Rome Newsroom, Aug 4, 2023 / 12:15 pm (CNA).
In a newly published interview, Pope Francis described the ongoing Synod on Synodality as fulfilling “the dream of Paul VI” and underscored that the process is about recovering a lost form of ecclesial participation, not changing doctrine.
The Holy Father also confirmed rumors that Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Vatican’s special envoy for peace in Ukraine, will soon be visiting China. The pope described Zuppi’s “scheduled stopover” in Beijing as part of the Vatican’s “peace offensive,” which has already included visits to Kyiv, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. The pope said he is considering appointing a permanent representative to serve as a bridge between Russia and Ukraine.
Pope Francis also shared his concerns over what he called “ideological” youth groups and “rigid” priests and seminarians.
“We need normal seminarians, with their problems, who play soccer, who don’t go to the neighborhoods to dogmatize,” said the pope in the wide-ranging interview published by Vida Nueva, a Catholic newspaper based in Spain.
The published interview was the product of a multi-hour discussion between the pope and Nueva Vida staff that was held at Domus Santa Maria, the pope’s Vatican residence. Pope Francis has made it a hallmark of his papacy to give similar wide-ranging interviews to select publications, often making some of his most provocative statements in such contexts.
Synod concerns misplaced?
Regarding the synod, the pope said that he was beginning with what St. Paul VI started when the latter recognized at the end of Vatican II that “the Church in the West had lost the synodal dimension” and created the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops “to start working on it.”
The pope also shared an experience of speaking to a religious sister who expressed concern to him that the Synod on Synodality, which holds its first universal assembly this October in Rome, would change the Church’s doctrine.
“Tell me, dear, who put that into your head?” the pope said he responded. The synod, he said, “is about moving forward to recover the synodal dimension that the Eastern Church has and we lost.”
The pope also suggested that Synods of Bishops held before his pontificate were too tightly controlled by organizers, and he suggested that controversial topics that have emerged during his own synods, such as the issue of communion for the divorced and remarried at the 2015 Synod on the Family or the possibility of more widespread married priests at the 2019 Pan-Amazonian Synod, were “imposed on us” from the outside.
Responding to a question about a third Vatican Council, the pope said that “things are not ripe” because Vatican II had yet to be fully realized. He said that was because it has been held back by those who call themselves “depositories” of the true faith.
The pope also emphasized that the Church must dialogue with all comers, saying the power of the Gospel is for “everyone,” a mantra that has emerged as a key theme during Pope Francis’ ongoing visit to World Youth Day in Portugal.
Continued warnings about ‘rigidity’
The pope also spoke at length, in multiple responses, about the status of young clergy, seminarians, and pastoral formation for young people.
The pope told Vida Nueva that “rigidity” among young priests, who are good people who want to serve the Lord, comes from fearfulness at “a time of insecurity that we are experiencing.”
“That fear does not let them walk. We must remove this fear and help them,” said the pope, noting how more experienced pastors can “soften” young ideological clerics.
But the pope also said that rigidity is like a shell that “hides a lot of rot.” He said that in multiple dioceses, traditionalism has acted as a façade for “serious moral problems and vices, double lives,” which persist when bishops, in need of priests, accept those who have already been thrown out of other seminaries for “being immoral.”
“I don’t like rigidity because it is a bad symptom of the inner life,” Pope Francis said. The pope also warned about people “who live trapped in a theology manual, unable to get into trouble and make theology move forward.” He said that both movements of “the left and right” create corruption when they stagnate.
Regarding seminaries, the pope spoke of the need for a “humanistic formation.” He cautioned that seminaries cannot be “ideological kitchens,” as they “are to train pastors, not ideologues.”
The pope also said he is “afraid of intellectual youth groups,” without specifying any by name, only adding that groups “linked in some way to right-wing ideologies are perhaps the most dangerous.”
Pope Francis also said that outreach to the youth needs to focus on catching their attention and slowly bringing them closer to Jesus and the Gospel. Focusing exclusively on moral issues, such as chastity, “scares them all away.”
“If it is an ideological pastoral care of the left or the right or the center, that is useless, it is already sick from the beginning and it hurts the young.”
‘Imperialism’ threats
The pope also spoke about the threat of imperialism, which he says has particularly victimized the people of Latin America.
“I speak badly of any empire, whatever the trend. For this reason, I know that I am a stone in the shoe” for multiple interests, the pope said.
But the pope also addressed a form of imperialism within Europe, namely, the imposition of secular values upon countries through the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels. The pope said that when he speaks to leaders from countries resisting these efforts, he tells them, “Please, stay free,” encouraging them to maintain their own unique culture, art, and lifestyle, united with the rest of Europe, “but in diversity.”
Regarding additional papal visits, the pope said that a trip to Kosovo is being worked on, though not defined, and he reiterated that he will not visit major European nations until he finishes “with the small ones.” The pope also confirmed that a return trip to his native country Argentina is “on the program.”
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Look, when a Synod of BISHOPS is no longer BISHOPS, but is stacked with every weird and creepy left wing nonsense group, when the pope appoints only crackpots and anti Catholic goofs to go there, then it is not a Catholic Synod. This is a pope who grew up under Peronism, where the leader tells enormous lies and falsehoods, and changes his message every day. Pope Francis does the same thing. Pope Francis’s great insight is that all he has to do is IGNORE doctrine. All he has to do is develop a competing doctrine that gets enforced. Then just ignores the old doctrine. Hence his demand that Kissyboy only look at the “recent magisterium”.
Francis is a train wreck. The church will be lucky if it survives him.
“The pope also shared an experience of speaking to a religious sister who expressed concern to him that the Synod on Synodality…would change the Church’s doctrine. “Tell me, dear, who put that into your head?”
Tell me, dear, maybe a monkey put that in her head?
Or perhaps, dear, she thought as a Bride of Christ that doctrine had something to do with living God’s law?
Note that the Pope didn’t answer her concern. Why start now?
Allow me, dear, as a judgmental rigorist to point out this exchange as reeking of dismissive, mysogynistic clericalism. Oh veh!
Yes I made a similar comment on the article about the kissy cardinal. Those who claim to be anti misogyny are generally the standard bearers for it, let me tell you my dear.
“Focusing exclusively on moral issues, such as chastity, “scares them all away.”
No, it does NOT! Chastity has ALWAYS attracted young people with high ideals that are difficult to corrupt.
Since the 1960s, Communist-indoctrinated Infiltrates – like those from Argentina – have been chasing such Good Men OUT of the seminaries, to ensure the Pee-dough Sodomite Rot of the Infiltrates developed and festered and exploded into Full Blown Post-Conciliar Apostasy.
What Scares Young People Away? The lowest WYD turnout in history proves: the openly visible “Unchaste Wolves of Sankt Gallen” in Rainbow Kit trapped in a 1960s ideological Perversion who have been attacking the Youth in Vatican II purpose designed “Hands On Post-Conciliar Reconciliation Chambers” since the Freemasonic Coupe d’état of 1958.
What scares young people the most?
Jorge Mario Bergoglio!
The value of the Petrine ministry it seems to me is to be a force for unity in the Church. This Pope has done nothing but foster division in the Body of Christ. He will be judged accordingly.
Deacon Edward
You are right.
By his “fruits” ( pun intended…) we know Francis.
“…he suggested that controversial topics that have emerged during his own synods, such as the issue of communion for the divorced and remarried at the 2015 Synod on the Family or the possibility of more widespread married priests at the 2019 Pan-Amazonian Synod, were ‘imposed on us’ from the outside.”
Imposed from the outside? As in, Eve made me do it, and then as in the serpent made her do it (Genesis 3:12-13)?
After recently “walking together,” yours truly gave a stranded 22-year-old and likeable young man a ride to the home of his parents where he still lived. And, who in recent months had had not one, but two cell phones stolen, his wallet lost or stolen, and at 120 mph on the freeway (the not-so-narrow gate?), he had totaled the Lexus given to him by his father. (Now flat-bedded to a lot and asking $1,000 from any buyer.)
“I go to the wrong part of town, and hang with the wrong people,” he confided, “they’re not really my friends…”
Francis made a “mess” (something he exhorts all Catholics to do) of the Church in China and now we have to hear in one of his tiresome news conferences of how he’s sending an envoy to the Communist government in China.
I’ll stick with St. Vincent of Lerins [ on apostates and novelty ].
He’s a pretty rigorous Patristic defender of the “Faith of our Fathers”,
of Christ, and of CHRIST’S Church, Francis the humanist and merciful
notwithstanding.
Yes, to 5th-century Vincent of Lerins, and to the 19th-century St. John Henry Cardinal Newman and his identical and yet more unpacked–but not mutantly evolutionary–“The Development of Christian Doctrine;” and yes even to the Second Vatican Council (Dei Verbum, Lumen Genitum, and specifically that part of Gaudium et Spes upholding the natural law and “permanently binding” moral absolutes, as slipped into n. 79)…
Above, we read a gratuitous slap at those steadfast in upholding the gifted “deposit of faith” who are said to fancy themselves (!) as the possessive “‘depositories’ of the true faith.” Butt, now “walking together” under cover of a deformed and betrayed synodality, will we not find that the shoe is on the other foot?
The knee-jerk rejection of things chronologically past, which have been given and received, in favor of a possibly clericalist/populist and mutant new gnosis….of such a substitution, the layman G.K. Chesterton (and his “democracy of the dead”) says it best:
“Because we may possibly grow wings they cut off their legs.”
The Pope has taken a very Biblical position with his disdain for “rigidity.” He is embracing Genisis 3:1.
is this what they call “word salad?” – not sure I understand the ultimate intent
morals has/have always been a focus of the Gospel and teaching/upbringing of our youth, correct?
Of young people, we read: “Focusing exclusively on moral issues, such as chastity, ‘scares them all away.’”
Exclusively, or more accurately—to not be excluded? In any event, does this sound a bit like saying earlier that we have to rotate compromised priests to other parishes, otherwise we lose the needed numbers?
Still, a good interpretation of synodality is to see that if Catholics cannot congregate within the Church, then at our precarious moment in history, they will be left in the hands of politicians, globalist social engineers, and even Marxist malcontents.
But, if morality is non-inclusively put on hold by even the Church, then what’s the difference? Is it really enough to presuppose that all of the premised “People of God” have responded to the “universal call to holiness”? The Fundamental Option cross dressed in synodal garb?
He thinks young clerics are too “ideological rigid”?? And “The pope also said he is “afraid of intellectual youth groups,” without specifying any by name, only adding that groups “linked in some way to right-wing ideologies are perhaps the most dangerous.” AND he has issues with an emphasis on chastity???This Pope has taken the church down a unhelpful path. The damage will take decades, if not generations, to un-do. He seems oblivious to the reality that the less that is demanded of the faithful, the fewer are showing up to church at all. Aiming for the lowest bar is not attractive to many people.
The CRUX article has a link to the full interview broken down in parts.
Pope Francis reiterated his positions on his slate of issues concerning “spirituality” and other affairs.
“Rigidity” continues to be a case-closed theme and it generally reads as if his other concerns are fully informed and decided.
Not being party to them means comments are conditioned accordingly.
https://cruxnow.com/pope-in-portugal-2023-live-coverage/2023/08/in-new-interview-pope-says-hes-a-stone-in-the-shoe-for-his-critics
Like all leftists, Bergoglio decries most what he himself is:
“Rigid,” “ideological,” “dogmatic,” “imperialistic.”
Also, like all leftists, he is extravagantly un-self-aware.
I am sad that Pope Francis doesn’t seem to be leading our youth with the powerful vigor needed to shake them out of the grip of secularism and all its fake, empty promises. Chastity is not abstinence. Don’t have sex out of marriage is not a message that attracts the youth because it doesn’t provide the critical information of why that is so very important. Chastity goes further and explains that it is based on living your infinite worth that God has given you. The youth need desperately to learn their God given identity as sons and daughters of the Most High God, heirs to His glory. When you live with that truthful identity, you demand and give the respect/love/chastity from others and from yourself that God intends for you. Chris Stefanick’s book, I AM… is a great tool to discover and internalize one’s true God given identity. It changed my life and allowed me to move forward as a royal daughter of the Most High God. Praise Jesus!