Why even have a pope, if bishops’ conferences determine Church reforms?
Pope Francis, in this Lenten season, reminds me of Pontius Pilate. He washes his hands and leaves decisions to mob mentality.
First, it’s Holy Communion for adulterers; now it’s married priests that’s up for a vote.
That’s a little extreme. A conference of bishops isn’t mob rule. Mob rule would be if he declared a referendum of Catholics on the subject. Bear in mind, the liberal Catholic bishops in Europe and Latin America are counterbalanced by conservative Asian and African bishops.
I have tried to be fair to this pope. I think he has run into problems when his own public addresses have not really addressed key issues, but when he does talk about these things, we always get it secondhand from someone who “talked to him”.
This being said, as a non-Catholic, I don’t have much strong feeling on the celibacy issue, but I understand it is a looong-running tradition that conservative Catholics to a large degree do not want to see undermined.
But judge him by his fruits. We have seen much talk and not a lot of action. When we see a conference, and when we see them change the rules, then we can critique it, but much like the Malaysian flight mystery, until you have something solid it does seem a lot like shouting at phantoms. Trust but verify.
They already allow married priests
If this goes through I'm going to wash my hands of the whole thing.
Hard to disagree.