Italian Priest’s Attack on Francis Draws Attention to Clergy’s Use of Social Media

Crux ^ | 11/17/17 | Claire Giangravè

[marshmallow]

ROME - A recent case of an Italian priest asked to leave his parish due to outspoken remarks against Pope Francis and his unconventional practices, highlights the current polarization among some factions of the Church as well as the power of social media to amplify and foment it.

Division is nothing new in the Vatican, but Pope Francis’ reform and openness to change has generated consistent backlash. His document on the family, Amoris Laetitia, which cautiously opened up to the possibility of communion for the divorced and remarried, was met with criticism. In early November, a theological adviser to the U.S. bishops’ conference, Thomas Weinandy, released a letter accusing the pope of causing “chronic confusion.”

The latest public declaration of dissent comes from the pope’s own backyard, more precisely in the Southern Italian city of Palermo, where Father Alessandro Minutella, of the southern Italian city of Palermo, recently published a video on social media where he refused to declare loyalty to the pope as requested by his bishop.

The first warning in Monreale

Minutella had gotten in trouble in the nearby Archdiocese of Monreale - a city just a few miles from Palermo in Sicily. Back in 2015, Monreale’s Archbishop Michele Pennisi disciplined him due to his comments against the pope, and because he claimed to speak on behalf of the Virgin Mary.

His odd practices and the fact that he presented himself as a prophet, led the archbishop to condemn his functions as “contrary to the will of the Church,” and aimed at “manipulating consciences.”

Minutella had even created an order of nuns without authorization, and claimed he and his followers had dug out a well of miraculous water. At the time, Pennisi warned faithful that whoever “supports his activities and collaborates with him [Minutella] is at serious risk for.....

[HLPhat]

 

"...who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;

 

...

 

 that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. "

 

"I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY TO EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN"

--The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom
--Thomas Jefferson, 1786

https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=truth%20is%20great%20and%20will%20prevail%20if%20left%20to%20herself

 

[SpirituTuo]

I think the priest needs to have a long period of reflection if he believes he can call himself spokesman for the Blessed Mother. Additionally, many of the greatest saints demonstrated Holy Obedience. This priest didn’t, in the establishment of an order of religious sisters.

[blackpacific]

This article is a distortion of what is being done to this good priest.

Here is another perspective:
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/11/for-record-fr-minutella-threatened-with.html

Watch the video, he has done everything that was asked of him. As for asking for a public act of allegiance to the Pope, he refuses, as it is pure subjugation, not obedience. I think William Tell was asked to do the same....