Posted on 01/20/2020 7:08:38 PM PST by ebb tide
Pope Francis meets with U.S. bishops from Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas during their "ad limina" visits to the Vatican Jan. 20, 2020. The bishops were making their "ad limina" visits to report on the status of their dioceses to the pope and Vatican officials. (Credit: CNS photo/Vatican Media.)
ROME - Sometimes the political choices people face can seem like a choice between supporting a “snake” or supporting a “dragon,” but Pope Francis told a group of U.S. bishops their job is to step back from partisan politics and help their faithful discern based on values, said Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.
Meeting the bishops of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas Jan. 20, Francis mentioned how, in an election, “you sometimes seem to be caught, you know, are you going to vote in one sense for a snake or you going to vote for a dragon?” DiNardo said.
The pope’s advice to the bishops was “teach your people discernment by you stepping back from the sheer politics of it” and focus on the values at stake, DiNardo told Catholic News Service. “If you try to step back and say, ‘but here are the major moral issues that we face,’ that’s what is most important.”
The region’s 26 bishops, including auxiliaries and retired bishops, spent about two-and-a-half hours talking with Francis in English and Spanish. The pope responded in Italian so his aide could translate the responses into English.
The topics were wide-ranging and included the clerical sexual abuse crisis, migration, the challenges of a media-permeated culture and forming Christian consciences, especially in a time of deep political divisions.
Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas, one of four Texas dioceses on the border with Mexico, said all of those issues were important, but for him the key was listening to the pope and being listened to him by him.
Citing the “whole host of issues” they discussed with Francis, Bishop Edward J. Burns of Dallas said, “I am really looking forward to sitting, digesting, reflecting and praying over the conversation we had this morning with the successor of St. Peter.”
“It was exciting. It was exhilarating,” he said.
Francis is attentive to and knows the pastoral challenges posed by modern social media and their pervasive presence in many people’s lives, said Flores, a daily Twitter user. But the pope has “a calmness about how we address that,” mainly by remaining true to the identity as pastors, proclaiming the Gospel and encouraging people to act according to it.
Flores said all the bishops realize they must learn “how to be a pastor in a media world where you keep justice and charity and a steady focus on the Gospel.”
The ad limina visits are “very important for deepening our sense of personal communion” with the pope, the successor of Peter, he said. “It’s not just the office, it’s the affection for your father spiritually that we need to cultivate, because it is part of the gift that is the communion of the Church.”
“The narrative” that Francis and many of the U.S. bishops “are on different pages,” he said, is “overblown.”
Sometimes that impression may arise when a bishop reacts to a news or social media report about something the pope has said. “It is our responsibility to hear him in his own words and to resist the temptation that sometimes hits across the spectrum of the Church to jump to a conclusion because of some line that was quoted here or there.”
Even in the fast-paced world of social media, “we can afford to be judicious and thoughtful,” he said. “It’s part of our intellectual responsibility.”
DiNardo said the pope and the bishops recognize the value and importance of media. However, he said, some on social media “may represent only a small number of people, but they make a lot of noise, and we try to sift through that,” both in what is said about the pope and what is said about the Church and bishops.
Flores said he was surprised by how much Francis knew about the life and witness of Blessed Stanley Rother, the Oklahoma native martyred in Guatemala in 1981. After his name appeared on a death list, Rother went back to Oklahoma, but refused to stay.
“It was very moving to hear the Holy Father, the successor of Peter, recount to us a story we all know so well,” the bishop said. It showed the pope’s awareness of “that missionary spirit and how it is alive in the United States.”
“He talked about the importance of pastors who accompany their people,” Flores said. “I found that encouraging, because they are the unsung heroes who accompany their people, day in and day out.”
Francis also encouraged the bishops to be pastors, in a real sense, spending time with their faithful “not just at confirmations and on the big feast days,” he said. The pope said, “The people have a nose for the deep reality of the Church, and that is that where the bishop is, there is the Church.”
The pope’s words were “profoundly pastoral, profoundly theological and ecclesial - a sense of church” - as well as obviously flowing from a deep spirituality, Flores said.
On migration, Flores said the pope was clearly knowledgeable about and grateful for the decades of work the Catholic Church in the United States has done to welcome migrants and refugees and was encouraging of what the bishops are doing now, especially to speak of “the dignity of the immigrant and the just treatment” of them.
DiNardo said the conversation also touched on the fact that “some people think when you deal with those issues that’s not church teaching, you know, that’s politics.”
Francis, he said, encouraged the bishops to spend time reflecting on and sharing with their people the difference between “politics as ideology and Catholic social teaching, which stresses the human person and how we are always called to be at their behest.”
“We need to be voices for the immigrants” who do not have a voice, “pushed as they are by many different sides,” the cardinal said. The question of migration policy is complicated, but Christians must come down on the side of “the poor and those who are in need. The immigrants, at one point he mentioned, they really represent to us the face of Christ suffering. The suffering Jesus.”
Burns was among the Texas bishops who voiced their opposition to Gov. Greg Abbott’s announcement that the state would no longer resettle refugees.
The Church as a mother takes care of people in need, he said. “And while every country has a right to protect its border, every person has a right to a better life.”
What really is needed, he said, is immigration reform. “It’s taking all too long.”
About the only think he outright condemns, with no room for discernment, is captital punishment which Texas enforces.
Ping
Does Francis consider Donald Trump to be the snake or the dragon?
During the 2016 presidential election, Bergoglio strongly implied Trump wasn’t a Christian (for his pledge to build a border wall, enforcing U.S. immigration laws).
Did the Pope mention abortion at all?
Maybe he could urge them to stop shuffling around homosexual predator priests within their dioceses.
This imposter is NO Pope of mine!!
I did not leave my Holy Catholic Church. Under the leadership of our present pope it left me.
Today I attend a Baptist Church. The Sunday sermons are okay and sometimes inspiring as was Mass. Our Wednesday bible study group is most excellent. We take the scriptures and analyze them and debate their meaning. The debate is intense with persons of great intellect. This did not happen in my former church.
I would welcome the day I could return to my Holy Catholic Church. I do not see this happening.
It should also be noted that certain congregations of Baptists, Methodists etc. have become as corrupt as the Church of Rome. One must choose wisely their congregation they attend.
Maybe it’s time for laypersons to start their own congregations that actually follow Christian doctrine.
What if the guy giving you advice from the Vatican is both a snake and a dragon?
great idea. But as soon as the diocese decides you’re not part of the church ... Toast. Then most Catholic people won’t go there
https://catholicism.org/ad-rem-no-344.html
The (Catholic) Church is run by an apostate. Until such time as he is run out, along with his Communist SJW allies and fellow Homofascists, those that wish to worship God and follow Christian doctrine have little choice but to go outside. It is beyond outrageous, it is plain evil, that these Satanists, sex perverts, and anti-Christians have been allowed to run through and capture almost every Christian sect with little to no opposition.
2pm EST
Pope urges bishops to propagandize their parishoners on political issues.
There. Fixed it.
Every bishop runs his diocese as his own little kingdom. For better or for worse. It’s not necessary to flee the pope and it’s impossible to flee the bishop.
How about encouraging discernment towards becoming a priest or deacon or religious?
Unfortunately this prick appoints the Bishops.
I know of a certain prelate that is known to frequent a bathhouse, good friend of his Hellishness.
Who will the next Pope be, with this anus appointing all the Cardinals?
Odd to me that it’s the conservatives arguing against married priests. I think of there are tons of men who might like to be priests without giving up marriage and children.
Flood the seminaries with normal guys and there won’t be as many fags. Without getting rid of the fags the problem will never end. Local seminary seems to be trying to actively weed out decent men.
Yes.
But:
In USA, the bishops decide who will become a new bishop. They give the pope a list. He chooses from the short list.
Cardinals. Another story
What the .....?
So if the Church wants to be a political organization, they should be taxed like one.
And what do we do with married priests who get divorced? What do we do with a married priest whose wife or son/daughter is virulently anti-Catholic or a criminal or an abortion advocate?
Everybody thinks that married priests are the simple solution without considering the unintended consequences. You not only need the commitment of the man himself but the family he is responsible for.
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