Too bad this Cardinal isn't the Pope.
Posted on 07/03/2016 5:33:30 PM PDT by ebb tide
A senior Catholic cleric took a swipe at the press during an exchange with a Twitter follower late Friday.
Wilfried Cardinal Napier is the archbishop of Durban, South Africa. He also holds various offices in the Roman Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy, and is one of the African continent’s most prominent ecclesial figures.
“Thank God I live in Africa, where we base our faith on the Scriptures & Church Teaching, & not every papal interview!” he tweeted.
The cardinal was criticizing the largely secular global press that has tended to report the pontiff’s extemporaneous comments without sufficient theological context, often leaving the impression that the pope has undertaken major changes in Catholic belief.
As a general matter, Pope Francis has made himself more available to the press than any of his predecessors. The pope’s ex parte communication with journalists or lay Catholics and long in-flight tet-a-tets aboard the papal plane have placed the notoriously meticulous Vatican press office under strain. The Holy See has sometimes made edits to Francis’ remarks before releasing official transcripts, as recently happened when the pope suggested that most modern marriages are “invalid” at a pastoral congress in Rome. The official text produced by the Press Office of the Holy See softened the language, which read that only “a part of our sacramental marriages are null.”
Veteran Vatican observer John L. Allen notes such emends are not necessarily unusual.
Napier’s invocation of his home continent is a telling confirmation of the factional topography of the Church. The 2015 Synod on the Family, which discussed among other things, the status of LGBT and divorced faithful within the Church, revealed a geographic and theological schism between the progressive clerics of the European churches and the conservatives of the African bloc. Events at the Synod prompted Vincent Cardinal Nichols of the U.K. to speculate that the African bishops would exert more influence in the Church in the coming years.
“Traditionally, historically, the strong points of the Church have either been in Europe or spread from Europe and I think the Synod of Bishops has shown us how much strength and resources there are in the Church all around the world,” he said.
Oops! If I were Cardinal Napier, I would be worried about Francis sending me to Siberia after saying that.
Too bad this Cardinal isn't the Pope.
I had been wondering if he was related to Alan Napier, who played Alfred the Butler in the 1966 Batman series. Probably not.
*Groan*
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