“There you go again!”
Remember that winning line from presidential candidate Ronald Reagan to President Jimmy Carter in October 1980? It was a riposte to Carter’s constant rehashing of pet topics.
That retort came to mind as Pope Francis, once again, landed on young priests and their sartorial preferences. This time around, however, it was sallied at the conclusion of his final address to the participants in his “Synod on Synodality” and, on that score alone, inappropriate and offensive. It was a reprise of his favorite “hobby horse” of “clericalism”:
Clericalism is a thorn. It is a scourge. It is a form of worldliness that defiles and damages the face of the Lord’s bride. It enslaves the holy, faithful people of God.
And the best example of this “scourge”? “It is enough to go into the ecclesiastical tailor shops in Rome to see the scandal of young priests trying on cassocks and hats, or albs and lace robes.” “Scandal”?
Even more: “The faithful holy People of God patiently and humbly enduring the scorn, mistreatment, and marginalization of institutionalized clericalism.”
Ironically, he lobbed this at them—the only group he singled out for castigation—in the context of calling for charity in the Church and criticizing those exhibiting “dictatorial attitudes.”
With everything going on in the Church and the world, why the focus on lace albs? In the interests of transparency: I don’t wear lace surplices or albs, largely because I don’t think their use reflects the 1500-year tradition before their arrival on the scene. That said, I don’t think it should be cause for a major ecclesiastical kerfuffle.
Of course, anyone can read between the lines to apprehend that the Pope’s issue is not really about cassocks and lace; rather, he knows (correctly) that the junior clergy are not in his camp.
His broadsides against anything that smacks of tradition have been incessant, dubbing seminarians “little monsters”; delivering a profanity-laced assault this past January to seminarians from Barcelona against priests who deny absolution (where does that happen?); repeatedly suggesting that traditional Catholics probably suffer from mental illness.
What have been the results of these mean-spirited, unkind attacks? I spend hours of my week trying to convince young priests and seminarians not to give up on the priesthood.
However, there is much more than my own anecdotal data. According to the Vatican Office of Statistics itself: “The temporal tendency of the number of major seminarians observed in the world since 2013, reflects an uninterrupted decrease, which continued in 2021.” Further: “The number of major seminarians worldwide surged from 63,882 in 1978 to 110,553 in 2000—far surpassing the rate of world population growth—and rose more steadily over the next decade to a peak of 120,616 in 2011. The decline has been especially pronounced since 2019.” From that same source, we learn that the number of seminarians has been hemorrhaging since 2013 (the year of this Pope’s election).
Just this month, very disturbing data surfaced from Poland. In 2012, the country gained 828 new seminarians; in 2023, 280. In 2010, the country could boast of 5500 seminarians in toto; in 2023, merely 1690. Similar data comes from Latin America where, in 2010, there were 12,000 seminarians but fewer than 10,000 in 2020.
To be sure, one cannot posit a single cause for these declines, but nor can one deny a serious “Francis effect.” Due to the climate of fear generated in the Beroglian era, it is only in closed-door conversations with seminary rectors and bishops that one can hear such sentiments expressed.
I do not know a single seminarian who counts Pope Francis as a positive influence on his decision to pursue the priesthood. Amazingly, young men not even born or mere infants by the time of Pope John Paul II’s death, see him as a model and guide. On the other hand, I know of many potential seminarians hanging out on the fringes of vocational commitment until this pontificate is ended.
Francis has constantly urged clergy to have “the smell of the sheep.” Interestingly, the lay faithful are almost uniformly laudatory of the junior clergy; they appreciate their orthodoxy, their ars celebrandi, their preaching, and their pastoral zeal. The Pope ought to be praising these young men, who have offered themselves to Christ and His Church at an historical and cultural moment when there is no status or payback for such a decision. John Paul understood that and so gifted us priests every Holy Thursday with a letter aimed at supporting us in our holy vocation. He knew how to correct and challenge priests without being demoralizing or bullying.
It is somewhat curious that although Pope Francis is put off by seminarians and priests in cassocks, he apparently turned a blind eye to many nuns parading around the Synod in lay clothes and even a formal presenter, Father Ormond Rush, in a suit and tie–all clearly in violation of church law!
Yes, “clericalism” is a disease, but so is anti-clericalism–especially when it comes from a pope. I suggest that the papal Francis have recourse to the fraternal advice of his heavenly patron:
I am determined to reverence, love and honour priests. . . . I refuse to consider their sins, because I can see the Son of God in them and they are better than I. I do this because in this world I cannot see the most high Son of God with my own eyes, except for his most holy Body and Blood which they receive and they alone administer to others.”
That kind of attitude would foster holy priestly vocations, not snuff them out. So, please, no more “There you go again!”
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The scary thing is the conclave elected this Pope, who has no respect for tradition or the moral law.
BTW, how about focusing on the the clericalism of letting Fr. Rupnik maintain public faculties and avoid trail for much worse crimes than shopping for albs and lace.
Francis and his ilk see their replacement and the future of the Catholic Church on the horizon and both look very dissimilar to what the man has become familiar with. Deo Gratias! The future is a return to Catholicism proper. We’ve spent way too much time placating the rebellious, the revolutionary, the wrong-headed, i.e. “protestants”. It’s far past way too long ago that we should have jettisoned modernism. It’s empty, shallow and mean-spirited, anent Francis’ attack on Catholic identity.
I’d like to know when Pope Francis launched “a profanity laced…”
It was December 10, 2022, to a group of seminarians in Barcelona, as reported by Italian media, The Catholic Herald, and others. There is also, I think, video of the incident. It’s also not the first time the Pope has uttered vulgarities in public, as reported by NPR in 2014.
Please note that the words, “profanity laced assault” are in bold, colored font. This is to signify that they are a link to the source. If you click on it you will be taken to the article which describes the profanity laced assault. Happy research!!
Amen.
Call it what it is. Bullying.
Have met many amazing young, devoted priests and witnessed countless more. They follow Christ crucified.
Speaking of which, St. Ignatius Loyola is credited with this teaching:
“If you do not have an enemy, find one. They will do more for you than your friends.”
#1. I’m fast concluding that Pope Francis is ashamed of his priesthood. I wonder what he thinks of Christ’s Priesthood.
#2. Francis ought to look in a mirror and note that he’s always wearing a cassock – one that, I’m sure, is hand tailored by one of the premier sartorial shops in Rome. No smell of the sheep here but you can be certain that hypocrisy has a distinctive and repulsive odor.
#3. I want my priests to look and act like priests and not participants in a Gay Parade. I want my priests to model John Vianney and Fr. Cappadonno. I want my deacons to look and act like deacons whose models ought to be Stephen and Lawrence. I want my bishops to look and act like bishops and not political hacks with fingers held aloft to test which way the popular sentiment is blowing. They ought to model Augustine in contrition and Borromeo in service to the Gospel and God’s people. Lastly, I want my Popes to look and act like Popes on the order of John Paul and Benedict and not on those in the past who lived profligate lives and undermined the faith. I want a Pastor of Christ’s Church who models unity, who inspires the faithful to seek the transcendent, who defends Church teachings and Teadition, a Pope who speaks the Truth, and a Pope who clarifies and doesn’t confuse the Faithful. But then, again, I’m rigid, backwardist and all the other epithets hurled by a sourpuss.
Do you think we can exercise the rarely-used Eccelesial option to chip in for a one-way ticket to a nice mountain villa somewhere in Argentina so that he can go away and be happy?
Extremely well said, Deacon! ‘thank you!
With so much going on and coming at them at the same time, priests have to keep Presence of God, steady their thoughts and maintain a watch on their will and feelings.
Pope Francis says he is tackling abuse as a continuation of Benedict. But how the reality is playing out is, as homosexualists running their themes and showing forth their styles, “gay spirituality and fraternity”.
There is a lot to be said against gay spirituality but it is not addressed. One gets the sense that he is afraid to offend some groups and not others.
In addition, the excessive publicity attention seeking on these things is not the way of the Church and simultaneously is counter-productive on all fronts.
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2023/11/pope-francis-and-the-sharron-angle-strategy-of-media-relations
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/liberalism-is-a-sin-10081
There is no such thing as “gay spirituality.” SSA and authentic Christianity are at complete odds. No authentic Christian spirituality runs contrary to God’s will.
What is “SSA”?
I see now. “Same Sex Attraction”. I get an intuition slowness sometimes. This slowness isn’t related to time of day like waking up; it’s just comes on even when I am fully alert, I go into a loop like a nincompoop.
Isn’t it fair to say that until some heresies are named definitively, we can use the generic terminology to refer to them and acknowledge that something (wrong) is going on there.
At the time of the problem in the early Church of “exchanging wives” there was not an immediate final label given to it and its practitioners. As it unfolded those involved were called Nicolaitans.
There is a debate if Nicholas of Antioch, by whom it is named, was even one of them. It could be that as a deacon he gave some undue allowance, comfort and protection to those groups?
There were a number of individuals involved in what became termed Jansenism and I have the impression that only later it fell upon Jansen to be identified as the originating culprit.
My impression of Jansen is of a person with a kind of dissociative religious idealism; who in addition could not foresee the disastrous consequences of what he initiated. He didn’t live to see what fully ensued.
Because of the elevation of Pascal recently, I have to mention him here. Pascal was the unqualified apologist for Jansenism and he did nothing to abate or relieve or identify those extreme consequences. Pascal fed into them. Inadvertently or deliberately? Good question.
Something similar is going on with these sexual perversions held up as “conditions”. It could be that at a time to come, the heresy will be named by, or, as to, a certain individual in authority.
Spirituality can become altered to the bad. When this happens it would not be right to say “it does not exist”. In fact the Church takes pains to warn against bad things and going bad with them. The prime example of bad spirit is the Devil.
Another example would be New Age Movement. For the priests reading this please forgive me lecturing to priests. I do not mean to come at you -lecturing. I feel I am announcing the faith. I’ve been told by a priest that I tend to pound out uncompromisingly on issues with a booming voice. At least when you read this, therefore, it’s all on the quiet and peaceable-like.
This is why I do not take exception with terminology like LGBT in the general parlance and when the Church has to address it honestly. I do take issue when the terminology is used in such ways that the dangerous content is passed off as good or negligible or not needing warning or as ordinary or as something that can be legitimized in law (which actually only contorts law too).
The look demonstrates reverence and that this endeavor is related to something not of this world. It calms the sheep to know that someone is in charge and watching out for them.
Seeing a white collar on a priest or even protestant in public is a positive experience for most.
Have met 6 young priests the last few years. They are orthodox, devoted, active, a positive influence on their elder pastors. These young men are heroic figures- rushing selflessly into a burning edifice for the salvation of souls by the Word of God. They have disdained the world and taken a tarnished collar on true humility and fealty to the Beloved One. Let us pray in gratitude daily that the Holy Spirit is at work in the Church despite the depredations of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Amen, Shawn.
May God bless courageous young priests today.
We read: “Of course, anyone can read between the lines to apprehend that the Pope’s issue is not really about cassocks and lace; rather, he knows (correctly) that the junior clergy are not in his camp.”
Been thinking, here, about the mystery of the so-called “traditionalists” versus the “camp” of papal insiders, BOTH appealing to the same rich “humus” of long Church experience. And, about the misuse of the “paradigm shift” metaphor (misappropriated from the natural sciences and Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” 1960).
The conundrum goes away when we reconsider the OLD TESTAMENT experience. the Israelites are admonished not to mingle in a welcoming way (!) with the worshipers of Baal, lest by small habits they transition (!) into the wallpaper and sacrifice their own children to the local humus” first pagan idols on the mantel and then eventually tossing one’s children onto sacrificial bon fires and even cannibalizing them. (Not unlike the thread linking contraception to abortion, to the homosexual lifestyle, to gender theory, and to artificial insemination, to the marketable sex-transitioning (!) of children (and even a curious blurring of moral absolutes and Veritatis Splendor).
The real “paradigm shift” was not the transition, but the CHASTISEMENT. And, today?
The purpose for vestments (and for some, even lace and berettas) is to render the priest NEITHER a “clericalist” autocrat nor a ceremonial performer, but invisible such that the Alter Christus is the One seen. And, yet, those of the insider “camp” will insist, instead, that the “backwardists” are not listening, as they themselves transition (!) into a unilateral theology of (what’s that word again, oh yes) “welcoming!”
Without resolving the conundrum of equally sincere (?) ships passing in the night, might we at least observe that the Church hangs by a thread? And, be reminded what the convert JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN had to say about this vital “thread”:
“No one can really respect religion and insult its forms. Granted that forms are not immediately from God, still long use has made them divine to US [italics]; for the spirit of religion has so penetrated and quickened them, that to destroy them is, in respect to the multitude of men, to unsettle and dislodge the religious principle itself. In most minds usage has so identified them with the notion of religion, that one cannot be extirpated without the other. Their faith will not bear transplanting….Precious doctrines are strung like jewel upon slender threads” (“Parochial and Plain Sermons,” Vol. II, Christian Classics Inc., Westminster, Md., 1966, pp. 75-76; cited in Vincent P. Micelli, SJ., “The Antichrist”, 1981).
Christ came not to abolish the LAW (meaning the Commandments as the natural law), but to fulfill it (Mt 5:17). Does this Incarnation still include the Eighth Commandment? As prohibiting (!) privileged insults and scripted caricatures: “bigots, rigid, fixistic, backwardist,” and now gratuitous contempt for lace threads?
Just askin”….and trusting that the synodal “listening” thing includes dead white dudes like Newman.
Even in my atheist years I was schooled enough in philosophy and exercised enough common sense to know that a belief in God would require a fundamental faith in the consistent, essentially static, nature of truth if God existed. Creation can make discoveries, but only what God knows and has known eternally and discoveries must be coherent with what is received. Revolutionary ideas about the human condition and reforming the human condition are impossible, that the only reforms possible would be from acts of individual human virtue. Years later it was explained to me how very close I was then to being a believer by having such beliefs even though my formal Damascus Road experience was years away. It staggers the mind to contemplate a Pope so lacking in understanding as to be disposed and impatient for Catholic revolution and hatred for the changelessness of tradition worshiping a changeless God.
It helps to remember that synodal theology is patterned after science fiction, rather than the other way around!
I refer, of course, to the 2005 release of “War of the Worlds” where Tom Cruise’s scientology is infiltrated as the way that the invaders’ blood-sucking tripod contraptions were planted underground a million years ago…Likewise, in 1962-5 indestructible theological cockroaches planted the seeds of destruction in Gaudium et Spes, to be later exploited: “…the human race has passed from a rather static [!] concept of reality to a more dynamic [!], evolutionary one” (buried in n. 5).
Attempts to resolve the very real conundrum, yes, of living the absolute truth within the river of history have shown mixed results. As elsewhere in the Council’s same constitution: “…the Council wishes to recall first of all the permanent binding force of universal natural law and its all-embracing principles. Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles…” (n. 79).
While the 5th-century Vincent of Lerins is routinely quoted as endorsing “change” as a wedge for mutation, his “Commonitorium” (c. 434 A.D.) explicitly does not do this, nor does the 19th-century Cardinal Newman in his more elaborate “Development of Christian Doctrine” (1878). Instead, Newman, as the “father of the Second Vatican Council,” clarified truly: “…here below to live is to change [!], and to be perfect is to have changed often. [BUT] “[a great idea, or principle] reappear[s] under new forms. It changes with [new challenges] IN ORDER TO REMAIN THE SAME” (Ch. 1, Sec. 1, caps added).
Hence a side observation relevant to Vatican ghost writers and such, by novelist Honore do Balzac. Not a writer of science fiction, but of historical fiction: “bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”
My take on the Pope’s comments is that a priest might give the impression of being a dandy. But what priests do that? When has he ever visited a store where priests are obsessing about how they dress? I have known only a few priests, some young and some old, who wore cassocks, and they were very humble.
However, I do think that the lace is a bit much and would love to see it go because it does give the dandy impression. Vestments should be dignified and humble so as to not distract from the action of the priest, in persona Christi, at Mass.
I guess I don’t fully understand “dandy” dressing when I see a man of God confecting the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Silly me, I suspect things closer to God to be a beautiful, ethereal and other-worldly. I wonder how many of Gods angels he created drab, flat and “usual”. No, keep the lace in place. Lets see the burlap sack vestments get shelved (or used as dust cloths).
The point of the vestments is very much to distract from the priest. Father’s personality and habits of dress should be subsumed in the Mass, not the other way around. *What* he is, is of more importance than *who* he is, in this particular context. He is a minster, who is ministering, and therefore will act and speak and move and dress as a minister, with the dignity that befits his ministry. Which happens to be the highest form of worship that has been given to mankind.
One of the most lacey albs I have ever seen a photo of was worn by St. Francis when he served as a deacon.
Lace was used because it is both beautiful (and therefore fitting for the worship of God), and practically speaking, hole-y. It’s not a pun, it’s an attempt to keep cool in the centuries preceding air conditioning. Still an issue in many places today, whether from poverty or an effort to not freeze out the parishioners AND stay conscious.
I love the lace vestments. For me it adds to an atmosphere of joy and beauty in the presence of God. I have only evere seen lace vestments at the Traditional Latin Mass, where the priest faces the altar and prays the mass QUIETLY in Latin. Never calling attention to himself.
Poland’s deep decline in vocations since Francis’ pontificate is more than an indication of causality. To be fair to His Holiness [magnanimity is a virtue] scandals involving Polish bishops can be added. Then there’s the lace dilemma as the pontiff perceives it. A hated reminder of what, if not orthodoxy? Fr Stravinskas, a lace hater like myself [I agree with Stravinskas that the introduction of feminine lace to clerical attire after 1500 years is an imposition] sees through the inimicality. The rigorous withholding of his sacramental open border policy.
His Holiness is out to demonstrate to the world he’s got a better handle on current Church affairs than that dusty image of Jesus of Nazareth. Or is there something else in hand here?
Obama knew that if you wish to destroy a country like America, you grind down the Founders and that is exactly what the democrats have done as was evidenced by the destruction of most of the statutes that, at one time, represented the men and women who put their lives, liberty and fortunes on the line to establish this country. At the same time, you highlight their faults, sins and missteps. As if taking a page from the same playbook, Francis is grinding down the Catholic Church by attacking its priests. This comes to me as no surprise as his generation “demythologized” Christ himself – taking from Him everything that made Christ extra-ordinary, super natural. In fact, his order, the Jesuits, represented the worst of all the revolutionaries that toppled the bulwark of Catholicism and jettisoned Aquinas and Trent. It was as if I received a gut kick when in 2013, they announced Francis as the new pope and I heard he was a Jesuit from South America. I have been praying for the man ever since in almost the same way Rush Limbaugh prayed for Obama: “I hope he fails”. I anticipated all of this vitriol and condemnation of Catholicism that spews from him. We, faithful, are living once again in times not too unsimilar to those of the mid-15th century when men from WITHIN the Church gave rise, through rebellion, to the many protestant creeds. Anyone who understands history senses the similarity: it’s just too eerie to simply ignore. Pray for the man incessantly, follow the man with trepidation. It matters.
Clouded by his blind adulation of Pope John Paul the Great, Father Stravinkas still has not and I think will never get to know the truth, beauty, and goodness of the pastoral heart of Pope Francis until he gets beyond JPII’s Holy Thursday Letters to Priests or Pastores Dabo Vobes, and other writings on the priesthood and start to prayerfully read Pope Francis’ homilies, talks and addresses to and about priests in the 2017 compilation, With the Smell of a Sheep.
“Who are you to judge?” to turn a phrase from your wonderful pope. I read enough of Fr. Stravinskas to know with certainty that he follows Christ and the teachings of the Church. Francis cites his own works when writing new documents. He reminds me of that megalomaniacal narcissist Obama who had 150 self-portraits hung in the West Wing. I gotta hand it to them both – they never get sick of themselves – even though the rest of us have had more than a gut full.
About “the smell of the sheep,” let me recommend a CWR article by yours truly from five years back; how about a “dip” into this for those who have the stomach for it….https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/05/17/lay-evangelization-and-the-smell-of-the-sheep/
And, apart from both JP II’s “Letters” or Pope Francis’ homilies, but rather about discerning the crucial fine line for “pastoral” solutions, how about this:
“A separation, or even an opposition [!], is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [no longer a ‘moral judgment’] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ [!] solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [“Thou shalt not…”]” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 56).
I used to raise sheep & I can tell you they don’t smell too great. It’s a difficult odor to get off you after handling them, I suppose because of the lanolin in their fleece. Goats smell a whole lot worse though…
🙂
Please explain the pastoral truth, beauty, and goodness of telling men in Amoris Laetitia, that they can “discern” (previously understood in Catholicism as prudentially choosing between two goods) that “in his concrete circumstances in today’s world” that abandoning his family to run off with another woman to start another family “that this is what God is asking of him at this time.” What is so truthful, beautiful, and good, and merciful, from the Pope who gives lots of lip service to happy talk, to the crushed and damaged abandoned family? I would like an answer.
I hate to say this but I feel it. I dont care about ANYTHING this Pope says. I have NO feeling for him as the VICAR of Christ. Are you serious???
Concur with your post. I reluctantly say Francis means nothing to me.
I’ve simply had enough of his contempt for so many people and things traditionally Catholic. Basta.
I must humbly agree. Jesus commands us to love Francis and pray for him. Just as he loved the Pharisees, scribes and lawyers to whom he showed great tough love by vilifying them into hoped for repentance. Likewise the Holy Spirit commands us to ignore and not invite into our homes and hearts church leaders who do not bring Christ and his teaching ( 2 John: 10-11). I believe that Francis doesn’t bring Jesus Christ and his teaching. He brings himself, his personal and political beliefs, his prejudices. And he empowers those who literally seek to substitute their own woke views for the clear words of Sacred Scripture.
So I will try to love Francis and pray for him but also ignore his words and his purely personal and political, and often times harmful, teaching and that of his acolytes.
Well said, Father.
As a brother priest I am hopefully and patiently awaiting the next pope. Until then, and indeed until God calls me out of this world, I continue to pray and remain faithful to Jesus Christ.
“I refuse to consider their (priests) sins, because I can see the Son of God in them and they are better than I.”
Refusing to consider a priest’s sins is problematic. Please read the room…it is 2023 and the faithful have been through scandal after scandal.
Yes, Mills but the faithful have selectively been through scandal after published scandal as long as those scandals involved Catholic priests. Meanwhile, numerous public & private school teachers are being busted for the same offenses & no one seems to lose faith in our school systems for that reason. I was just reading about a volunteer for Big Brothers/Big Sisters that was arrested for the most disgusting things you can imagine.
It’s about our shared fallen nature & sin. Secularists have successfully constructed a narrative depicting priests as child abusers to undermine our morale, where in fact only a tiny percentage of priests are actually guilty of that.
We don’t need to connect Catholic clergy with sexual abuse of minors anymore than we should do that for Big Bros./Big Sisters volunteers, teachers, law enforcement, little League coaches, etc. etc.
Some people choose to work with minors for the wrong reasons. It’s that simple.
Tiny percentage????? Only a narrow majority of priests and nuns and prelates express any level of grudging acceptance of some Catholic teaching on sexual ethics and who knows how this impacts their personal lives. Do you think it is accidental that a homily that laments abortion is as rare as a truthful congressional tax return? Do you think a Church that has now created the impression to the world, not only for the past torturous ten years, but for the past sixty years, that we just arbitrarily make things up as we go along and demand that if anyone who fails to accept this ridiculous sham process sins against the Holy Spirit? Do you think the secular world needs to create narratives about scandalous behavior in the Church when Catholics do such a good job themselves, even when scandalously identifying what are and what are not doctrines?
I’m sorry Mr. Baker if my comments weren’t clear. A tiny percentage of Catholic clergy *prey on minors* & commit sexual abuse.
None of your comment diminishes the weight of the clergy scandal. Refusing to consider someone’s sins, regardless of vocation, is negligent not virtuous.
We certainly shouldn’t refuse to acknowledge sins committed by those few who have been lawfully convicted of such but neither should we unjustly consign the entirety of Catholic clergy to suspicion.
The “weight” of the clergy scandal is not nearly so heavy in reality & is in fact a great deal lighter than similar scandals found in secular vocations.
… rather, he knows (correctly) that the junior clergy are not in his camp.
Who beyond a dwindling, aging handful of conciliar partisans is in this man’s camp?
Unfortunately, the entire Western world, including many cardinals, bishops, and the vast majority of nominal Catholics.
It is just too easy to fool people by saying, “Hey, look at and totally focus on the good things that Pope Francis has written about and totally ignore the very wrong things that he is actually doing and saying.” The gigantic difference between both is more than enough, consistently and shockingly contradictory for many years, to see the “truth, beauty and goodness of the pastoral heart of Pope Francis” as something we are not to believe on. The Truth, Beauty and Goodness of Jesus Always Consistent and Always Sacred Heart is not there.
‘Smell of sheep ‘- decided to look up what is truly meant,to gratefully hear the Paternal Blessing – for the priest sons, that they are capable of having enough graces of the Holy Spirit as the ‘anointing ‘… to care for the blind and the lame – who are invited to The Banquet, as wounded and occasions for taking such along with own wounds to The Lord with burning hearts , pleading for His graces, for the healing unction … graces from a life of deep prayer , its fruit of joy of trusting in His Love for both – the people and the priest …hoping that such would be the real message that is taken in with gratitude …his chiding of excess focus on ego in seeking adulation – ? from having discerned same at the root of much of the mess that afflicted The Church …interesting how living at Santa Marta , he likely would heard of anecdotes of persons with rather exquisite tastes as ones who also have more of the duplicity and interior corruption – caution that laity too can heed , in efforts to be more faihful !
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-francis-warns-against-duplicity-of-heart-at-sunday-angelus God Bless !
Evangelization and conversion are ongoing and never ending opportunities. His Holiness Pope Francis continues to evangelize all pilgrims, religious nuns, acolytes, deacons, priests, religious priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals with his customary zeal, fervor, and unction. May the Giver and sustainer of life bless the Holy Father with good health and stamina.
And then, we have the Holy Father going off script “…to rant against ‘f***ing careerists who f*** up the lives of others’.”
Yes, I’d say those are evangelizing words and phrases that will bring the faithful flocking back to the sacraments, wouldn’t you?
The words of warning by the Holy Father on ‘clericalism’ also to be taken as meant to bring good, not just pain – esp when seen as intended for the laity too- both for prevention and healing – to recognise any such patterns early on , to help protect both sides as well as to hear the compassion for any one who might have been exposed to same , also to bring repentance where same is needed .
The drop in #s – having previously heard how it is lot more related to local situations, the effort of the Holy Father to remove unhealthy leaven might help to bring forth good dough in the near future !
Evidence shows the Pope as very ambiguous and judgmental.
I learned everything I needed to know about that crazy cat from his reactions to enthusiastic female fans, and from his encyclical on prayer where he told contemplatives they needed to get a REAL job doing good works.
He misses entirely the point that loving others perfectly starts first with loving God more than anything, tapping into the fountain of perfect love, where we then can love others without greed/need intruding and then do the proper works as most beneficial.
He consistantly puts the cart before the horse, and any loving insults from that unstable individual are best utterly ignored along with him. Anyone who says social work comes before union with God is clueless, utterly.
To Bob. Thank you for saying that. I agree, especially with the last line. Diane
Good article Fr. Stravinskas! Yes, Pope Francis uses the Liberal, Progressives’ practice of using massive amounts of hate language against their political opponents. In Pope Francis’ case, our Faithful to Jesus Catholic Priests are seen by Pope Francis as his enemies.
In EWTN’s ‘Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’, It shows how the evil Liberals use hate, conflict, and even murder, to do their Liberal social engineering.
EWTN, Wolf in sheep’s clothing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnKB9NzgD4k
“I do not know a single seminarian who counts Pope Francis as a positive influence on his decision to pursue the Priesthood.”
What more need be said?
One thing only is necessary to keep always in mind:
“By their fruits you shall know them.” No papal-inspired vocations?
Confusion? Ambiguity? Yes, deadly fruits.
I should have added: pray pray pray for Pope Francis! And, remember to be
very careful in wishing for an end to his papacy. The College of Cardinals has been reconfigured very carefully in his own image.