[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis and the Fast-Approaching Future

The Stream ^ | October 24, 2024 | William Kilpatrick

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[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis and the Fast-Approaching Future

Excerpt:

Moreover, as McCusker points out, “Francis is not universally and peacefully adhered to by the Catholic Church … On the contrary, many Catholics, including cardinals and bishops, publicly refuse to submit to his teaching on faith and morals as contained in a number of documents.” Indeed, Francis’s “teachings” on sex, gender, and homosexuality have been universally rejected by the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (the equivalent of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.) In short, a whole continent of Catholics refuses to adhere to his revisions of Catholic doctrine.

An Increasingly Tough Job

Still, many conservative and traditional Catholics continue to defend the legitimacy of Francis’s papacy. They are called “popesplainers” because they expend much energy in trying to explain away what, to many others, looks like public heresy on the part of Francis.

The popesplainers have their job cut out for them because, as Fernandez said in a 2015 interview, “If one day he (Francis) should intuit that he’s running out of time … you can be sure he will speed up.” And sure enough, Francis seems to have reached warp speed in his efforts to change the Church. Just last month during a visit to Singapore, he informed the world that “all religions are paths to God.” This seems to be a direct contradiction of Jesus’s command, “Go therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

I’m not sure how the “popesplainers” will explain that contradiction away, but I’m sure they’ll try. Meanwhile, they can always fall back on the “discredit-the- Church” argument — namely, that if you raise the possibility that Francis is not pope, you will discredit the Church’s teaching authority.

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As I said, Francis is speeding up his assault on the Catholic faith. It would seem that now is the time to identify, resist, and rectify, not to wait for some hazy date in the future only to discover that Francis’s “reforms” have become irreversible and the opportunity to change course has passed.

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Ping

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(Franken)Cardinals Cupich and McElroy call on US bishops' conference to be more synodal