "lust for power . . . taken to monumental proportions". The Polish pontiff, he said, had re-emphasised "devotion to the static Real Presence" and "reinforced a distorted devotion to Mary". Father Hodgens said his generation had "changed from being priests called and consecrated by God to being presbyters called and ordained by the church - the people of God." He decried church teachings about papal infallibility, confession, priestly celibacy, contraception and homosexuality. "Why can't women be leaders in the church . . . Why alienate remarried divorcees . . . Why this salacious preoccupation with sexual mores?" Cardinal Pell said Father Hodgens's arguments had moved "beyond the limits of orthodox Catholicism". "We find no evidence in Eric's article that the Catholic Church is the recipient of divine revelation," the cardinal wrote. "In my view, Eric's prescriptions are a significant cause of our problems. His solutions were put into practice after the (Vatican) Council, to some degree in Australia, but especially in Belgium, Holland and French-speaking Canada. They emptied the churches there." Cardinal Pell said "in an astonishing example of provincial arrogance", Father Hodgens had claimed some of the more intelligent, better educated bishops were corrupt and had sold their souls for advancement. "Methinks he protests too much," he said. "Pope John Paul provokes a special hostility, allegedly an abuser of power, out of touch in scripture, limited in theology, a bad listener," Cardinal Pell said. "It is a surprise that anyone came to his funeral. In particular, he is denounced for emasculating the leadership of the church." He said both John Paul II and Benedict XVI were "professional academics with a record of scholarly and popular publications rarely if ever equalled by any Australian priest." They were not hostile to intelligence, education or competence as claimed. Both had "striven to appoint bishops who would defend the apostolic tradition and strive to implement policies that would strengthen the Catholic position, not white-ant it".
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