New liturgy makes us more and less than human

I'm afraid I simply cannot agree with the premise that you shouldn't be respectful to the sacraments, or that you shouldn't bring art, beauty and reverence to the Mass. I also object to the claim that somehow preferring a "high" mass makes me more likely to be a sex offender or psychologically twisted.

There were plenty of priests in sweater-vests who liked an extremely low and plain mass who were caught with their hands down the trousers of young boys. That's a fact, and stop pretending that a low mass would have done anything to prevent the sex abuse crisis. It is insulting to your fellow Catholics and dishonest to boot.

come to the Spanish Mass (the one WITHOUT those fascist Opus Dei or frisky Legionnary boys)

practice Catholicism

And two other sayings come to mind:   1) There is such a thing as being so 'spiritual' as to be no earthly good to anyone;   2) Grasping for the shadow we end up losing the substance.
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In the theological economy of RCC hierarchs the outward mechanics of 'how ya do it' liturgical theater seem to trump an actual interior relationship with the Lord of the Church.     How sad.
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Conley sounds like a restorationist whose theology harkens back to Trent. Hold old is the man, and more to the point, where did he get his training? If this is what we are to expect of the hierarchy in the 21st century, deliver us, Lord, from a church of things non-human, without body, and that mystical margin of existence where the bodiless reside!

Excellent bulletin!!

No wonder bishops are completely ignored by 'thinking' adults. And these same bishops can't even be trusted with teaching the 'little ones'!

Many dioceses are initiating their "Welcome Home' marketing campaign in order to bring disillusioned catholics back 'into the fold'. Former catholics should continue to stay FAR AWAY from crap teachings which Conley exemplifies.

The church is supposed to 'help' us get to 'heaven'. However, the church has lost all its credibility.

The bishops are trying to convince others of their neurotic teachings. But there are too many healthy adults out there now, and they will no longer be bamboozled as in the past by these sycophant and psychopath bishops.

According to catholic teaching there is no church in 'heaven' because there is no need for one 'there'. THANK GOD!!

wow!!! Congratulations on your comments of Bishop Conley. It makes me wonder from what planet are our bishops from? Margaret Dilgen

Wouldn't it be nice if parishes just did not buy these new Missals for a while! If the Liturgy of the Council of Trent remains valid to use, then the Liturgy of Vatican 2 should be equally valid.

Why do all of your commentaries come off sounding like the smirking condescension of the supposedly 'cool kids' back in high school?

I bet you know all the words to Kumbaya, too.

'Jes sayin....

Where did we all of a sudden get all these weirdo bishops in the Church? This Conlet character seems way off the modern world in his own medieval life of the one,true church and his ridiculous dismissal of the use of a coffee cup instead of his loved golden chalices!!J

"Conley is living in the days before Copernicus and Galileo rather than in the Space Age in which it is clear that the earth is not separate from the heavens but is in the heavens. Nor can we, from what we now understand of space, speak of an up or a down."

Calling Bishop Conley a good man was apparently editorial boilerplate, given how backwards Mr. Kennedy regards him.

More to the point, from a scientific standpoint, the quoted passage is a bit off. Gravity--not to mention poetry--ensures that "down to earth" means something. Poetry ensures that we can enjoy the delight of slipping its surly bonds to touch the face of God. If he doesn't believe me, well--watch that step out of the third storey window--it's a doozy.

A pity Mr. Kennedy's view of the liturgy is so unpoetic, crabbed and crassly material--not very human, actually.

You've missed the point Eugene...again. The good bishop was merely speaking poetically. Probably doesn't actually think we turn into angels. More than likely, he is quite aware that the sacramental liturgy is the most profoundly human thing we could do. Angels don't have bodies. Sacraments are for people with bodies. The Bishop knows that. He was speaking in beautiful pious symbology. I know you libs can't stand religious poetry in the liturgy, which explains why you guys bleat and stamp about the new translations. The experiment is over. It is time for everyone to start praying again.

The dualism that marked the pre-Vatican II Church, and which apparently Conley has been missing, seems to me to be a contradiction to the essence of the Incarnation. I can't speak for Jesus, but I suspect he saw his humanity as holy by its nature. Consider the source--his Abba.

Any apologies to Bishop Dewayne yet??

Thank you Dr. Kennedy for getting clearly to the point of the good bishop's delight with the restoration of the old liturgical style wehere the laity simply pray, pay and obey. Since I presume he will use the sanctified language of Trent, why should he bother to learn English? No one listens to him anyway.

He's one of Chaput's cronies. You were expecting otherwise? Why? He didn't get where he is by being a maverick. He has visions of cappae magnae dancing in his head even as he speaks. Lincoln will be vacant soon when Brusquewits retires. Denver is just over the hill. Hint, hint, hint.

Bishop Conley, like most bishops,is a jerk. Why the people in the pews even tolerate these fools and put dollars into their coffers is unfathomable.

I don't know about God swooping down (like Superman?) to raise us to his level, but isn't the whole point of the Incarnation about God lowering Himself to our level? And what's wrong with using a coffee cup as a chalice, as long as it's clean? (As the Nazis found out to their chagrin in the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", Christ did not use a jewel encrusted gold chalice at the Last Supper). And I guess that "pedestrian" is a bad word for somebody who probably tools around in a limo all day.

Here we go again with the "pedestrian" vs. "pompous" dichotomy. Amid the accusations flying from either side of our pervasive ecclesiological and liturgical polemic, we forget the complementariness of transcendence AND immanence. I believe that what we really need in liturgy is a balance somewhere between the monotony of the colloquial and the obscurity of the inaccessible.

Conley seems overcome with Celtic romanticism. His verbage is overall, silly. Maybe he should talk with some of his cousins or brother priests in Ireland to see what that hierarchical thing will get you. But clergy of his type see and hear only what they wish. There is an intellectual dishonesty about this, an agenda which in the end, tries to force the Spirit back into a box.

I too have wondered about the urban legend thing. No one seems able to document much, only they seem to use "examples" they have heard of, or read of online, to make a point. This they parrot back without inquiring about that truthiness thing.

In the very early days post Vat II, no doubt the liturgically rediculous happened at times. Done, by priests who were in their seminary days before or possibly during that council, and massively undereducated or rather indoctrinated, but not taught to think, and certainly tasteless.

It's so much easier if you can just turn to manuals. Next comes Latin. Even if I can read it (and I can some) I'm so busy translating, that I'm not praying, it is an intellectual exercise instead. I love what the Church could and should be, not so much what it is becoming.

I am a young Catholic and may be susceptible to naiveté, but why are we treating a brother in Jesus Christ and servant of his church with such open hostility? Did not Jesus command us to go first and be reconciled with our brother? Did he not call us to be poor in spirit? Did he not command us to love one another as he has loved us?

I know that our church is comprised of sinners and that true love demands that we humbly correct each other, but can we as Christians first learn to listen to each other and then work out our differences? As a young Catholic, that's the church that I want to be a part of: a church of brotherly love, a church of Him who is Love. Peace be with you brother, P.J.

a priest who, at Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker House, “used a coffee cup as a chalice.”

and this is wrong because . . .?

To implement fully the findings of the proceedings of the Second Vatican Council, from here south to the canal, we must use the corn tortilla as the host.

From here North, a coffee cup sounds about right, for gathering around the altar of Love!

what's up, bish? wasn't rimmed in GOLD? Wasn't, as the new interpretation inauthentically imposes upon us, "precious?"

"Praying with the angels sounds more dignified but fits along as just an inappropriate fiction as sleeping with the fishes."

both euphemisms for death

want a dead Mass? Aspire to the angels.

whenever the ancient elder desert monks saw a novice ascending to the angels, they pulled his ankles back to the earth.

neither does he like the “People” of God, finding the phrase too “pedestrian.”
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Has he not read his Penny Lernoux?

His "People of God - The Struggle for World Catholicism?"

His "Cry of the People: United States Involvement in the Rise of Fascism, Torture, and Murder and the Persecution of the Catholic Church in Latin America?"

Pedestrian?

The people of God are out here amongst us pedestrians, not in the episcopal limos.

This article by Mr. Eugene Kennedy really upsets me. I just visited a website (Most Holy Family Monastery) that states the Catholic Churches run by priests ordained after 196? are invalled and all the priests ordained after that date are heretics. The main thing that scares me is they consider Pope Benedict XVI is an "anti-pope" and also a heretic.

I just returned to the Catholic religion after a 30+ year absence and my best friend was baptised just 4 years ago. Now I'm getting the feeling there is a lot of discord in the Catholic Church! This scares me! I just want to be a good Catholic and accept Jesus Christ as my Savior, and pray to Our Blessed Mother Mary too.

The sex scandal in the Catholic Church doesn't help. A priest in our diocese (Venice, Florida) was arrested a couple weeks ago for sexual molestation of a young boy. Is this still going on?

All this stuff really upsets me. I don't know what to do.

Well said, but to what end? The bishops are not going to buck the Vatican. In addition, they must strive to find meaning in these changes. How else would their lives makes sense? It is one more step in taking the church back to the days prior to Vatican II. The only consolation we have is that no one lives forever. Even the oldest who seem to be able to cheat death will soon die. Then things will change again.

Whatever our words, they will always be inadequate. God understands, and loves us anyway. Let's all calm down, go to mass, pray and worship together in love. All will be well.

Right on
It is hard to believe that this man, in a position of leadership, is so out of touch with reality.
Thank you, Eugene, for your lucid and sane presentation of what is perhaps the greatest 'danger' to the faith: the estrangement of the hierarchy from the real Christ, "the son of man."

Thanks Eugene! This is simply an amazing bullseye article to remind us humans of our humanity freely and fully expressed by the human Jesus in the Eucharist/liturgy. Why does this human Donley aspire so much to be like an angel when in fact he has not seen one himself? Is he afraid of his humanity? I just don´t understand why some human creatures exalt divinity to the expense of demeaning their (and others´) humanity? It is in being fully human that we achieve fulfillment. Didn´t Jesus become perfectly human like us? Was there something wrong with the incarnation? Conley and some like-minded hierarchical figures are working hard to erase the gains of Vat. II by devaluing the human dimensions in the liturgy. The human Jesus seems to be a risk to the divine Christ. That´s why Jesus did not last long on earth.

Hmm, reading the Bishop's words, I find it hard to believe that Mr Kennedy's caricaturization is honestly come by.

For instance, the Bishop heaps praise that many others (including a certain then-Cardinal Ratzinger) find unfounded on the Ordinary Form. He is not a liturgical 'restorationist' (which presupposes that hermeneutic of discontinuity), but a 'continuist'.

Again, before citing the story recounted by Dorothy Day, the Bishop makes it clear that this is not a product of the Council, nor even the Concilium (that fashioned the Ordinary Form of the Mass), but an aberrant spirit that has marred the reading and reception of both.

The condescending invective that Bishop Conley does not understand the words he uses is both apparently false and sadly pedestrian (using the analogical meaning: lacking wit or imagination; dull; everyday; unexceptional). BTW, again Mr Kennedy mis-cites the Bishop, the bishop finds "and also with you" 'pedestrian', he finds that the emphasis on people of God is inevitably overmuch on 'people' and too little on 'God'.

More importantly than all these quibbles about lack of journalistic integrity or liturgical formation, however, are the implications of equating (as Mr Kennedy does) Heaven and space (aka the heavens). The innate materialism of such a view is expressly countered in the new translation of the Creed: no more will we proclaim in belief in the 'unseen' (I cannot see Mr Kennedy, but I believe he exists, a rather unimpressive claim of belief) but that which is truly 'invisible' (cannot be seen, as in 'No eye has seen... what My Father has prepared for those who love Him'). Admittedly such a view turns gnosticism on its head, but only to descend to the level of, at best, an agnostic humanism.

While the merits of the particulars of the new translation can be debated, nothing is gained by attacking the pastors of the Church explaining the benefits of the changes, nor by approaching the question from a position immediately at odds with the Church and Faith.

Jesus came for all. I can not morally condone a liturgy that excludes and refuses to save all and denies that Jesus came for all.

I am disgusted by the elitism and selfishness of this new Roman Missal. It is unChristian. It drives away and creates ex-community, not communion, not community.

Actually, I think that you, Mr. Kennedy, are the one who is condescending. Your words are typical, I'm afraid, of those who dismiss the concept of solemnity and transcendence in liturgical worship as nothing more than the reflection of a hierarchical mentality. What it is, in fact, is the expression of an esthetic which is universal and innate in human beings and intimately connected with the act of worship in many cultures. The kind of pedestrianism that you seem to advance reflects an essentially secular mentality in which religion is nothing more than an instrument to transmit humanistic values. Read the Holy Scriptures, observe all the traditional liturgies of the Church, East and West, look even beyond the pale of Christianity to the rites and ceremonies of other religions. You will see how completely mistaken you are. By the way, those who have suffered most from the imposition of attitudes like yours over the past nearly fifty years have been the simplest and most devout within the Church. I have seen over and over again what they have had to go through and how it has tormented them. Thank God your way of thinking is finally being routed.

Thank you for a poignant and pointed commentary. We are the people and as such are the crown of God's creation. Why are angels suddenly a higher creation? And if they are(were) they,too, were open to the faults of ego. And very few people have I heard deeply desiring the liturgies of yesteryear, tho some would like the 20 minute time period. These bishops, etc., seem to have decided that Vatican ll was an anomaly that is better gone. How wrong. Vatican ll was definitely a gift from the Holy Spirit. How sad that so many priests have closed themselves against a visit from the Spirit. The people embrace the Spirit and are in turn, embraced and strengthened and made more spiritual in all the right ways. Are these bishops really the human version of the fallen angels? Whose work are they here to accomplish? No judgment, you understand. Only some questions.

I am in my late seventies. Fifty years ago I was a member of a church choir (about 40 voices strong,) who "performed" every Sunday a beautiful Latin mass by such as Mozart, Handel, Kemptner; and Latin Requiems for funerals. Now,when I get across one of those Latin masses at the EWTN I have to switch channels.

You see, when we delighted in doing those masterpieces, the men would snore away, or do business deals. The little children would fidget in their front pews, and the teenagers exchanged notes. The Latin mass allowed for little participation of the faithful. The preaching was hell fire and brimstone, cracking the whip mostly over women, for not being submissive enough. After 1 hour and half to 2 hours of this kind of penance, the guys would be more likely to be irritated to go either to the pub to imbibe too much, or go home and be more abusive.

The most spiritual Eucharists I participate in now are those of the charismatic prayer groups. Those are truly celebrations of our Lords Super, which as well can last from one to several hours. There might be from 50 to several thousand (during conferences,)but everybody is taking part with their whole being. Everyone is welcomed to celebrate as a community, not just docile spectators. The language is one of prayer and praise and understood by all.
Today, I consider it absolutely destructive and divisive, to force a dead prayer language onto the faithful, which was not even the native language of our Lord Jesus Christ, and translate the mass prayers for the vernacular to resemble more the Latin. It is nothing less than another evil force, on the path of destruction for our Church. Latin is the language of an empire gone long ago to defeat. Latin represents power and control for an ungodly hierarchy, who wants no less than empirical fortune, fame and splendor, on the back of unquestioning slaves, who are supposed to kiss their bejeweled rings and feet. Latin like translations have nothing to do with the well-being of souls and salvation, nor giving praise to our Lord and Savior in a most devout manner. The newly forced prayers of the mass, translated from the dead Latin language into English has to be done away with as much as the pompous ceremonial attires of our priesthood. Either are big time scandals for all.

I didn't think it possible for Kennedy to get worse, but he's managing: more tilting at windmills of his own making as he imagines conversations with people he's never met and evaluates people's lives on the basis of snippets taken out of context. As usual, his main complaint is that he's getting old and no one pays attention to him any longer, and the main reason is that he writes drivel like this. As one Irishman to another, 'tis better to lie down before someone else has to tell ye you're dead.

This article argues for ignoring what prayers *REALLY SAY* in Latin and substituting phrases in English that are based on an ideology that the saints of the Church would find unrecognizable. If you imagine St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas coming to your defense yelling "huzzah!" I would have to ask for an explanation as to how that is true. If you don't imagine that that would be their reaction... well doesn't that make you wrong by definition?

In summary, Christ is the source of all action in the Mass. We participate only as parts of His Body. We are indeed singing with the ranks of angels, since the Sanctus is their song. Anything else is foreign to 2,000 years of Catholic sensibilities...

Since Constantine, when Christianity became the Empire’s region, Vatican state was so good or so bad as the actually so much decried Islamic movements. Afterwards, there were significant changes, all of them preceded by fanaticism, extreme intolerance and rivers of blood. Holly Fathers John XXIII and Paul VI, and the II Council, opened new windows that are closing again. They started to close under one of the worse Popes in Church’s history – yes, the almost blessed John Paul II, a “brilliant” actor like Reagan who had a harder heart than Thatcher, that I hope will spend eternity running from his protégée, Fr. Maciel, and having to pay taxes to Opus Day -, and they continue being shut by Benedict XVI, his talking cricket. If one was a Holly See style Sylvester Stallone, the other is a version of Glenn Beck, with Communion and Liberation taking the place of Murdoch. I despise so much this spirit, that sometimes I always forget the Spirit. I’ve to pinch myself to remember that He’s always there, and that I’m still a Catholic. You aid me a lot in this effort. Thank you!

What I don't understand here is why it is such a terrible thing to want to strive to pray with the angels. Haven't many saints described how it was revealed to them that there are innumerable angels at each mass with us, praying and worshipping Christ in the Eucharist? Wasn't it the knowledge that Christ would become man that drove Lucifer in his pride to rebel against God? Perhaps we should maintain the "up and down" sense of liturgy because God does stoop down to bring us up to him. Isn't that the whole mission of Christ in giving us the Eucharist? When is the last time that a person who is not a priest able to turn bread and wine into the God who created us? It is only through the humility to accept that we can do nothing good without God that we will find the way to Heaven.

I understand that some like Mr. Kennedy want to think of the Liturgy as only a human endeavor, but how can we when we know that we would have no ability to worship God if He, Himself had not revealed His presence to us in the Universe. The "up and down" nature of the liturgy exists because the Universe has an up and down nature with God at the top and us at the bottom. Remember that the notion of the sanctuary of the church is to show us that we partake in the heavenly worship of God with the angels. The sanctuary is Heaven and it is at communion that God reaches out to us on Earth from heaven to draw us to him. We are closed off from heaven now, but we all hope that when our journey here on Earth is finished we may be able to pass to paradise to enter God's Heavenly sanctuary. God Bless!

When I saw the coffee cup reference I realized that I'd seen the story before but in a context that was far different from what the Bishop seemed to suggest.
http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/canonizationtext.cfm?Number=34
In a printout, the story is about 80% down. If we could treat a 'coffee cup chalice" as a chalice, would that not be a direction to consider? When do you connect to "fruit of the vine and work of human hands"?

This sounds bitter. Especially the acid rain bit.

"The bishop might well ponder that in light of the Church’s sex abuse scandals and return to a sense of the human person as the subject of the liturgy."

While I had to ponder this sentence for few seconds in Cullen's article to extract it's true message, I believe he is right on. Once again Bishop Conley and many like him seem to not really understand what most of us in the pews who have found meaning in Liturgy over the last 30 years really found so prayerful. He clearly hasn't bothered to ask us either. Dud's do you not get it? Do you even want to understand Jesus faithful? I thought that was part of your job description. Jesus sure did!

Well said, Dr. Kennedy. I cannot understand the persistent attacks on Vatican II. I thought that such concils spoke infallibly. I must be wrong. Nevertheless, how can the current anti-Vatican II rhetoric be justified? I can understand advocating for change but to do so by bringing somebody/something else down seem ingenuous.

I usually suspect a sales person that cannot talk well of his/her product but instead runs the competition's product down. So it is with those who want to undue Vatican II.

It was Fr. Dan Berrigan S.J who used the coffee cup at Mary House. Dorothy , being very liturgically conservative broke the cup and buried it with respect in the back yard. Of course Fr Dan used cups in prison to say Mass like many other priests around the world in prisons. That some bishops may have to do so may be just around the corner. as you said WWJD?

This was a bit of a ramble, Mr. Kennedy. I wish you had quoted more of what the bishop said; it was hard to figure out what you were responding to. I'm not sure what you found condescending about his remarks, either. On a couple of your remarks: the cup used at the Passover meal would not have been a ordinary household object used for regular meals. Also, if the Mass is nothing more than a "human activity", then why bother at all? I'm not sure about the purpose of your writing, but it seemed pretty mean-spirited.

I found Bishop Conley's own language to be actually more stylistically sonorous and pleasing to the human ear than the new translation he is exegeting. Perhaps he should send his resume to Vox Clara?

Thank you. If, only our prelates had enough sense to listen to the English teachers, theologians and biblical scholars for up-to-date input, we would not be given such a mess. I would like to see the curriculim vitae of every bishop, archbishop and perhaps the priests too to inform the congregations of the last course they took to be part of a world that embraces continuous education: moral, psychological, spiritual, biblical, theological. The majority of them have lost their way and need in this Lent, conversion.

My apologies, but this article was so poorly written that i had to abandon it halfway through. Please edit your work before submitting it.

As to his point, a priest is called to follow the precepts of God and the Church by his ordination. If he chooses to follow his own precepts in disobedience to that of the Church, he commits a sin.

Our priests must be the shining examples that we follow so that everyday when our priests act in persona Christi, we may remark that they truly radiate such an aura.

Yes, Gene, quite correct.

Auxiliary Bishop James Conley in speaking of liturgical renewal, is emoting as though the Roman Missal will take us out of the banal and lift us up to divine abandonment.

In his comment about the priest, who used a common coffee cup in his liturgy (that shocked Dorothy Day), Bishop Conley forgets one basic point. The Mass is primarily Christ's action, not just that of the priest and the faithful and that it is a gift of God, not something to be manipulated. The new Roman Missal manipulates much in the Liturgy, because its basic premise goes back to the years after the Council of Trent---rather than back to Christ at the Last Supper---who gave us the gift of the Eucharist.

Jesus used simple, ordinary items in his miracles and also did so at the Last Supper. Would Jesus be seated at the Last Supper in sumptuous vestiments, with a highly embroidered lace tablecloth on the table, and with costly plates and a bejeweled chalice before him? Would he have Gregorian chant with large choirs singing and would he be wearing a magna cappa?

As you have pointed out, Gene, the simple cup would have been closer to the reality. How do we know that? When Jesus praised John the Baptist (Lk 7:24-35, Mt.11:8-9), he stated about John, "What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who put on fine clothing and live in luxury are in royal places." Christ took the common, the ordinary, the humble and rendered it holy. And Jesus would not have been speaking to his disciples in a language that would require them to have tutors next to them to translate His words.

Speaking of language---the Roman Missal eased out long established English scholars of ICEL(who had sent each and every change in the English missal to each bishop in the English speaking world---for their suggestions, imput, and changes)with CDW (Congregation for Divine Worship) appointments. Not one of these members spoke English as their first language. This take-over of the scholarly ICEL, with CDW appointees became secretive (so typical of the Vatican) and bishops around the English-speaking world were presented with a 'fait accompli'.

In stating that he finds the term the "People of God too pedestrian," Bishop Conley is showing his distain for the common folk---the people to whom Jesus (who was a true pedestrian) came to bring the Gospel. If God wanted humans to be spirits (like the angels) we would have been created as such. Jesus, truly God and truly human, 'pitched his tent among us' and did not distain people as they were---not creatures whose spirits were at war with their bodies.

In the practical issues of higher costs of gasoline---that people will not be able to support their churches with as much. And I would hope that parish priests would say, "we can't afford hundreds of dollars for all these new books and don't the bishops know how tight our budgets are? Apart from this we would prefer to give the money to the poor".

This article by Mr. Eugene Kennedy really upsets me. I just visited a website (Most Holy Family Monastery) that states the Catholic Churches run by priests ordained after 196? are invalled and all the priests ordained after that date are heretics. The main thing that scares me is they consider Pope Benedict XVI is an "anti-pope" and also a heretic.
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B16 has bigger fish to fry than fretting over these kooks and their sympathizers in the SSPX. They're anti-Semites, a throw back to the new European and American radical right-wing sweeping throughout the western world. They're holdovers from the discredited and defeated Vichy, Nazis, Fascisti,and Phalangist elements who never went into hiding at the end of World War II.

Rather than trying to placate these kooks and their sympathizers in the SSPX, the pope should stop trying to win them back, run the risk of being associated with them as a sympathizer, and just let them spin off into obscurity. Much the same as the Polish National Catholics, Church of Utrecht, and other heretical/schismatical bodies have done.

"Conley is living in the days before Copernicus and Galileo rather than in the Space Age in which it is clear that the earth is not separate from the heavens but is in the heavens."

With a statement like that, you don't have a right to lecture Conley on being condescending.

Which he does when he says,

"He may not know that the meanings of transcendence include (from the root skand) “to climb over” and that it is related to ascend, as every bishop knows, and condescend, that bishops like Conley are very good at."

Which is pretty condescending as a statement in itself.

The whole editorial reads like a self-righteous screed.