Posted on 04/25/2014 6:54:58 AM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
I have waited to comment on this for a few days to let the facts shake out. It seems that they have shaken out to the maximum degree that the Pope will allow.
Is it true that we cannot know for sure what the Pope said on the phone call? Yup, that is true.
Does that mean there is nothing to worry about? Well, let's see.
So let's stick with what we do know and see if there is anything to worry about.
We know that the phone call took place and the topic was divorce/remarriage and communion since that is the topic of the letter that prompted the call.
We know what the woman alleges that the Pope said, namely that it is OK for her to return to Communion.
We know that as a result, many many people now think, rightly or wrongly, that the Pope has signaled that it is legitimate for the divorced and remarried to return to communion.
We know that the Holy See knows this and we know that the Holy See refuses to comment, to confirm or deny, the context of the situation thus leaving in place suppositions of many as a result of the call.
We know that the Holy See has done nothing to re-iterate in anyway the Church's doctrine on this matter in the wake of the scandal caused by the reporting on the call.
We know that at the invitation of the Pope, Cardinal Kasper proposed just such a solution to the consistory.
We know the Pope effusively praised Cardinal Kasper for his proposals.
Is this sufficient to form an opinion or to be a source of worry for a faithful Catholic?
You decide.
Edward Peters, JD, JCD, Ref. Sig. Ap.
For a no-comment comment this is interesting. Let’s look at Fr. Lombardi’s four-sentence statement.
Several telephone calls have taken place in the context of Pope Francis’ personal pastoral relationships. {Okay}.
Since they do not in any way form part of the Pope’s public activities, no information is to be expected from the Holy See Press Office. {The HSPO has never been limited to commenting only on a pope’s “public” activities, but this statement certainly serves to distance the HSPO from anything related to Francis’ phone calls. The phrase “in any way” strikes me as strong language.}
That which has been communicated in relation to this matter, outside the scope of personal relationships, and the consequent media amplification, cannot be confirmed as reliable, and is a source of misunderstanding and confusion. {Through the garbled syntax of the sentence, I think this says, again, that the HSPO has no intention of trying to parse what might or might not have been said in a papal phone call, so please don’t even ask.}
Therefore, consequences relating to the teaching of the Church are not to be inferred from these occurrences. {The most important sentence in the communique, and a welcome one, first for what it says—though that should have been obvious—and for its not repeating what was said earlier in regard to Francis’ homilies and ferverinos, namely that they supposedly form no part of the papal magisterium. Of course such statements, being liturgical, public, and on points of faith and morals, were part of the papal magisterium. Not a very big part, I grant, but still, a part. Popes cannot switch-off being popes in the middle of Mass, and the HSPO was, I think, wrong to imply otherwise. Anyway, that mistake is not repeated here.}
Overall a helpful statement. Certainly an interesting one.
I do not see a “no comment” on the matter as interesting.
I would hope that any discussion of a personal nature between a priest, cardinal, or even the Pope remains just that... personal. If the other person wants to make it public, that is on them. If in making things public, they mislead, that is on them, not the Pope or the Church.
So far there is no reason whatsoever to believe the woman has misled. On the contrary what she claims matches exactly the agenda of Cardinal Kasper, who was appointed by Pope Francis to address the recent meeting in Rome on exactly these issues, and whose heterodox position our Pope subsequently praised as serene and pastoral theology.
How many times have we been told that we can't trust a news or polling source that isn't Catholic-friendly? Are you suggesting that this divorced, living-in-sin woman is a more trustworthy source than your own pope?
I think the new FRomoan Catholic talking point goes something like this: He is a fallible man, he is not changing doctrine, blah, blah, blah. Over the last couple days I have heard this repeatedly, even if talking about something not related directly to Frankie.
My question is this: WHY did he single out this one lady to call? How did he KNOW enough about her plight to single her out.
Certainly there are some easy explanations, but there are some that are perhaps a bit more, shall we say, inconvenient.
Go away, fag.
I have to wonder about the latent tendencies of any man who sees homosexuals everywhere that he looks.
Perhaps because she had sought an annulment or was in the tribunal process, which if the church finds the first marriage invalid...can have her new one accepted.
So you see, you or the original poster, don’t really know all the circumstances surrounding this ‘woman living in sin,’ from your secular viewpoint.
On the other hand, we only know what the woman alleges.
Please don't put words in my mouth. Where has the Pope contradicted what this woman said? Where has the Vatican issued a clarification that she misinterpreted or misrepresented his advice?
Father, I hate to correct a venerable priest, but I believe you are mistaken in your comment:
"Tereze,
I don't know what you mean by 'strange'. The real question is, 'Is the Pope a Catholic?' The only possible answer is in the affirmative, therefore any 'strangeness' is impossible, otherwise..., otherwise.... well, that is impossible to imagine, and millions of Catholics have been living a lie and our faith is built on sand."
No, it certainly would not mean that. Not at all. This kind of thinking is what got us into this mess. The pope is not the Faith. The pope does not give us the Faith. If the pope loses the Faith, I don't lose mine. If the pope is a heretic, an apostate, a schismatic or any of those horrible things, I don't have to be those things too.
The Faith comes from God not Rome. The papacy is a key unit of the Church, so having such a bad one would be a terrible thing, but absolutely no reason whatever for anyone to lose their Faith.
I personally think we are in a unique situation. I have asked many smarty-smart people, who know lots of history and theology, when there has been a comparable disastrous period in the Church, and each one of them has said something like, "Well, the Arian crisis comes close, but this is probably worse." And it is clear that the current worries about Francis are not isolated, unique or distinct from the general catastrophe that has befallen us.
Francis, if I may say something so dreadful, is a symptom - or perhaps the culmination - of the overall disaster that has become the ruling principle of the world since 1965. But again, this has no effect on the Faith. The Faith is simply the Truth. The Real. The realness of the Real does not change or fade because lots and lots of people want to deny it. Two and two still equal four. Marriage is still what it is. The Holy Eucharist is still the Holy Eucharist.
If the Papacy has been seized by bad men it does not mean that the things we believe are "built on sand". It means only that the papacy has been seized by bad men. Bad men will do what bad men do, and we can do nothing but maintain and continue to proclaim what we know is true throughout their reign.
Facing up to the possibility that something very bad is going on does not necessitate a loss of the Faith. Fearing that the sky will fall if there is a bad pope, fearing it so much that one tries to retreat into denial of what we see plainly before us, will do nothing to help anyone.
Facing up to what is really happening is the only way to maintain the Faith. Retreating and saying, "oh, that couldn't possibly happen and if it did then the Real is no longer the Real." is going to allow the disaster to spread still further.
Only the Real counts. And if the pope and all the cardinals and bishops of the world try to say that something other than the Word of Christ is true, then we reject that as a wicked lie. We know what is true because we have the Faith.
As laypeople (and humble parish priests) our duty is clearly before us. We don't have the power to stop bad men from doing bad things. But we have the power to continue to maintain the Faith, what we know. And to pray for a just solution to the terrible troubles of our times.
And Frank involes himself in such mundane issues.
Sure.
You can believe me when I say that I very thoroughly washed each one beforehand.
Where has the Pope contradicted what this woman said? Where has the Vatican issued a clarification that she misinterpreted or misrepresented his advice?
I'm not a Catholic, so you'll have to confirm for me that this is a pope's job - to constantly and comprehensively issue statements and clarifications covering every single private statement ever made, making the pope responsible for his every private utterance on the subject of faith and morals which may somehow have been overheard, misinterpreted or misrepresented to the point wherein the rules concerning papal infallibility and ex cathedra are surely being thrown out the window by the very Catholics who claim to believe in them.
As I surmised on an earlier thread on this subject, I guess this really does mean that the pope has been placed under arrest, and is being counseled not to open his mouth without his lawyer being present.
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