Anger, Ritual, and Krazies

Jonathan Edwards

Ritual is a highly complex set of symbols that expresses—both on conscious and less-than-conscious levels our relationship with the Divine, with society, with specific others, and with ourselves.  Anthropologists can tell much about societies from their rituals and much about individuals, not only by their private rituals but also by how they relate to the communal rituals to the various societies to which they belong. 

While we are going to be looking at religious rituals in particular in this posting, ritual goes far beyond the religious.  We stand for the national anthem.  We sing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.  We eat roast turkey for Thanksgiving.  Brides wear white for their first wedding.  We blow out candles on a cake and sing happy-birthday to mark another year of age.  When individuals deviate from these rituals, or elaborate on them, or ignore them completely, it tells us some things about them. 

Families have rituals too.  Italian families often have pasta as the first course of Sunday dinner; Portuguese have a fish plate to begin the meal.  Some families go out to breakfast after Sunday Mass, others cook a big breakfast at home.  Some families have a particular grace they say before a meal.  Some parents say night prayers with their children before they go to bed.  Some families keep an Infant of Prague or a statue of the Blessed Mother in a prominent place in their home.  Most families put up a tree at Christmas and have traditional ornaments that are particular to their family.  All these things reflect certain values and ideas, theologies even, about the various families. 

And individuals have rituals.  There are certain prayers they say in the morning or at night.  They may pray the rosary or begin a car trip with a specific prayer.  They may telephone a parent or a sibling at a specific time each week.  They may choose a certain flower for their garden or put a religious statue somewhere in their garden.  There might be a certain song they listen to when lonely or when wanting to remember a loved one.  They may visit a cemetery or go back to a specific place that holds a special memory.  

Many of these rituals which we celebrate we do without reflecting on their meaning but they each, in some way or other, bring us comfort or fulfill some meaning in our lives.  Anthropologists, psychologists, or other social scientists can tell us things about ourselves by the rituals we follow or the approach we take to social rituals.  The father of some friends of mine was raised in a very strict Polish Catholic family but in college became—or claims to have become—an atheist.  Every year on Good Friday he eats a big plate of kielbasa at three in the afternoon.  It is a ritual for him.  He says that it expresses his belief that religion is a bunch of b.s.   It may, but I think it also represents a rebellious anger against his upbringing and his desire to disassimilate himself from the Polish and Catholic heritage in which he was raised.  When I was in college—many, many years ago—I used to attend Sunday night services in the Lutheran Church up the street. It was an informal service and people could request a favorite hymn.  There was one gentleman who every week asked for “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.”  It wasn’t church if we didn’t sing “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.”  This song carried some specific meaning for him on which his entire relationship with God seemed to depend.  I don’t think that was particularly healthy but then rituals can, and often do, express more about our neuroses than our healthy side, especially when those rituals become compulsive behaviors. 

We wrote in the previous posting about the popularity of an angry God in certain circles.  An angry God reflects the faith of an angry believer.  Our society is riddled with anger, indeed we can talk about the “culture of anger” which is another aspect of what Pope John Paul referred to as the “culture of death.”  How much of our television and our movies are about anger, violence, and vengeance?  We are raising our children on the pornography of violence with video games that are about destruction, violence, and death.  Some people feel a need to have semi-automatic weapons in their homes and the strongest lobby in our country is the N.R.A., an organization that builds a culture of fear directed towards a host of undifferentiated “others” from Hispanic immigrants to the Federal Government to Muslims to unspecified liberals to an invasion force from Canada. 

I refer to the “Katholic Krazies” as a spectrum of wing-nuts from hausfrauen Mary Ann Kreitzer of Les Femmes and Janet Baker of Restore DC Catholicism to the genuinely sociopathic minds behind Pope Francis The Destroyer and Mundabor’s Blog to the delusional episcopal wannabes of sedevacantists Daniel Dolan and Mark Pivarunas.  What they have in common is an attraction to an angry god. 

The roots of societal anger—by which I mean those who are angry with society or because of society—are that people feel powerless and disenfranchised.  Often they feel they are not being heard, their opinions are not being respected, they have no influence over the way that the larger society in which they live is running its course.  A sense of powerlessness creates panic and panic can manifest itself in strong anger.  Religious people who feel powerless about the Church—any Church, their Church whichever Church it is—project their anger onto God to validate and make “righteous” their anger.  One can go back to Jonathan Edwards and his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” preached at Northampton Massachusetts in 1741.  Edwards had much to be unhappy about.  While Independence was thirty-five years in the future, the colonists were already feeling themselves to be second-class Englishmen, disregarded by the establishment at home in London.  Moreover, Edwards was a “dissenter”—a Congregationalist in a Congregationalist colony but an Anglican empire.  And he could see that even in his colony of Massachusetts Congregationalism was losing ground to Anglicanism on the one side and to Unitarianism on the other.  Indeed, as the Congregationalists lost their grip on control of Massachusetts, the colony—and indeed all the American colonies—were becoming less and less religious as they grew more and more prosperous.  The original Puritan vision for Massachusetts of a commonwealth was fast disappearing as the Boston merchant class grew wealthier and wealthier and the farmers in western Massachusetts (where Northampton is) worked harder and harder just to survive. 

Puritans like Edwards had certain rituals and ritualistic principles to which they clung furiously.  These principles were essentially re-active in as that they were a reaction to the liturgical principles of the Church of England which Puritans thought had not been sufficiently “purified” of Catholic practices.  (In the next several entries on the History of the Anglican Church we are going to see more about this conflict.)  The set prayers of the Anglican Prayer Book were rejected for the extempore prayer of the Puritan preacher.  The Surplice was rejected for the black academic gown.  The communion table was set aside for a dominant pulpit.  Kneeling for communion was replaced by remaining in one’s seat as the bread and cup were passed along to you in your place. 

What about our angry Catholics and how they view ritual?  An angry God needs propitiation to hold back his wrath.  The Mass, therefore, is first and foremost (and for many, exclusively) a sacrifice.  Christ the victim is offered in sacrifice to appease the Divine Wrath.  Day after day the sacrifice is repeated, the Divine Victim is offered again and again, to counter-balance the sinfulness of the world. 

A sacrifice requires a priest who offers the sacrifice on our behalf.  Because he offers it on our behalf, he goes forth from us and ascends the altar to offer his victim.  The place of sacrifice needs separation from the unholy for whom it is offered.  It is to be elevated and walled off.  Only the priest and his assistants can be in the sacred space.  The priest, since he faces God on our behalf, needs to stand between us and God, thus with his back turned towards us.  It also is necessary that he clearly be not one of us.  He must be worthy of the role of intermediary between God and us, as sinless as possible.  Thus he should have nothing to do with sex, which is the primal base of human sinfulness.  He needs to be dressed differently from us to mark that he is consecrated in a way that we are not.  He needs to speak to God in an arcane language and in a whisper we cannot, for the most part, hear.  The sacrifice must be an experience of total otherness if it is to be accepted by God who is wholly Other. 

We can see why the current liturgy is so threatening to those who have a need for their prayer to appease an angry God.  An altar that positions the priest standing in the middle of the congregation, or even with the priest facing the people across it, changes the entire dynamic.  The idea of a community of people, not huddled in fear but relaxed and comfortable and “very much themselves” in the presence of God undermines their entire concept of God as the Divine Reflection of their rage.  For the priest to celebrate the Mass—to offer the Sacrifice—not on their behalf but with them as full, conscious, and active participants requires a drastic theological—as well as psychological and anthropological—shift that is just too much for some.  We look at this in more detail in future postings.  

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. 

Y'ad Think They Were Proddies For How They Hate The Pope

Recently a number of Katholic Krazie blogs have ceased publishing.  In one case, a deacon who maintained a blog was instructed by his bishop not to publish anymore.  In another, the blogger’s confessor suggested that she cease publishing at least temporarily for her own spiritual welfare.  In other cases bloggers of the Katholic Krazie persuasion have just give up, having become discouraged by the significant change of direction in which Pope Francis is taking the Church.  But there are some, fortunately for my entertainment value, who are resolved to slog on through this winter of their papal discontent in their determination to keep the Church on what they determine to be its orthodox track when we have Mad Max at the helm of Peter’s Barque.  Dymphna’s Road, a peculiar little blog from Virginia that more frequently is given to somewhat maudlin pictures than to serious thought, published a posting a few months ago “Screaming in Pain” about the plight of those Catholics who are struggling with the current Pope and his style.  It was quite mild and an honest acknowledgement that there are those in the Church who are bewildered by the current course. Janet Baker, the doyenne of the Katholic Krazies in the Washington Archdiocese, through her blog Restore DC Catholicism, published a response regarding “a lot of defeatist attitudes among bloggers and other Catholics” and exhorting them to keep up the battle against this papacy.  Janet, who was described to me by a priest from the Washington Archdiocese who has long been familiar with her, as “a deeply troubled soul” (which, in a prescribed tone of voice, is priest-code for “#*@$ing nuts”) and who apparently has caused more than her share of strife in the parish of Saint John Neumann in suburban Gaithersburg, recently published a new exhortation to her fellow bloggers in the Krazie Katholic Kamp to keep up their blogging in the face of “despondency, discouragement, and even cynicism.”  It sounds like the Krazies are settling in for a long, hard war against Pope Francis and the direction in which he is leading the Church.    There is a determined core ready to fight on, one of whom maintains the Boston-based blog recently re-named What Did the Pope Really Say?   
Our Boston Krazie, who is a kindred wacko to Janet, has migrated her blog through at least three re-incarnations now.  In the days when she was focused on getting President Obama out of the White House and Democrats out of Congress, she was Throw the Bums Out in 2010.  When she was unable to dislodge the forces of Satan in Washington, she changed the name of the Blog to The Tenth Crusade, a not-insignificant name given her near hysteria when the subject of Islam comes up.  She recently morphed again into What did the Pope Really Say?  By no means is this an homage to the Holy Father.  To the contrary: she has made it clear that she believes this papacy to be an absolute disaster. Each posting on the subject is more vituperative that the previous.  Here is how she sums up the pontificate:    
A counterfeit church where dogma and doctrine is forbidden and replaced with a battalion of washed up women and sissified men constantly distracting you from your pursuit of entering into deep mystical communion with Christ. These people don't have any idea what the whole thing is about. While we are running into the building where we put everything else out of our minds to concentrate on going to the mystical world where we are met and greated (sic) by angels and saints, Our Truine God, the Blessed Mother and we immerse ourselves - they're trying to find ways to plug into each other and grab something to help them overcome the sick feeling they have in their soul from sleeping with somebody they're not sacramentally married to. They've been coming to the parish for years and the priest has never told them what that feeling is all about and the only way to get rid of it.…Isn't this what the Pope is turning our religion into?
Attracting with a welcome wagon, withholding and undermining doctrine and the tools to get people into a state of Grace, ridiculing doctrine and dogma and turning it all into a welcome wagon so people can find a personal relationship with Jesus on Sunday morning after they roll off of their lovers?
There's nothing like a Sunday morning breakfast after having your adultery affirmed by your local Catholic priest. That kind of a 'personal relationship with Jesus' really gets your juices going for the week.
Golly Gee, she certainly has her agenda—and her suspicions about everyone else in Church.   She brings it home at the end of the post and explains her real concern..
My main concern is about how to get my own children/grandchildren/relatives/people/friends around the larceny. I'm feeling kind of resentful 'bout 'dat. For years, when Fr. SoandSo encouraged dissent and I flew the coop with them, I always had a Pope to point them towards to explain the mess on the ground and give them the ability to mentally process how to apply doctrine to the judgments they make every day when faced with temptations. It has all been turned upside down for them. That is what I am upset about and what I am focused on. The Pope has ripped my children from the intellect and sound judgment of Christ. Possibly for the rest of their lives. I couldn't be any more disgusted and upset about it.
The plight of the parent who sees their children and grandchildren abandoning our Catholic faith is heart wrenching, I certainly agree.  We see a legacy, a treasure that has been in our families for generations being discarded without a second thought.  But it isn’t Pope Francis who is to blame.  And it isn’t Vatican II.  And most likely it isn’t our parish priest.  Perhaps it could be our own narrow pharisaical pieties that present a Christianity that is most unattractive to the genuinely Christian heart—repulsive not for its doctrine but for its prejudice and self-righteousness.   I talk to people who have left the Church all the time—perhaps now they are Protestants, perhaps agnostics, perhaps just lazy about Sunday mornings—but almost invariably what has turned them off to the faith is the lack of charity on those who profess to be “good Christians.”  Sorry Granma, but the problem might just be you and not the Pope.   
Let’s go back to Janet from Restore DC Catholicism and see she what she has to say about Pope Francis.  In a particularly audacious attack on the Pope, Janet channels Sarah Palin (why am I not surprised?) and says “You Cannot Put Lipstick on a Pig.”  Janet’s attack is a response to Krazy-Katholic journalist Michael Voris, but the “Pig” she refers to is, of all people, Pope Francis. I never would have thought two years ago that once-oh-so-faithful Janet would be calling the Vicar of Christ a “Pig.”  But at least she capitalized it, which would perhaps show some lingering respect for the office if not the man.    Voris, for his part, is caught between his Krazy Katholic Konstituency and the fear—very real—that he will be publically silenced by Church authority.  While going after everything Pope Francis has stood for in his papacy, Voris is very careful not to attack the Holy Father himself.  As Janet points out in her rant, however, Voris will have soon to take sides or lose much of his following.  Janet’s conclusion: Moral of story? Pray that the pope learn from these disasters and take responsibility for what issues forth from his mouth. Real spiritual peril can result. Obviously Janet does not believe that Francis is a worthy successor to Saint Peter.
Perhaps the most offensive of the anti-papal blogs, and one that clearly believes that Francis is no successor to Saint Peter, is Mundabor’s Blog, the grumblings of a dyspeptic Englishman (ok, ok, I know, “dyspeptic” and “Englishman” is redundant; have you seen the movie Unfinished Song?).  Mundabor has been attacking Francis from the beginning of his papacy and has referred to the Pope as “a fool,” implied that Francis’ refusal to condemn gays indicates that he himself is homosexual, and that the Pope is an atheistic secular humanist rather than a faithful Catholic who offers a “man-centered” religion rather than Christocentric faith.   Mundabor derides “this disgraceful pontificate” for caving in to the values of modern society.  Here is a sample of his venom
I doubt Bergoglio reads the Gospel other than to try to extract some of the stupid, populist, socialist, childish, or simply unintelligible nonsense he regales us so often with. I know he very probably does not believe in God, does not think he will stand in front of his Judge, and does not care a straw about doing his job as a Pope is (sic) expected to do. But I do wonder: if Francis were – perhaps after drinking a grappa too much – to make an effort to read the Gospel seriously….
 The attacks on Francis, both personal and for his orthodoxy, have brought Mundabor right to the verge of sede-vacantism and perhaps it would be more honest of him to join those who believe the Chair of Peter is now empty rather than to have him constantly undermine the authority of the man who holds the office.   
There is more—plenty more—of anti-Francis material among these Katholic Krazies;  both more blogs and more diatribes from the various bloggers mentioned.  What does this barrage of anti-Francis material mean?  The neo-trads are losing ground in most quarters.  Several neo-trad blogs have mentioned that the move to restore the Pre-Conciliar liturgy seems to have reached its high water mark and that interest in the pre-Conciliar Rite is now in decline.  A stronghold of pre-Conciliar Catholicism is the Diocese of Arlington VA.  There are fifteen churches in the Diocese of Arlington where the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass/Tridentine Latin Mass) is offered every Sunday—representing about one parish in five.  Yet sources in the Diocese tell me that few, if any, congregations get more than 150 people and most get less than 100. This would represent less than 2.4 % of Sunday Mass goers in the Diocese.  Both bishops and priests who felt that Popes John Paul II and Benedict were steering the Church to the right and it was necessary to go along as that seemed to be the future, now feel that Pope Francis’ approach means a change in direction for the parishes as well.  “My parishioners are so enthused about Francis, I have no choice but to go in his direction,” said one Monsignor.  “I didn’t expect this resurgence of the old Vatican II mentality—but it is here, the faithful are on board, and frankly I am finding that it is bringing renewed energy to the parish.” 
I wouldn’t get my hopes up just yet that Francis’s vision of Church will prevail.  Popes come and go and as they do, the barque of Peter seems to rock a bit.  Francis is not a young man and shows signs of physical weakness.  The battles are not over; the victory of Vatican II is not yet won.  In fact, the neo-trads are digging in strong with conferences and congresses to keep their fans devoted to the cause of restoring all things to 1950.  They are well organized, well-funded, and ready for a long season in the underground.  Moreover time is on their side.  There is no missing the observation that a significant number of younger clergy, in many dioceses even a majority, are silently with them and ready to dig out the maniples and birettas at the first tolling the big bronze bell that hangs over the arch of the bells at St. Peter’s.  For those who are delighted that Francis has us back on course again, don’t take it for granted.  We need to use the time given us in this papacy build strong faith communities in our parishes.  We need to know the Conciliar Documents.  We need to know the various encyclicals and decrees. We need to continue to work on developing the Liturgical Prayer of the Church. We need to have a strong sense of mission and be committed to it.  Above all we need to be rooted in a strong spirituality founded in the Word of God and with a deep appreciation for the Sacramental Life of the Church.  The battles will be won not by those who have right on their side—or we would not have to worry—but by those who are best prepared.