Rotten Fruits of Pope Francis: schism, rebellion, and approval of Iran nuke deal

His papacy is only 2½ years old, and already Pope Francis has provoked a raging culture war within the Catholic Church.

Anthony Faiola reports for The Washington Post, Sept. 7, 2015, that rather than stake out clear stances, Francis is more subtly, often implicitly, backing liberal church leaders who are pressing for radical change, while dramatically opening the parameters of the debate over how far reforms can go. Since then, liberals have tested the boundaries of their new freedom, with one Belgian bishop going as far as calling for the Catholic Church to formally recognize same-sex couples.

In more than a dozen interviews, including with seven senior church officials, insiders say the change wrought by Francis “has left the hierarchy more polarized over the direction of the church than at any point since the great papal reformers of the 1960s.”

There is “a growing sense of alarm” about Francis among the Catholic Church’s conservative clergy, who have launched “a conservative backlash” against “the liberal momentum building inside the church.”

The conservative rebellion is taking on many guises — in public comments; in the rising popularity of conservative Catholic Web sites promoting Francis dissenters; books and promotional materials backed by conservative clerics seeking to counter the liberal trend; and leaks to the news media, aimed at Vatican reformers.

While criticism of a sitting pope is not unusual — liberal bishops on occasion challenged Francis’s predecessor, Benedict XVI — what shocks many is just how public the criticism of Francis has become. Here are some examples:

◾Wisconsin-born Cardinal Raymond Burke who, in November 2014, was demoted by Francis from his position as Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, recently told a French news crew that he would “resist” liberal changes, and called the church under Francis “a ship without a rudder.” Burke also seemed to caution Francis about the limits of his authority, saying, “One must be very attentive regarding the power of the pope. Papal power is not absolute. The pope does not have the power to change teaching [or] doctrine.”

◾A senior Vatican official said on the condition of anonymity that conservatives have been thrust unfairly into a position in which “defending the real teachings of the church makes you look like an enemy of the pope. We have a serious issue right now, a very alarming situation where Catholic priests and bishops are saying and doing things that are against what the church teaches, talking about same-sex unions, about Communion for those who are living in adultery. And yet the pope does nothing to silence them. So the inference is that this is what the pope wants.”

◾In an open letter to his diocese, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, R.I., wrote: “In trying to accommodate the needs of the age, as Pope Francis suggests, the Church risks the danger of losing its courageous, countercultural, prophetic voice, one that the world needs to hear.” Commenting on Francis’ call for dramatic action and a supranational new global authority on climate change, Pell told the Financial Times in July, “The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.”

◾In conservative circles, the word “confusion” also has become a euphemism for censuring the papacy without mentioning the pope. 500 Catholic priests in Britain drafted an open letter this year that cited “much confusion” in “Catholic moral teaching” following the bishops’ conference on the family last year in which Francis threw open the floodgates of debate, resulting in proposed language offering a new stance for divorced or gay Catholics. Although that language ultimately was watered down, it set up another showdown for next month, when senior church leaders will meet in a follow-up synod that observers predict will turn into another theological slugfest. Francis will have the final word on any changes next year.

◾Last year, five senior leaders, including Burke and Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna, Italy, drafted a “manifesto” against a possible policy change that would grant divorced and remarried Catholics the right to take Communion at Mass. In July, a DVD distributed to hundreds of dioceses in Europe and Australia, and backed by conservative Catholic clergy members, made the same point.

Maike Hickson reports for LifeSiteNews, Sept. 8, 2015, that Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the head of the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), said German bishops are leading the Church to a schism.

According to the German newspaper Die Tagespost, Mueller criticized “a climate of the German claim to leadership for the Universal Church.” Many German bishops have declared that “life realities” must be taken into account as part of Church teaching and salvation. However, Mueller said the goal should not be “about adapting the Revelation to the world, but … about gaining the world for God.”

Mueller said that he is frequently asked why German bishops claim to be leaders of the Catholic Church — while flouting teachings on marriage and sexuality — despite overseeing dramatic reductions in church attendance, shrinking numbers of seminarians, and a drop in vocations to religious orders.

Mueller specifically identified allowing “remarried” Catholics to receive the Eucharist, as well as accepting a redefinition of marriage, as challenges to overcome. “We may not deceive the people, when it comes to the sacramentality of marriage, its indissolubility, its openness toward the child, and the fundamental complementarity of the two sexes,” he firmly stated. “Pastoral case has to keep in view the eternal salvation,” as opposed to a desire to be popular or accepted in the world.

Jordan Schachtel reports for Breitbart that on Sept. 15, 2015, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s chief diplomat, released a statement officially welcoming the nuclear agreement between the P5+1 world powers (U.S., UK, China, France, Russia, Germany) and Iran, stating that the Holy See believes Tehran will reduce its nuclear capabilities in exchange for sanctions relief.

Moreover, in calling for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, the Vatican also appeared to target Israel, given that it is the lone nuclear power in the region.

H/t Fr. Michael T. Barry, who had this comment about the Vatican’s approval of the Iran deal: “What? LSD in Vatican water supply?”

On Sept. 23, he will be welcomed to the White House by Obama, who, in a supreme “F-you” gesture to the Church, has invited to the meeting with Francis a freak-show of opponents of traditional Catholic teachings, including a pro-abortion nun, a transgender woman transvestite, the first openly-homosexual Episcopal bishop, and two “Catholic” homosexual activists.

Pope Francis has not changed, will not change, and cannot change Catholic doctrine.

Now, what he could change is not doctrine, but praxis. Actual on-the-ground pastoral practice. Which is almost as bad as changing doctrine, because the doctrine remains in the catechism and the catechism remains on the shelf, and the dust accumulates on the unused shelves of the library while souls are lost by the millions because of bad pastoral practice.

So don't think I don't see the danger. It is all rather horrible.

A couple of years ago, Frances Kissling, when she was still president of Catholics for Choice, that hell-proud apostate coven, admitted to me that she knew Catholic doctrine on abortion would never change --- but that was OK with her: all she had to do is get it to be ignored.

And one way to do that was to honor the sanctity of unborn life (on occasion, maybe once a year) as a bit of utopianism which, though lovely, could never be attained; you know, an aspirational ideal which we could not and should not impose on people.

Aspirational ideal. That shrewd hag was probably, in her cynicism, correct. Forget doctrine. Forget dogma. Nobody cares about that anyhow. All of Matthew 5 - 6 - 7 is pretty much relegated to aspirational ideal. Hallmark Cards, not Commandments. We'll put the sanctity of the babies' lives there as well. We can put the Hallmark Cards in the abortion clinics. That way we nod at the sentiment, can the commandment, and do what we want.

Yeah, that'll work. All the way to the final horror.

We are making a mistake, SkyPilot, if we assume that the media coverage Pope Francis gets is directed or selected by Francis himself or his staff. On the contrary, it is directed and selected by the editors and publishers of the inveterately secular media, which so often earns its nickname, the "EneMedia".

Has it never occurred to you, my respected friend, that if you were pope (bear with me in this absurd example) the Washington Post would quote everything you said about Ruth Ginsberg, "Fabulous" Fanning, the UN, the RAF, and the Brewster Buffalo --- edited toward two ends, either to make you sound foolish, OR edited to make it sound like you agreed with them ---- and wouldn't quote a single thing you said about Jesus Christ Our Lord?

Don't you realize they'll skim through pages of Jesus-talk to get to the one or two necessarily non-Jesusy things they would consider newsworthy?

The media lie by shading and framing, by molding and pinching, by manipulative paraphrasing, by tendentious captioning, and by omission, and we need to be wise about their lies.

Pope Francis' video message to 2nd Theological Congress (Sept 4)

“Doctrine is not a closed, private system deprived of dynamics able to raise questions and doubts. On the contrary, Christian doctrine has a face, a body, flesh; He is called Jesus Christ and it is His Life that is offered from generation to generation to all men and in all places”.
The theologian is a believer. The theologian is someone who has experience of Jesus Christ and has discovered he cannot live without Him. ... The theologian knows that he cannot live without the object / subject of his love, and devotes his life to sharing this with his brothers."

Jesus shows us the path to freedom, not success, Pope says (article on his Sep 13 talk)

"By announcing that he must suffer and die, Jesus is making it clear to his followers that he is a Messiah who is a humble servant, and who obeys his Father even to the point of dying on a cross," Francis said.
The Pope then recounted how Jesus gathered the crowd along with his disciples, and told them that whoever wants to follow him must also become a servant, and “deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
To imitate Jesus in his servantly role and to follow him isn’t easy, Pope Francis observed, and requires a strong union with the Lord, an “attentive and diligent listening to his Word, (and) the grace of the sacraments.”

Pope Francis: "Jesus is the bread of life"

To meet and to welcome Jesus, “the bread of life” – Pope Francis concluded – gives meaning and hope to our lives that are sometimes tortuous; but this “bread of life” – he said - also gives us the duty to satisfy the spiritual and material needs of our brothers.
"To do this" – he said- "we must announce the Gospel everywhere, and with the witness of a fraternal attitude of solidarity towards our neighbor, we can make Christ and his love present amongst men."

Pope Francis: Jesus Shows Us His Mercy by Teaching Us The Truth

"Yet the people discover where Jesus goes, and follow him." And here, Pope Francis said, the evangelist “offers us an image of Jesus of unique intensity, ‘taking a snaphot’ of his eyes, as it were, and capturing the sentiments of his heart.”
The evangelist says: “As he landed he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things” (v. 34)."
The Holy Father called the the three verbs used by St. Mark — to see, to have compassion, and to teach — the “verbs of the Shepherd.” Jesus does not look on the people as a “sociologist or a photojournalist,” he said. Instead, “he always looks with ‘the eyes of the heart’.”

Pope Francis: Jesus is the secret of a Christian’s benevolence

“A Christian is a person who opens up his or her heart with this spirit of benevolence, because he or she has “all”: Jesus Christ. The other things are “nothing”. Some are good, they have a purpose, but in the moment of choice he or she always chooses “all”, with that meekness, that Christian meekness that is the sign of Jesus’ disciples: meekness and benevolence. To live like this is not easy, because you really do receive slaps! And on both cheeks! But a Christian is meek, a Christian is benevolent: he or she opens up his or her heart. Sometimes we come across these Christians with little hearts, with shrunken hearts…. This is not Christianity: this is selfishness, masked as Christianity”.
“A true Christian” – the Pope continued – “knows how to solve this bi-polar opposition, this tension that exists between “all” and “nothing”, just as Jesus has taught us: “First search for God’s Kingdom and its justice, the rest comes afterwards”.

Pope Francis: Jesus ‘Rocks Our World’

“The words of Jesus always rock our world,” he said, because they challenge the ways of secular society. And Jesus knew right off the bat they were those among his disciples “who do not believe,” Francis said, and so they left him. And yet, “faced with these defections, Jesus does not back down and does not soften his words. Indeed He forces us to make a clear choice: either to be with Him or separated from Him, and so He said to the Twelve: ‘Will you go away too?’” It is Peter, Francis said, who makes his profession of faith on behalf of the other Apostles: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” The Pope underscored that Jesus does not say “where shall we go?,” but “to whom shall we go?” From Peter’s question, the Pope continued, “we understand that loyalty to God is a matter of loyalty to a person to whom we are bound to walk together on the same road. And this person is Jesus.”

Pope Francis: 'Jesus Loves Us Without Limits'

“Jesus loves us, without limits, always, until the end,” the Pope said. “The love of God for us doesn't have limits. There is always more, always more. He never tires of loving anyone.”
Francis emphasized that Jesus gave his life for each person by name, saying, “Each one of us can say, 'He gave his life for me.' Each one. His love is like this: personal!”

I only pause here from the need to be reasonably brief. I could post a different selection of Pope Francis'"Jesus-talks" every day for months, and never run out.

Don't FReepers know this? Can we, as FReepers, be media-savvy enough to understand this? I am embarrassed by the level of obtuseness around here sometimes.

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