Posted on 08/10/2022 6:09:03 PM PDT by ebb tide
The best insights into what the Pope thinks, and what terrifying journeys into his brain these tend to be, is when he is giving one of his airplane interviews or speaking to Jesuits. Phil Lawler looks at the latest brain droppings of the Pope to some Canadian Jesuits:
Here, I believe, is the ultimate expression of the “hermeneutic of rupture.” In his July 29 conversation with Jesuits in Canada, Pope Francis seems to have said that the Roman Catholic Church ceased to exist!
Read his words and check my logic. The Pope said that “the Church is either synodal or it is not Church.” Then just a few moments later: “Certainly, we can say that the Church in the West had lost its synodal tradition.” So it follows that the “Church in the West” was not Church.
The Pope does concede that synodality— thus, the Church, by his definition— continued. “The Church of the East has preserved it.” But this astonishing statement from this astonishing Pontiff seems to dismiss the authenticity of the “Church in the West”— that is, the Roman Catholic Church, which he now leads. And notice that he does not make this claim as a hypothesis; he begins the crucial sentence with the word “Certainly.”
The Pope’s statement does not specify the historical point at which the Western Church lost its synodal character. But he does point to the time when it was recovered: after Vatican II:
Paul VI set up the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops because he intended to go ahead on this issue. Synod after synod has gone ahead, tentatively, improving, understanding better, maturing.
In his famous 2005 address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict decried the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” which alleged “a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church.” But nowhere has that “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” taken such a radical form as this: the suggestion that the Church had ceased to be the Church prior to the Council.
Go here to read the rest. The Pope is an extremely sloppy thinker and writer, but when he is comfortable with his audience what he really believes tends to come wandering out from the labyrinth of his mind. Until Vatican II he seems to believe that the Church which he leads was not the Church. This of course helps explain the ferocious hostility the Pope has to traditional Catholicism. Heckuva job Conclave of 2013, heckuva job.
Ping
I’ve mentioned this previously. It’s all about stealing the great treasury. Feels like a Soros operation.
Pope Francis talking about “synodality” is a sadistic farce. He makes it clear he wants a given outcome. He makes it clear he will demote or outright remove any bishops or cardinals who dissent. The bishops make clear that they do not assent to his novelties, and then he publishes them anyway.
You can’t sack people for “stubbornly clinging to dead traditions” and then claim you stand for “synodality.”
As much as I am routinely outraged by Pope Francis, this is not about stealing the great treasury. The Vatican is broke and was never fabulously rich. The claims that the Catholic Church is so wealthy stem from real-estate holdings from individual dioceses. And there’s scarcely a nation on Earth that did not seize most of those holdings centuries ago. An exception is Canada, where the Church still holds vast parklands that in the United States would be run the National Park System. Smaller, more common exceptions are churchyards and grounds that typically have evolved over centuries to be so valuable because of their locations.
It’s about stealing authority.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.