Now That The Shoes Of The Fisherman Are On The Other Feet ...

I remember the afternoon John Paul II was elected.  I was at a committee meeting with our local auxiliary bishop.  The white smoke had already been seen and one of our number had been delegated to keep an eye on the television in the next room and let us know when the announcement was made.  The “spy” in question was an old Irish monsignor and he came into the room in a state of shock.  “It’s some Pole” (he didn’t use the politically correct term) “who I never heard of.”  The room exploded as everyone jumped up and made for the television room.  While everyone else seemed quite excited by the first non-Italian Pope in over four and a half centuries, I had an immediate feeling of foreboding.  Italians know how to do the Pope thing.  They’ve done it so long that the Pope is just the guy in the white robe who live down the block or over on the other side of Rome or a two-hour rail trip away.  They don’t take the pope all that seriously.  Even when they become pope, they take the whole thing a bit more lightly.  But a Pope from Poland—that spelled trouble.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There were aspects of John Paul’s reign that were absolutely brilliant.  He was a great communicator.  And he was a phenomenal political strategist.  But by and large, it was a troubled and troublesome papacy.  At least, I, for one, was not a happy camper during those long years of ever tightening and centralizing control.   He wrote some great encyclicals—and some not so great ones.  But most of all I saw good bishops with vision being replaced, successful innovations in pastoral practice being reversed, and a negative message edging out the Good News of salvation.   But he was the Pope.  I respected him and while in the classroom or in private conversation I might point out the flaws in his policies or thinking—and even the infallible have flaws—I only spoke with respect.  I had various opportunities to meet him—well, to be presented to him actually: needless to say we never sat down over a kielbasa and beer—and I always acted with due deference.  I was not a happy camper during his pontificate but I was—and remain—a Catholic and that means that there are boundaries regarding what and how we say what we say regarding the Pope.

I had more respect for Benedict.  He was a sort of papal Jimmy Carter.  While I think his pontificate was, aside from his precedent setting resignation, a disaster, I believe he is a man of unparalleled integrity.  I would probably agree with him on very little but he is a sound scholar in his field (which is not history, by the way; he doesn’t have a good grasp of historical data, even Church history) and I have a genuine empathy for the man who I believe sincerely desired to be pope to “fix” what he perceived to be the problems left behind by both Vatican II and his immediate predecessor, but who found that his professorial skills were not up to the shenanigans of the long-entrenched cesspool of monsignoral fuchsia that stood between him and his objectives.  All in all, I was no less unhappy with him in the chair of Peter than I was with John Paul II.  But again, I spoke only with respect of him.  The Pope is the Pope.  Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia.  While I was personally discontent with the direction in which these popes were taking the Church, I bore neither any animosity, personal or otherwise.  After all, they were Pope and I am not. 

Needless to say, I love Francis and feel thirty years younger with him on the Chair of Peter.  But not everybody shares my enthusiasm.  Last week it was announced that Gallup reported some serious drops in Francis’ popularity among Americans, especially since Laudato Si and its critique of our consumerist society.  Let’s face it, we all love our SUVs more than we love our Catholic Faith.  Jesus was obviously wrong: it is possible to love God and wealth, or at least to love some pious idea of God and the reality of our material obsessions. 

Criticism of Francis ranged from the ignorant to the vituperative.  Self-proclaimed authority on all things Catholic and Republican candidate for President, Rick Santorum, declared

The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality.”  

I think he would have a point if he knew science as well as those scientists the Pope turned towards for advice on the encyclical, or even as well as does the Pope himself.  His Holiness is no authority on science, of course, but he does have a stronger background than does climate-change denier and general fantasist Sanctimonious Santorum.  Nevertheless, the ex-Senator’s remarks were mild compared to some who aren’t running for President and are able to shoot from the blind the Internet offers.  (Admittedly, I too keep my identity concealed in cyberspace anonymity.).  Here is an exchange of anti-Francis buffoons from the Katholik Krazy blog Eponymous Flower:

AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 4:41 AM
   Pope Francis stinks.

AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 5:34 AM  
It's only the sheep' smell......don't you like it?


AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 5:51 AM  
"Pope Francis stinks."

That's for sure. He stinks from the rot of Vatican II !!!

Some of Francis’s strongest critics are both very public in their identity and ruthless in their critique.  Our Fancy Friend over at the Knight of Malta, Cardinal Burke, says that the Church under Francis “is a rudderless ship.”   It has been a long time since a Cardinal was so openly contemptuous of a reigning Pope, probably not since Cardinal Lucien Louis Joseph Napoléon Bonaparte, grand-nephew of the Emperor, who was given to open mockery of Pius IX, the Pope who both ordained him and named him a Cardinal.  (Curiously they remained friends despite Bonaparte’s well-known habit of ridiculing him to visitors.) 

Equally insulting to Pope Francis is Fox News Commentator, Steve Milloy who refers to Francis as “The Red Pope.”  The Fox News crowd caters to an audience that is rabidly opposed to any degree of self-restraint on the part of free-market capitalism and its raping of the planet’s resources and considers the sort of economic reforms Francis calls for sheer heresy.  One “Bruce,” responding to the KK blog, The Radical Catholic, says

Pope Francis is to the Catholic Church what Obama has been to America. Obama kicked the already weakened final supports out from under the country and America is NO MORE. Call it what you may but it is gone.

The Pope is well on his way to doing the same to a Church already turned Protestant by the Modernist Heresy. If they aren't already the confused Catholics will soon be Useful Idiots for the Global Elite who Francis apparently serves.

The electronic version of the British Conservative Magazine, The Spectator, recently produced an article: “Watch Out Pope Francis: the Catholic Civil War Has Begun.”   The article isn’t bad at all, other than calling Ross Douthat of the New York Times, a “moderate,” but it is a bit like Paul Revere hanging the lights in the tower of the Old North Church (actually Robert Newman, the church sexton hanged the lights to warn us about the Brits); we know that already, it ain’t news.  The article drew some pretty rabid responses however: who knew the Krazies were literate enough to read The Spectator? One “Gwenn Ap Nudd” responded to Phil Steinacker

Yes, this Pope teaches error so he is not a Pope. Sede Vacant (sic) - the Seat is empty. There have been a number of Anti-Popes. Francis is just one more.

And then to one “James M”

Legalism. As Rev Cekeda says, he was a manifest heretic before his election so it wasn't valid to begin with. The Council rejected the Holy Spirit and elected a heretic. I grant you it would be more complicated if a Pope fell from grace while in office. But he didn't fall, he never had it apparently - or at least since he's been in the public eye.  (Antony Cekada is a sedevacantist, “theologian” in residence and companion of Bishop Daniel Dolan, ersatz sede-vacantist bishop of no place in particular.  I have written about Dolan and Cekada elsewhere; you can check the Label list on the right side of the webpage.) 

Actually Francis is driving many of those who were clinging to hope of a pre-Vatican II restoration to sede-vacantism.  The KK blog, Eponymous Flower, draws a number of readers who espouse the idea that Francis is not the authentic pope.  One, writing under the universal veil of “anonymous” and who represents a sort of second wave sede vacantist theory (first wave being those who claim Pius XII was the last authentic pope) wrote:

Thanks guys! I see things in a different light. Pope Benedict XVl is still for me the Supreme Pontiff. And if I live to see the day of his death, then it will be Sede Vacante. I am a Traditional Catholic and Francis will not deprive me of that. May God forgive this fake Pope. In the meantime I am a CATHOLIC. And Francis is an anti-Catholic. Deo Gratias!!!

Then there are those who want to depose Francis.  A particularly Krazy blogger from Boston by the name of Carole McKinley who runs the Blog The Tenth Crusade (in various other reincarnations known as Throw The Bums Out 2010 and What The Pope Really Said) has not only had some of the blog-flies that feed off her ordure suggest that it is time to give Francis the boot but supports the idea herself.  One Michael Dowd wrote:

I suggest a petition be developed and circulated via blog network for the removal of Pope Francis. This kind of thing might get some more national media attention on this diabolical issue. Every day more and more souls are being lost due to him. He renders advocacy for Catholic doctrine ineffective by the carelessness of his moral attitude and confusing remarks. He has got to go. Go Francis Go.

An “Anonymous” came right in behind in support  

Michel Dowd is right. Enough of this. Are there no cardinals or bishops with a Catholic backbone left? Stand up to this man and boot him out. 


Ironically the post was titled “Catechized Catholics Upset With Our Holy Father’s Shtick”  When I suggested that really catechized Catholics know that there is no way for cardinals or bishops—even those who have backbone—much less petitions to remove a pope, Carol herself came in with one of her typically vitriolic exercises in unapprised idiocy:

If the Holy Father reveals himself to have been elected by the queens to contradict Church teaching, his See most certainly has the power to kick him to the curb. We are all waiting to see what kind if stunt is pulled at the next synod. The last one was orchestrated by the queens and had the collaboration and blessing of the Holy Father…,

I was only relieved that she referred to Francis as “Holy Father” but then I remembered in an earlier blog where she said she calls him that “tongue in cheek.”  One “Lazarus Gethsemane” then chimed in his opinion that Francis was foisted on the Church by a College of Cardials gone mad:

And yet - what we get from the politico Bergoglio is not truth, but rather, confusion, chaos, division, constant obfuscation of clear doctrine, and an unprecedented elevation of man and physical manna, and all at the detriment of immutable Truths and doctrines within the church itself. … 

Many of the corrupt liberal clerics in the college of cardinals (which is the majority) knew about Bergoglio, and that is exactly why they launched an illicit internal campaign to elect him to the papacy. Don't think for one blessed moment that this chaos and destruction wasn't pre-planned beyond Bergoglio.

So, yes—Francis is edging the Church towards a Civil War, or actually a schism.  It wasn’t his doing: it has been brewing for years.  The Lefebvre Schism was the first wave, the sede-vacantists the second.  They both had their roots in the Council and the papacy of Paul VI. The more measured track of John Paul II and Benedict XVI let the fires die down a bit but as nothing short of a rejection of the Council and post-conciliar Magisterium would appease the rebels, the fires remained smoldering.  Francis has fanned them into flame again.  Some hold the old grudges about the changes in the Liturgy or the ecumenical openings initiated by John XXIII and confirmed by the Council.  For others it was seeing their hopes of a restoration of the old rites promised in Summorum Pontificum dashed by a Pope who has no time for what I have referred to as the Colonial Williamsburg approach to worship.  There are those who grieve the “injustices” perceived to have been done by Francis to His Corpulence, Cardinal Burke. More are threatened by the more pastoral direction taken in regard to the divorced and remarried.  But the largest number of American discontents to Francis’ pontificate are bound to be those who see him as a threat to our socio-economic status quo.  Let Christopher Moncton and Sarah Palin and Senator Inhofe and Governor Parry and, of course, Rick Santorum continue to deny the effects of our economic strategies on our planet, but as for me I am a believer—both in Francis and in the fact that we gotta change.  Let me just conclude with this slice of Ashley Ahearn’s KUOW Seattle program on NPR this past Tuesday. 

Tribes and wild fish groups share Butler’s sentiments. River temperatures throughout the Northwest are entering lethal territory for salmon. The fish become stressed once river temperatures reach the 60s. When they exceed the 70s, temperatures can be lethal.

“When these fish are very hot they become lethargic and they don’t reach as large sizes as they would in more cool conditions,” says Adrian Tuohy, a biologist with the Wild Fish Conservancy. The nonprofit group analyzed water temperature data from the U.S. Geological Survey earlier this month on 54 rivers in Washington, Oregon and California. Thirty-nine of the rivers were at temperatures that can be lethal to salmon and trout.

"Their metabolic rates are so high that they just can't grow as fast," Tuohy says. “That affects their survival rates in the ocean.”

Warmer waters contain less oxygen and provide conditions for fish diseases like gill rot to thrive. So as the water levels drop and fish crowd into smaller and smaller pools, the results can be deadly.

So, say what you want about Pope Francis, but as for me and the fish, we’re believers.

Fed Up With Francis

Well Pope Francis’s favorability ratings among Americans has taken a serious dip.  All I can say is that it is about time.  For two and a half years now everybody has been falling all over themselves over Francis and I have been asking myself: Are they listening to the man???  Really listening???

Well, ok, not everybody was falling all over him.  The Krazies spotted something wrong right from the first.  A Jesuit?!?  Not a good sign!  “Francis”—hmmm, a break with tradition, shoulda been a Pius or an Alexander.   And where is the papal folderol that we had grown used to again???  You know, the fur-trimmed cape, the floppy Santa-hat, the ruby-reds on his feet???  But the regular joes liked it: living simply, eating in the cafeteria with the staff, the used car to get back and forth to the office.  “A poor Church for the poor”—good rhetoric, clever marketing.  But there were a few more who saw the problem: without the fancy shoes and living on the palace, he becomes just another priest doing his job.  I mean he had might as well just get a bicycle to ride around like the Queen of Holland.  Michael Voris was first to sound the blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of a Jesuit claiming to be Pope when the real Pope is still alive.  Now that Mother A. is incapacitated, thank heavens we have Michael Voris to be our infallible guide when the magisterium fails.   

And then there was “who am I to judge.”  That alienated all the Pharisees.  I mean, if the Pope can’t judge then the rest of us can’t keep score.  This time it is Lions 0, Christians 1.  Game’s over.  Son of a Bitch called an “olly olly in free” for sinners.  Damn.  The I’m-holier-than-thou crowd still hasn’t forgiven him for that.  Poor Carol McKinley at Throw the Bums Out 2010, aka The Tenth Crusade, aka What the Pope Really Means, and Janet over at Restore D.C. Catholicism, and Mary Anne at Les Femmes: what will these women do if they can’t cast the first stone at anyone who doesn’t meet their criterion for worthy reception of Holy Communion.  If we don’t get back on track, next thing you know prostitutes and tax-collectors will be entering the Kingdom of Heaven before us. 

But despite all this, still Francis managed to hold on to the vast majority of Catholics.  Only the spiritually elite were seeing it.   Most of us weren’t interesting in sitting in judgment anyway, and most of us liked the Pope being a bit down at the heels after the previous Pope’s somewhat of a dowager’s penchant for damask and old lace.  And all that Swiss Guard, and Gentlemen of His Holiness, and stamping of feet and saluting of soldiers and thrones and things stand in somewhat dramatic contrast to the plain hard wood of the Cross.  The gilded crucifix thing used to work; doesn’t anymore.  So we could live with this guy: we liked it actually.  But then he began to move from the theatrical to the everyday and that increasingly made us uncomfortable. Of course before we run-of-the-mill Catholics realized we were being hoodwinked by this somewhat commonplace excuse for a pope, there was the famous Father Hunwicke, a refugee from women-priested Anglicanism who has been appalled at Francis’ disdain for the pontifical; but then the good Father is a subject of her Britannic Majesty and so can’t imagine life beyond the fantasy realm of Queens and palaces.  And our own America presbyter vagans, Father Z, another convert, has been beside himself about the Pope’s everyday style.  Why did these people become Catholics anyway: it certainly wasn’t the Gospel.  What did you go out into the desert to see?  A pope dressed in fine clothes?  Those who wear elegant clothes and live luxuriously are found in palaces.    If you don’t like a down-at-the-heels Jesuit from Buenos Aires, you certainly aren’t going to be happy with a carpenter from Nazareth. 

But then it began to get a little to hot-in-the-kitchen for the rest of us.  Frankly, when it comes to the immigrant thing, a lot of us want Donald Trump for Pope.  I mean if this Francis fellow wants to ramble on about Africans swimming ashore at Lampedusa, who cares?  Let the I-talians deal with their own problems, but when he starts talking about those Latino types climbing over our border wall with their diseases and their penchant for drugs and rape and violence, well, he should stick to things he knows about. 

And then it only got worse.  He won’t pontificate at the Traditional-Latin-Mass-of-All-Ages-and-Everywhere-Like-Jesus-did-at-the-Last-Supper (you know when he gave the Apostles Holy Communion—in one kind—on the tongue as they knelt around the table), but he’ll pontificate about Climate Change and how he thinks capitalism is ruining the earth.  He should stick to faith and morals.  In this age of abortion and rampant birth control and same-sex marriage any pope has more than enough to keep him busy without interfering with fracking and strip-mining and deforestation and human trafficking.  I don’t go to Church to hear about this world; I go to hear about the next world.  I mean, we are going to be in heaven (or hell) a long time; much longer than we will live on this earth.  So who cares about this world.  God gave it to us to dominate so strip ‘er bare and make what money you can doing so.  There’s no sin in being rich.  Jesus endorsed trickle-down economics when he told us about how that poor fellow, what was his name?  Lazarus?  How he used to eat the crumbs from the rich man’s table.  We need to hear more about that—what was it that Ronald Reagan said: when enough crumbs fall all boats rise.  No, this Francis fellow will destroy America as we know it.   He’s got to go.  Never trust a Pope who wears black shoes; he isn’t the real McCoy.  

Bazinga.  

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. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church XLIX

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer depicted in the
windows of the American Church in Paris 

Yesterday I blogged about Thomas Cranmer, Henry VIII’s Archbishop of Canterbury, who by the authorization of Parliament and not the papacy granted Henry the annulment of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and who served as Henry’s chief agent within the Church in snapping the bonds of communion that had for fifteen centuries existed between the Church of England and the Roman Communion.  Note that I am not saying that either Henry or Cranmer created the Church of England—the Church of England had existed from antiquity when the first Christians came to Britain in the late first century.  But that ancient Church, while distinct in liturgy and discipline from the Roman Church and while it had for many of those fifteen centuries enjoyed an autonomy from any governance from Rome, had always shared the bonds of the Eucharistic fellowship with Rome and through Rome with the other Churches of Christianity.  This is a very different ecclesiology than modern Catholics understand.  Today we look at the various Churches that make up Catholicism as being “under” the Pope but that is not the ancient understanding which saw the Church as a communion of Churches and which saw the Pope as the first among the equals of his brother bishops.  Pope Benedict had hinted at restoring that ancient understanding and Pope Francis, by his reverting to the title of “Bishop of Rome” has taken a symbolic step in that direction but it is still not the predominant understanding of the Church to which most Catholics subscribe.  It will take time for the Church to evolve towards a restored understanding of itself that is free on the monarchial structures of the Middle Ages.  But that is not the point of my entry today.  Rather, I want to make some comments on Archbishop Cranmer that I think have some relevance for us today.

Thomas Cranmer is a touchy subject on which to write.   Catholics consider him a demagogue.  Anglicans of an evangelical or low-Church stripe see him as a hero and a martyr.  He did—after Henry’s death (and we will get to this) Protestantize the Anglican Church.  High Church or Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians and Anglicans are somewhat embarrassed by him as he was far more Protestant in his theology and liturgics than meets their taste.  (The British historian William Maitland said that High Church historians make out that the Church of England was Protestant before the Reformation and Catholic afterwards.  I think I have shown how in many ways the Church of England was, while not “Protestant”, certainly not by modern standards “Catholic” in its ancient and early medieval history, but I intend to show you just how Protestant it would become in the second half of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth century. )  Cranmer would give the Anglican Tradition a liturgy that is magnificent in its literary style and which preserved much of the pre-Reformation prayers, but at the same time that liturgy reflected Calvinist and Zwinglian theologies in both its Christian anthropology and its sacramental theology.   At the end of the day I am not an admirer of Thomas Cranmer—I think for historical reasons rather than for theological ones, but then I may not be objective as his Calvinistic anthropology is so close to the Jansenistic anthropology of today’s neo-trads.  Jansenists and Calvinists drink from the same poisoned cup of an exaggerated Augustinianism that understands human nature to be not merely flawed by original sin but totally spoilt, rotten to the core.  I think we see this negative anthropology in those opponents to the direction that Pope Francis has taken the Church these last six months.  When I read blogs like The Tenth Crusade, Restore DC Catholicism, A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics, Catholic Champion, or Rorate Caeli, or when I hear the disinformationals of Michal Voris, I cannot but hear echoes of Calvin and Cranmer and Jansens in their fixations on sin and their failure to proclaim the Good News of Salvation.  Francis’ attempts to restore the balance of grace and sin and his reminders that we have the assurance that in the end God’s Kingdom triumphs over evil only scandalizes those who cannot move into the Light of the Gospel.  Don’t get me wrong, neither Francis nor I am denying the reality of sin but only remembering the power of the Atonement and the victory that it assures for us individually as well as for the world.  But I am wandering away from Cranmer.  Like Luther and like Calvin and unlike Ignatius and Teresa and John of the Cross, Cranmer was fixated on the fallen nature of the human person and consequently his understanding of grace was reduced to an arbitrary election by a whimsical deity rather than a restorative healing by a Loving God.  All of which is to say that Michael Voris and his blogging minions had better return to an orthodox anthropology and abandon their latter-day Calvinism. 

Well back to Cranmer.  My biases identified, I wonder if he truly had a vocation to the priesthood or if it was simply a career he chose given the limited opportunities for a disinherited younger son.  Really, given the family situation he had a choice between clergy and law.  His early career at Cambridge where it took him eight years to earn the bachelor’s degree—an extraordinary long time in that century—indicates he was not, at first, a serious student.   He was an adequate theologian—never an original thinker but one who could take the work of Luther or Calvin or Bucer (or even Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine) and adapt (and sometimes by twisting) their ideas to the pastoral exigencies at hand.   His prayers are vast in number and eloquent in their composition but they don’t speak the depths of the Christian soul in the way that do those of Ignatius or Teresa—or later Anglican Divines such as John Donne or George Herbert.  I think that his fall from power under Mary and subsequent imprisonment (all of which we shall deal with in time) provided a maturing of his spiritual powers but frankly in the years of Henry VIII I cannot see him as anything but an opportunist given to the careerism of the type that Pope Francis says that the Church today must rid itself of.  And this is my point.  Just because a man wears a miter (or rochet and chimere) doesn’t mean that he has the spiritual gifts needed for being a bishop; and just because a man wears a biretta and a stole doesn’t mean he has been called to the priesthood.   Ambition for power corrupts the Church and we have been ill served by those men who, consciously or unconsciously, have chosen church careers as means to rise in the organization rather than to serve the least in the community.  I am grateful to Pope Francis for showing an example of what Christian ministry is.  I had begun to lose faith with the revival of the long silk trains and pompous ceremonials we had begun to see these last few years.