The Katholic Krazies: Will The Synod Make Them Walk?

Pope Francis presiding over The 

Extraordinary Synod on the 

Family

I wish I had gotten further into my series on Katholic Krazies before the Synod on the Family began its work because it would be so much easier to talk about the krazies’ response to the Synod if I had gotten beyond the sedi-vacantist extreme and written about those krazies who are still within the boundaries of the Church.  After all those who do not recognize the Papacy of Pope Francis—or his five immediate predecessors—consider the Synod to be irrelevant to their pseudo-Catholicism and really aren’t burning up the internet over it.  But the wing-nuts who were just basking in the glow of the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI are now beside themselves in anxiety over where the Church is going with Pope Francis and his synod.  And as a historian I find this very ominous as I think it bodes some dark and heavy history unfolding. 

One of the blogs most angry with Pope Francis and his leadership is by a woman from Boston named Carol who has entitled her blog—ironically—What Did the Pope Really Say? Carol has long been antagonistic towards the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal O’Malley, but over the course of Francis’ papacy her bile has been more and more directed at him.  Bile is the key word here.  This blog has gone through several incarnations beginning with Throw the Bums Out in 2010  (which clues one in to her political leanings and the fact that her blog is more concerned with the Church from a political and  “Culture Wars” perspective than from theological principles).  For several years thereafter it was named The Tenth Crusade which reflected the author’s (and her readers’) Islamophobia. Now she has entitled it What Did the Pope Really Say? when she has little—or actually nothing—good to say about this papacy and in fact has distorted much of what Pope Francis has said or written.  A careful reading of her various entries over a period of time show that she is angry and upset about what the changes in the Church have done—or she perceives to have done—to her children and grandchildren.    Carol has had consistently negative input about the Synod which she yesterday referred to as “Pope Francis’ Apostate Coup.”  She had previously referred to it as a “heretical circus.”  But her venom is not directed to the Synod per se, but to the Pope himself.  Recently she wrote about Pope Francis:

Seems now as clear as the nose on my face: Pope Francis appoints people to teach heresy and removes people who raise objections to the people they love being misled into error.

Am I understanding the message behind the philosophical beheadings for not going along with the spiritual homicides?

I suppose, what's a Pope to do when the devil dragging his children into mass spiritual homicides but to silence Church teaching and give witness that if we all don't go along with it, he will remove and exile?

Carol has a loyal readership who agree with her in her distrust of Pope Francis and his leadership.  Witness one response to her column: 

Carol...you have been very responsible in your observations concerning this papacy. Its all quite clear at least to me...we are living through the Apostacy (sic) spoken of by Our Lady and our duty is to pray fervently the rosary as She has asked. God Bless you dear heart.

An even more dramatic response to Carol’s estimation of Pope Francis’ leadership and the Synod is as follows:

I couldn't agree more. I wonder if, at some point--very soon--we shouldn't try to get a movement of faithful, orthodox Catholics to rise up and all start telling Pope Francis and our bishops (maybe the Gang of Eight) that we're tired of Francis' schtick and want him to either teach what the Church teaches shut up, or resign. Maybe it would be a Tea Party-like movement. If we could get enough people and make enough of a stink, maybe it would hit the mainstream media, and then Francis would listen?

This sort of reaction indicates not only lack of confidence in Francis and the direction in which he is leading the Church, but turns papal authority upside down as if the Pope can be told to step down when one faction or another in the Church does not agree with him.  It brings up the threat of dissatisfied Catholics breaking with Francis and his papacy. More will be written about that towards the end of this posting. 
Janet from Gaithersburg, Maryland, has a blog she calls Restore-DC-Catholicism.  Her original target was Cardinal McCarrick who was Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006 and whom she saw as a dangerously liberalizing prelate.  She is no happier with Cardinal Wuerl.  Janet is an ardent supporter of the Reverend Marcel Guarnizo, a presbyter vagans who is nominally attached to the Archdiocese of the Mother of God (Moscow) but who wanders the world self-promoting and collecting funds for supposed charities and foundations he has established and administers.  Janet was extremely agitated when Cardinal Burke was removed from the Congregation of Bishops last December.  His Eminence has been an outspoken critic of Pope Francis, especially since he has been removed from various Vatican posts as Pope Francis has gone about his reform of the Roman Curia. Janet is a great admirer of the Cardinal and has taken to attacking the Pope for what Francis has done to her hero.  She has been particularly critical of the Synod (which she refers to as the SinNod) and was very angry about the talk given last week by Ron and Mavis Pirola whom she has continued to skewer in her postings.  She began her attack with: Synod Off To A Hell Of A Start  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I do mean usage of the word "hell", for that will be the fruit of the proceedings of this synod for some.  And before she went off on her initial diatribe against the Pirolas, she lit into Pope Francis’ opening homily.  She is convinced that the Pope is controlling the Synod to force his opinion on the bishops, the majority of whom she is confident disagree with the Holy Father. 

Michael Voris—the omnipresent face of Church Militant TV—has headed to Rome after doing a surprisingly critical appraisal of the Synod on one of his video-casts.  Voris has long been savage in his treatment of the American bishops, and especially Cardinal Dolan of New York as this plays well to his wing-nut audience, but up until this point he had avoided going after the Holy Father as this would be a “bridge too far” for most, even conservative Catholics.  It looks like the Synod is going to give him a change of direction however.  It will be interesting to see how he walks the tightrope on this one as an attack on the Pope or Synod could bring down his house of Catholic cards right on himself and his virtual television station by providing the American bishops with an excuse to censure him without looking vengeful about the grief he has given them.  

I have been saving the best for last (and yes, I eat the frosting after I eat the cake)and that is a krazy—an arch-krazy actually—whom some of my readers have been asking me to write about for some time.  It is our old friend Mundabor.  I will do a posting on him when I get back to my series on “Introducing Katholic Krazies,” but this guy really hates the Pope.  If the verb “to hate” didn’t require a direct object, I could just say that he hates because he is filled with an ubiquitous vile that spews in any and all directions.  Mundabor lives in a psychotic state where bishops still dwell in palaces and are counted among the nobility.  (Well, he is English so we need to cut him some slack—after all he was raised in a delusional environment called a Monarchy).  Pope Francis is known in Mundabor’s blog as “The Most Astonishing Hypocrite in Church History” (aka TMAHICH).  Along with Cardinal Kasper and Hans Kung, the Holy Father (or, as Mundabor calls him, the unHoly Father) is the arch-enemy of your soul.  Each in his own way, these three are among the most efficient weapons of the Devil in his battle for your soul. The Cardinal pays lip service to a truth he says you do not have to follow if your conscience dictates otherwise, the Bishop (of Rome; but he is so 'umble, you know…) supports him any way he can short of jumping around like a groupie, the theologian is so far away from even the notion of Christianity he now supports his own home-made religion.

In a recent posting about the Synod, Mundabor compared the Church on earth to a building to be made in the image of the heavenly Church, the New Jerusalem above.  This is actually good theology, however he stumbled on it.  But then he falls off the wagon writing:

The Architect has made the plan. The builders must stick to the plan. If they don’t, they are a disgrace. That’s all there is to know.

We are now in the hand of (referring to the bishops) drunken, blaspheming, careless building contractors who have been put in charge of the maintenance, but really do not care a straw for the edifice. They go around breaking windows, because they have noticed that the mob likes the sound of splintered glass. They also do not care whether the Architect of the immense building exists or not, and probably think the building “just got there out of nothing”.  It is perfectly irrelevant to them whether the edifice will still be in any half-decent state of repair in one generation or two. But when they break another window, the mob applauds, and gives them money to eat, drink, and be merry. That’s another window going, then…

And what is Pope Francis’ role in all of this  

Francis is a stupid, drunken, arrogant, socialist, and very probably atheist disaster of a contractor firm director. One day, the Great Chairman In The Sky will punish him as he deserves. 

Of course, when it comes to this backlash against Pope Francis and the Synod, you could find all this on the internet yourself.  You don’t need me to point it out to you.  My purpose is rather to indicate its significance.

I have long—for over thirty years—been convinced that in the wake of Vatican II a schism is all but inevitable.  I have also always believed it would come, not from the left but from the right.  My first reason for this opinion is that historically most schisms have been reactions against change in the Church.  My second is that liberals don’t have the attention span for a schism—they may as individuals get discouraged and go away—but they don’t have the organizational drive—or skills—to actually organize a breakaway.  Also liberals simply disobey and do as they please without creating a fuss about it.  But my final reason is that the social, political, and economic structures that the Church has been undermining for the last sixty-plus years since Pius XII’s encyclicals laid the groundwork for Vatican II (and actually for the last 110 years since Leo XIII) protect the interests of those who identify themselves as conservatives and not as liberals.  Conservatives have the most to lose in Vatican II Catholicism and it has been an increasing thorn in their side. The moderately conservative  policies of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI relieved some of the sociological neuralgia inherent in gospel-Catholicism, but Francis does his drilling without Novocain. 

When one questions the fidelity of the Pope I am not sure what choice there is but to reject his authority and find oneself in some state of schism.  I suppose I have more respect for the Sedevacantists who, judging recent Popes to have departed from Orthodoxy, have formally removed themselves from what they perceive to be a “heretical” papacy and a “heretical” Church.  How can these various critics remain in the Church if they have no confidence in the authentic belief of those who lead the Church? 

I do not think, however, that a schism would be particularly successful, at least from the perspective of attracting a substantial number of adherents.  While all may not agree with Pope Francis or Cardinal Kasper, the distrust of Pope Francis and the magisterium expressed by people like Carol or Janet are held by less than one percent of practicing Catholics.  I suspect too that while some priests and even a few bishops might withdraw from Francis’ Church if the Synod—or actually the ordinary Synod planned for 2015—makes significant departures in Church discipline regarding who may and may not receive Holy Communion, they will lack the critical mass to be any more significant than some of the various groups that have formed in the past such as the Polish National Catholic Church or the so-called Liberal Catholic Church.  Were Cardinal Burke to be among the defectors it would boost the success rate considerably but as unhappy as he may be with the direction the Synod is going, it is totally improbable that he would burn the bridge over the Tiber or even given public support to those who did.  

Also to be considered is that significant change in Church discipline will squelch any reconciliation with the Lefebvrist movement or other independent groups who favor the TLM.  This will divide those who give up on Francis with some going to groups that adhere to a pre-Vatican II Catholicism and others seeking groups that have Mass in the vernacular but follow an old-line approach to Church discipline.  A divided response will militate against the success of any schismatic movement.