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Pope Francis and Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew meet at
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
to pray together
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The afternoon Pope Francis was elected I had
to go to the airport to pick up an English priest who worked in Rome and whom I
had engaged to give a lecture. The first question he asked as he came
through customs was “Did they elect a Pope?” I answered “Yes, an
Argentine Jesuit who has taken the name Francis.” Now I have a bit of a
reputation for stating the improbable in jest but Father X looked at me in disbelief
and it was only when he heard it on the radio on our way back from the airport
did he believe it. An “Argentine Jesuit calling himself Francis” was more
than improbable, it was world-shattering. And indeed many have found
their worlds shattered by this Pope and his penchant for new models of the
papacy as well as of discipleship.
I have an eye for the signals that one finds
in the details. I watch papal ceremonies with a close eye. I had noticed immediately when the new pope
came out on the balcony that he was not wearing the traditional rochet and
mozetta. Hmm, I thought, this is curious. Pope Benedict was a
stickler for protocol and even had reverted to some of the archaic vesture his
recent predecessors had abandoned. And then there was the gesture
of asking the crowd to “pray for him” in which he was really asking for them to
“bless” him. This is a different ecclesiology, I thought. The
next day there was a picture of him celebrating Mass for the cardinals in the
Sistine Chapel where he had ordered an altar to be placed where he could face
the assembly while Pope Benedict had used the old altar, celebrating in the
pre-conciliar position of having his back to the congregation. Hmm, I
thought again. Word began to spread of tension between the new Pope and
his Master of Ceremonies, Monsignor Guido Marini, whom Francis inherited from
the previous Pope and who was known for retro-style worship. While time
has taught the two men to work together as a team, Francis was not budging on
his determination to do things his way which reflected a return to the ‘70’s
sort of less elaborate liturgy. Francis insisted on the plainest of
vestments, a definite step away from both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict
who favored the most gorgeous of robes. And then the new Pope decided not
to move out of the hotel where he had been living during the conclave, but to
commute in an old car to his offices in the Apostolic Palace. This was
all symbolic, but at the least it portended significant change in direction for
the Church. A few savvy souls on the right saw this and began to get very
nervous. They didn’t know what Francis was up to, but they knew he wasn’t
Pope Benedict.
They began to check out his record and
discovered as Archbishop of Buenos Aires he was far from enthusiastic about the
pre-conciliar liturgy. Then they found out he was close friends with an
Argentine rabbi and had not only co-authored a book with him, but had jointly
led services with him. Pictures emerged of him washing the feet of—gasp!!!—women
during the Holy Thursday rituals in Buenos Aires. The more they
investigated the more anxious they became. This guy was not on the
JPII/Benedict team. There not only was a new sheriff in town, there was a
maverick in the papal office.
The very day Francis was elected, the
Restorationist blog Rorate Caeli (http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-horror-buenos-aires-journalist.html)
launched an attack on him saying:
Of all
the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not
because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but
because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and moral
seem to have been irrelevant to him.
A sworn enemy of the
Traditional Mass, he has only allowed imitations of it in the hands of declared
enemies of the ancient liturgy. He has persecuted every single
priest who made an effort to wear a cassock, preach with firmness, or that was
simply interested in Summorum Pontificum.
Famous for his inconsistency (at times, for the unintelligibility of
his addresses and homilies), accustomed to the use of coarse, demagogical, and
ambiguous expressions, it cannot be said that his magisterium is heterodox, but
rather non-existent for how confusing it is.
His entourage in the Buenos Aires Curia, with the exception of a few
clerics, has not been characterized by the virtue of their actions. Several are
under grave suspicion of moral misbehavior.
He has not missed any occasion for holding acts in which he lent his
Cathedral to Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and even to partisan groups in the
name of an impossible and unnecessary interreligious dialogue. He is famous for
his meetings with protestants in the Luna Park arena where, together with
preacher of the Pontifical House, Raniero Cantalamessa, he was
"blessed" by Protestant ministers, in a common act of worship in
which he, in practice, accepted the validity of the "powers" of the
TV-pastors.
Probably Francis’ first real bombshell was
probably his famous “who am I to judge” response when asked about an allegedly
gay priest in the Vatican service. The Pope’s response went viral and
while many Catholics were happy for a less disparaging response to the
LGBT community, there were those who went into all out alarm on this pastoral
softening attitude. Then in September he said that some Catholics were
too “obsessed” with issues like abortion and same-sex marriage and that more
emphasis had to be placed on the issues of Social Justice. Now the fire
alarms were ringing among Catholics on the right. Bad enough that we aren’t
locked in on the two great moral questions of our day—abortion and same-sex
marriage—but to say that we have to focus instead on the roots of poverty and
injustice: that was a double whammy. All of a sudden Francis’ call when
he was elected that we should be a “poor Church for the poor” was beginning to
take on some ugly consequences. In November Rush Limbaugh—not a
Catholic—attacked Francis as a “Marxist” for his “radical” ideas about social
reorganization to give the poor of the world a better chance at bettering their
situation. Just a month ago or so when the Holy Father received Ban
Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, and the heads of various UN
economic fora and talked about
redistribution of resources, Limbaugh and his Katholic Krazies fans went
ballistic all over again about how wrong this Pope gets it.
The initial attack on the Pope by Rorate
Caeli spread as other self-appointed guardians of the “true faith” chimed in
with their remarks rejecting the authority of this mad dog of a liberal Jesuit.
By December one Catholic blogger was writing (
As many concerned Catholics have expressed, the silly
statements from the Pope are damaging to catechists, parents, grandparents and
Catholics who are intimately aware that the mission of the Deposit of Faith is
to teach the substance that gives every person right judgment about their
actions as they relate to the salvation of their soul.
Another Krazy Katholic blog recently
opined http://mundabor.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/the-bloggers-the-orks-and-the-uruk-hai/
It is clear enough, what is happening: Francis is paving
the way for a full-scale Modernist attack on the Church. He thinks, speaks and
act (sic) like a
Modernist because he is one of them. It is very clear that to him everything
can be changed, if the “Spirit” – that is, himself – says so.
How can we, then, react to this to the best of our ability?
My answer is simple: sound the alarm now, strongly and insistently. And do not
refrain from exposing the man for what he is: a danger for Catholicism, a sower
of confusion, and a buffoon…
Can't you see how Francis becomes bolder with every passing
month? When you see huge scandal in the making, do you speak against it or do
you think “oh well, the Holy Ghooost is guiding the Chuuuurch for the beeest”
like an old Pollyanna?
We can't give this Pope any slack, because he has not
deserved any. If anything, he has made very clear there is no monstrosity he
would not put into place, if he could. With his blabbering about not closing
the door to the “Spirit” he has, once and for all, thrown away the mask. The
Modernist machine is now working full steam, and we must not allow this and him
to go unpunished – yes, unpunished – because he is the Pope. Yes, he is the
Pope. Which is why the situation is so grave, why he is so gravely culpable,
and why we must see him as the worst enemy of Catholicism.
Corruptio optimi pessima. Francis is certainly not optimus
for any particular virtue of him – which he does not have -, but because of
the absolute preeminence of his earthly position. A Pope sabotaging Catholicism
every day is what the Germans call GAU, Größter Anzunehmender Unfall or
the worst possible (nuclear) catastrophe; and the nuclear plants that gave rise
to the expression are very fitting for our situation, because a huge accident
is about to happen in the Vatican Power Station, and mad or evil men have taken
control of it.
We.must.wake.up.now.
Francis is a popularity addict. His religion is himself
first, Socialism second, himself third and fourth, and Christianity nowhere.
What to do?
Mock him, ridicule him, let him drown in a sea of laughter
and scandal. This is what is most likely, or least unlikely, to stop him
or at least put a brake on his devastation. If every day thousands of Catholic
blogs were to openly ridicule Francis, this would have two very salutary
effects: it would show Francis he is the Kasperle (how fitting) of the
sound Catholic world, and it would contribute to cure a large part of the
Catholic masses from the Papolatry that has afflicted the Church for so many
decades now. In time, the phenomenon would be registered by the mass media. At
that point, Francis would have failed, and he would stay there like the old
dangerous or evil nincompoop he truly, truly is.
This is not your usual Pope, to which the usual rules of
utter deference apply. This here is a new breed of Pope….
We are, as I have already written, at the point that Francis
has brought such disrepute to the office, that to criticise the man is the only
way to defend the office. Ridicule him, so that the contrast with a decent
Papacy and his predecessors may become more evident. Mock him, so that his
delirious novelty may be discounted before he even opens his mouth. Make of him
a laughing stock, so that you will hit him where he is hurt most effectively:
in his boundless vanity.
Another blog that has moved into a position of open
hostility towards this papacy is Eponymous Flower (http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2014/05/bishop-williamson-holds-forth-on.html)
The crazy words and deeds of Pope Francis are presently
driving many believing Catholics towards sedevacantism, which is dangerous. The
belief that the Conciliar Popes have not been and are not Popes may begin as an
opinion, but all too often one observes that the opinion turns into a dogma and
then into a mental steel trap. I think the minds of many sedevacantists shut
down because the unprecedented crisis of Vatican II has caused their Catholic
minds and hearts an agony which found in sedevacantism a simple solution, and
they have no wish to re-open the agony by re-opening the question. So they positively
crusade for others to share their simple solution, and in so doing many of them
– not all -- end up displaying an arrogance and a bitterness which are no signs
or fruits of a true Catholic.
Is Pope Francis driving many believing Catholics
towards sede vacantism? I think that is
a pretty gross overstatement, though not nearly as extreme as Mundabor’s
rant. These are the Katholic Krazies and
they represent less than 3/1000ths of a percent of American
Catholics (20,000 out of 65 million.) I
think what is more significant, much more significant, is that this same group
had been ultra-loyalist during the pontificates of Popes John Paul II and
Benedict XVI and now is in open contempt moving towards rebellion. The vast majority of American Catholics are
more than happy with the direction in which Pope Francis is guiding the
Church. I think the vast majority of
American Catholics are also appreciative that this Pope has toned down the
rhetoric on same-sex relationships and adopted a more pastoral approach to LGBT
Catholics. No one expects a doctrinal
statement on the matter, but Francis has sent strong signals that the human
dignity of individuals come before moral strictures, something the Pharisee
party in the Church has a tendency to forget.
On the other hand, it does look like there may be a major policy change
towards the pastoral treatment of the divorced and remarried. That could send a significant number of
old-line Catholics searching for a new spiritual home. It would be difficult to
know where they would go because the Orthodox and even the most morally rigid
of so-called Evangelicals have accommodated the divorced and remarried. Certainly some would go to the Lefebvrists
but just because people may not agree with lifting the sacramental penalties
for remarriage after divorce doesn’t mean they want—or even would accept—the
Latin Mass. The greater number would
most likely be divided between those who would still come to Church grumbling
that everything was going to the dogs or those who would stay home on Sunday
mornings because everything is going to the dogs. On the other hand, there would be a
considerable number of those who were in “irregular marriages” and abandoned
Catholicism for the Episcopal or Lutheran Churches who would return to the
Catholic fold. There would also be a
significant number of former Catholics who would stay in the various Protestant
congregations which they joined because they had gotten used to women clergy,
more welcoming and inclusive congregations, and more flexible worship. Francis is changing the face of Catholicism,
hopefully he is also changing the heart, but I don’t think it will
significantly change the number of people in the pews one way or the
other.
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