I’ve been busy with a lot of other things recently and important things have happened. People have asked me to comment. I’ll ramble a little.
First, tonight I was drawn over to that fever-swamp that is the Fishwrap (aka National fill in an adjective other than “Catholic” Reporter) for an opinion piece about Charlie Kirk. What flipped the writers fin was Card. Dolan remark that Charlie was like a modern day St. Paul. The writer also slams Bp. Barron. One wonders how much of St. Paul’s writings any Fishwrap writer agrees with, but let that pass. The writer hums a little about how wrong it was that Charlie was killed – probably with an eye and a half on people being fired in various places (although I don’t think he has to worry about the Fishwrap). Then he gets out what another Fishwrap writer likes to use: venom. Samples…
Any reflection on the legacy of Kirk cannot gloss over the pain and suffering that Kirk inflicted on innumerable people through his harsh, divisive and combative rhetoric. We have published some of those perspectives in the National Catholic Reporter in recent days, but in any conversations about Kirk’s legacy, we cannot ignore his racism, sexism and xenophobia.
Gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Since Kirk was killed, I’ve reviewed quite a few of his videos. “harsh, divisive and combative rhetoric” “Harsh”? I saw no evidence of that. “Divisive”? Sure… he disagreed…. BUT… you aren’t allowed to disagree in the Rawlsian Fishtank. “Combative”? It was a debating moment with the phrase “prove me wrong” not “let’s braid each other’s hair”. “Rhetoric”? That’s a buzz word. However, rhetoric is
the art of effective or writing or speaking especially in the public square so as to move, delight and persuade your audience. He was in an outdoor place taking on all comers and moving, delighting and persuading. He also, paralyzed, irritated and hardened others, but, hey. You can’t win them all.
But you can win a lot of them, and he did.
Charlie Kirk, an autodidact who didn’t go to college, went into the public square – colleges and universities – and debated, especially young people, inviting those who disagreed with him to the front of the line. Results varied in the face-to-face moments: some youngsters with seriously scrambled minds (probably through little fault – but not all – of their own) stomped or slouched away firing a last obscenity, others had a light bulb moment. The effect on the bystanders listening to these exchanges and seeing the videos was strong. So, the secular left and progressivists in the Church became increasingly frightened by Charlie Kirk because he was both effective and he stole their spotlight.
One of the things that impressed me about Kirk’s style was his patience, often cheerful, with truly stupid questions and arguments.
Back to the Fishwrap, the writer casts doubts on Kirk’s interest in the Catholic Church. First, he says that Charlie didn’t like Francis. Wow. That’s persuasive. He pointed out that Kirk – a Protestant – as recently as 8 months ago had a problem with the papacy. Wow. There’s news. Conversions can gestate too, Fishwraper. Some sincere conversions happen pretty fast and they are no less real because of the timeline.
In any event, the Fishwrap writer was triggered by Card. Dolan’s remark and Bp. Barron’s words and probably, fundamentally, by Charlie’s success.
What about Pope Leo’s interview with Crux.
I’ll preface this: I don’t think Popes should give interviews.
Also, I am wary of imposing my preferences so that they become expectations so that they become demands so that they become ultimatums.
In what I saw, I had the impression that he was uncomfortable.
Leo mentioned that the homosexual thing, women deacons, and the “Tridentine” Mass are “hot button” issues. Leo has a finely honed political sense. A “hot button” issue is a controversial or emotionally charged topic that provokes strong, immediate reactions from people.
The topic of deaconettes is not interesting because it simply won’t happen. Leo said of it, okay we can talk about it, but: “I at the moment don’t have an intention of changing the teaching of the Church on the topic.”
First, I don’t think he thinks he can change it, and he knows it. Also, “at the moment” doesn’t mean that he is going to change his mind. Consider Greek heos. I’ll expand on that, below.
Leo addressed a couple of points which have made people run around with their hair on fire. Hot-button issues.
I would like to have heard something clearer from him about the homosexuality question. I believe it was a mistake to use the alphabet-soup label which only gives those on that side an chance to instrumentalize him.
Of course Francis was all over this, wasn’t he? And personnel was/is policy. What did Leo say? Among, other things he said,
“we have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the Church says about any given question.”
Okaaaay… if we want, we might say Leo means that we have to change attitudes to a more favorable position about homosexuality so that we can change doctrine. But that’s not what he said. It is also possible that, in speaking off the cuff and also being a little uncomfortable, he meant we have to change attitudes which reflect, for example, the rampant mania about sex today which causes so much harm.
People want the church doctrine to change, want attitudes to change. I think we have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the Church says about any given question. I find it highly unlikely, certainly in the near future, that the church’s doctrine in terms of what the church teaches about sexuality, what the Church teaches about marriage, [will change].
Saying “in the near future” doesn’t mean that thinks it can be changed in the distant future.
English… it’s hard. Example: in Matthew 1:25 we read that Joseph “knew [Mary] not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.” For Protestants and the unsubtle, “until” means that after she had her Son, they had relations. “Until” is Greek heos used also like Matthew 13:33, Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.” The use of heos does not mean that the leaven was later taken out of the flour.
And he co-opted Francis.
A person’s identity, for some people, is all about sexual identity, and for many people in other parts of the world, that’s not a primary issue in terms of how we should deal with one another. I confess, that’s on the back of my mind, because, as we’ve seen at the synod, any issue dealing with the LGBTQ questions is highly polarizing within the Church. For now, because of what I’ve already tried to demonstrate and live out in terms of my understanding of being pope at this time in history, I’m trying not to continue to polarize or promote polarization in the church.
What I’m trying to say is what Francis said very clearly when he would say, ‘todos, todos, todos’. Everyone’s invited in, but I don’t invite a person in because they are or are not of any specific identity.
He goes on to defend true marriage. He contradicts what is going on in Germany about the dreadful Fiducia disaster.
Families need to be supported, what they call the traditional family. The family is father, mother, and children. I think that the role of the family in society, which has at times suffered in recent decades, once again has to be recognized, strengthened. I just wonder out loud if the question about polarization and how people treat one another doesn’t also come from situations where people did not grow up in the context of a family where we learn – that’s the first place you learn how to love one another, how to live with one another, how to tolerate one another, and how to form the bonds of communion. That’s the family. If we take away that basic building block it becomes very difficult to learn that in other ways.
I think Leo is going to kill off documents like Fiducia in this way. It will become a non-document. Would I prefer that he issue a letter making it null and void? Sure. That runs the risk of giving it more energy and exciting certain people to push back. And, it must be admitted, they both organize well and they probably have preternatural help to drive them, given that certain activities can grant access to the enemy of the soul.
About Leo and the Traditional Latin Mass.
I wrote elsewhere that Leo not infrequently spoke about polarization. My experience is the lion’s share of polarization is inflicted by those who are set against traditional sacred worship. That results in responses to the inflictions. The majority of people who desire the TLM want to be left in peace to live their Catholic lives in a way that is entirely legitimate. That’s not what the enemies of the TLM want. They want to force people to do something. They can’t leave them alone.
Leo said:
Obviously, between the Tridentine Mass and the Vatican II Mass, the Mass of Paul VI, I’m not sure where that’s going to go. It’s obviously very complicated.
What was said here? There is a tacit acknowledgement here that there is not a one unique expression of the Roman Rite, and that one is older and the outgrowth of a Council and that one is a recent result of… well… Paul VI perhaps even more than Vatican II. What the Council mandated and what we got are pretty different. However, perhaps more telling is the identification of an implicit conflict of the Councils.
Under Benedict, who used a juridical solution, side-stepped the theological. This need not be a conflict of Vatican II against Trent. The enemies of tradition gathered by Francis held that Trent was superseded by Vatican II. Vatican II was a new Pentecost. Every aspect of the Church’s cult, code and creed must be rethought, reinterpreted, retooled, revised in the light of Vatican II. Moreover, only a few people are really qualified to know what Vatican II really said. There are those who say that the real importance of Vatican II is not the black words on white pages, the texts, but the subtext and metatext of the Council. Jesuit lib historian John W. O’Malley in his book What Happened at Vatican II argued that – in nutshell, the real content of the Council was not the black on white of the documents but rather the marked change in tone. It’s subtext. It is in this change of tone or attitude that we find the real message of the Council, so strong that it forces reinterpretation of everything that went before. In short, justification for rupture.
I would add also the metatext of the Council, what people commented on it. A well-organized para-conciliar ideology took hold of the reporting on and interpretation of the Council while the Council was going on, even on a day to day basis. It superimposed on the concrete discussions and documents. I can’t go into the role of IDOC at length. Suffice to say that well organized progressivists/modernists issued reports and summaries on the days work in different language. Since the press was hungry for information, they exercised a huge influence over how the Council would be received in the larger world, ecclesial and secular. Participants included people like Hans Küng, Edward Schillebeeckx, Yves Congar, Bernard Häring, names associated with theology pushing renewal in liturgy, ecclesiology, ecumenism, etc. IDOC leaked drafts of sensitive documents from commissions. IDOC continued after the Council. It is probably that an IDOC functionary leaked the documents from the papal commission on birth control to the Fishwrap.
Back to it.
NB: In two paragraphs, as divided in print, Leo used the word “polarization” three times. In the first part of the interview, he used “polarization” 5 times. In the rest of the parts as well.
Polarization is a key concern for him. It seems to me that he thinks if he moves quickly or moves strongly in one “direction” or another, he will contributed to the polarization. I think this also recognizes that Francis massively polarized the Church in many spheres. He has a huge mess… bunch of messes…. to clean up. How do you do that?
Leo said:
Again, we’ve become polarized, so that instead of being able to say, well, if we celebrate the Vatican II liturgy in a proper way, do you really find that much difference between this experience and that experience?
This could be a signal that he wants to have the Novus Ordo celebrated in keeping with the Church’s liturgical tradition and with abuses of creativity of whims. Isn’t that what Summorum Pontificum attempted? Apart from the issue of “mutual enrichment”, for DECADES I’ve been saying, put them side-by-side, Novus Ordo celebrated well next to the Vetus Ordo. Let people decide. Why should one be afraid of that.
A point:
I do know that part of that issue, unfortunately, has become – again, part of a process of polarization – people have used the liturgy as an excuse for advancing other topics. It’s become a political tool, and that’s very unfortunate.
I think this is perhaps an issue for some people in France. But it isn’t everywhere and for everyone.
Going on, Leo, in contrast to Francis, said, and I commented on this elsewhere (my emphases):
I have not had the chance to really sit down with a group of people who are advocating for the Tridentine rite. There’s an opportunity coming up soon, and I’m sure there will be occasions for that. But that is an issue that I think also, maybe with synodality, we have to sit down and talk about. It’s become the kind of issue that’s so polarized that people aren’t willing to listen to one another, oftentimes. I’ve heard bishops talk to me, they’ve talked to me about that, where they say, ‘we invited them to this and that and they just won’t even hear it’. They don’t even want to talk about it. That’s a problem in itself. It means we’re into ideology now, we’re no longer into the experience of church communion. That’s one of the issues on the agenda.
First, he says he hasn’t talked with people who want the TLM, but there will be not one opportunity, but “occasions”. Plural.
Second, “synodality”. I suspect that that “walking together” word doesn’t mean what it did for Francis. Were there to be a significant (not insultingly token) and prudent representation of people who desire to have the TLM, then we shall see. I suspect we will have to wait.
Third, “so polarized that people aren’t willing to listen to one another, oftentimes”. Which side was more unwilling to listen? Now we will see if Leo is willing to listen. The only bit of evidence we have at the moment is that he has restored that the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage have a Pontifical Mass in St. Peter’s.
Fourth, “bishops …say, ‘we invited them to this and that and they just won’t even hear it’. They don’t even want to talk about it.” Elsewhere, I wonder if these bishops were willing to accept invitations from the TLM communities.
Fifth, “It means we’re into ideology now, we’re no longer into the experience of church communion. That’s one of the issues on the agenda.” That means that he has this as an action item. It is “on the agenda”.
Bottom line, I don’t think we should make Leo say something that he didn’t say. I’ll try to avoid that, too.
Lastly, eventually, simply talking and talking and talking, especially about important moral issues, the hot button issues must be dealt with with crystal clarity. Dialogue and “walking together” which only goes in a circle must resolve.
In the Inferno, Dante with Virgil pass the gate that says “Abandon all hope you who enter here” and, before they even reach the Charon and the banks of the river leading to true Hell, they behold the vestibule of Hell, a plain filled with the a vast multitude of the tepid and indecisive, pointlessly chasing in a circle a whirling banner with no emblem.
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“I think this is perhaps an issue for some people in France”
I have experienced this a few times, but OTOH Summorum Pontificum has had some long-term beneficial results ; and the more radical French “traddies” have been increasingly concerned with their own internal squabbles ; and furthermore, the Novus Ordo Masses in France have become significantly more reverent and Latinate over the past 25 years or so.
Gone are the days of the extremely radical pseudo-trads who would firebomb a cinema or put up their skinhead neo-nazi literature stalls every Sunday during the SSPX Mass at Saint-Nicholas-du-Chardonnay.
Unity as such is still a long way away, but the French mainstream Catholics, whether they prefer the TLM or the NO, now engage in a genuine and respectful dialogue that the actual radicals had been completely wrecking to the benefit of absolutely nobody.
I have grown tired of the justification of the NO. We have one Mass where we receive the Sanctifying Grace necessary for Salvation.
We can have an all beef hot dog or a Tofu Pup.
We can have an all beef cheeseburger or a veggie burger with soy cheese.
My Wife has a mink coat she inherited from her Mother. It is older than our grown children. A faux fir coat would never last that long.
Why oh why do they continue to justify a Faux mass?
Has it filled the Churches? No. Has it increased Vocations? No. Can anyone tell me what the good fruits of the NO are?
[I was brought into the Church through the Novus Ordo. Are my conversion and priesthood bad?]
One benefit of having an American Pope is that we can interpret him by his language in our native tongue and mannerisms (pace to your readers in other countries). With that, Leo reminds me of a priest I know who is an incredible rhetorician. Never condemning, but always parsing things in the Church; soberly looking at the present situation as something to be solved, but with patience and grace.
Like you, I’d prefer him to just come in swinging, but I think men like him recognize the damage that it might cause, and would rather bring the flock together up the Mountain of the Lord.
It’s like a merry-go-round, but without the “merry” part.
I’ve never liked amusement park rides.
A man’s beliefs can be judged by what he does. Saying the opposite of what one does, to be kind, is obfuscation. Just look two of Leo’s recent appointments.
-Cristiana Perrella as Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome
– Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro- Pontifical Academy for Life.
Pope Leo isn’t going to be a Trump and with his pen declare any problematic, Francis-inspired publication to be null & void. I think he’s quieter and more subtle. I suspect he’ll emphasize the good aspects of something in hopes of letting the bad wither away from neglect.
Re: the kerfuffle about Leo’s interview. The wording of the controversial bit was unfortunate, but the overall context is, IMO, positive and sane. He sees himself as someone who is here to confirm others in the faith. He does speak of the faith as something he is not entitled to mess around to his whim. He emphasizes that family must be protected and promoted, and is very clear about what he means by family. He says that people must be welcome one on one, as sinners and children of God that they are, and not as “collectives” or groups; that sex and everything surrounding it must be de-emphasized because it’s not as central as some people want it to be. All his preaching goes again and again to the idea of recentering everything in Christ. In that context the changing of attitudes seems to me to be basically “seek the Kingdom of God and its justice and everything else will come as a plus”; if Jesus, God’s word and Truth is at the center, then everything else will fall into place.
I do think we need to look back: with Francis, context gave at best plausible deniability. That’s not what I see here. Here context illuminates and clarifies.
To my mind, Leo is reminiscent of “The Smiler with the Knyf under the Cloke” – Geoffrey Chaucer – “The Knight’s Tale”
[I hope you are not saying what I think you are saying.]
Thank you, Father. Your exegesis of the interview surely appears sound and it provides me consolation. That said, I’m afraid that after the last dozen years I remain skeptical, very, very pope-shy. God willing your analysis will be proven largely accurate.
[Yeah… I’m more than a little Pope-shy too. It is like having PTSD.]
This is square peg, round hole logic. You’re going to great lengths, even brandishing Greek, [God forbid I should do that.] to disprove what is glaringly obvious to anyone. [It is glaring that it is neither “glaring” nor universally agreed upon.] That is, anyone who approaches Leo’s statements objectively and with consideration to past events. [By not leaping to rash conclusions, that’s what I have done.]
Leo met with Jimmy Martin. [Paul VI met with Idi Amin Dada. What’s your point?] He met with the scandalous nun as well. [Luke 5:31-32] Did we see videos of him yelling at these two people to repent and amend their lives? [So you want to watch him yell at people. That would reassure you.] No. Martin was ecstatic about the results of his papal meeting. [Martin is like Geryon.]
Did you happen to see what the homosexual delegation did at the Vatican? [It wasn’t Leo’s “delegation”.]
Have you been keeping track of the type of people Leo has appointed to positions of power in the church? [Yup. He has temporarily reconfirmed some, done nothing about others. I admit I seriously disliked one of them… to a position that means almost nothing.]
Provost’s response should have been a firm affirmation of the teachings of Catholicism. He didn’t do that. Instead we got wishy-washy, mind numbing drivel that says nothing conclusively.
The way to understand his meaning is not to drill down to the ancient derivation of a word. Do the opposite. Use a broad vision of his past actions to understand what he means by his statements. [I am a close friend of one of his oldest friends in the OSA and I’ve met him when I did my studies at the Augustinianism. Enough said.]
English is……easy. Fidelity is hard.
[And so, apparently, is decorum in a house that is not your own.]
We can always count on you to help put the fires out, Father. God reward you.
“Martin is like Geryon”
A giant with three heads and wings, herding world-renowned red cows, would be so much more cool than an old Jesuit in casual clothes desperately trying to get attention for himself.
They say that Patience is a Virtue.
And my Dad used to say that I have the patience of Job.
All in due time… in due time.
Prayer, Penance, Fasting, Alms, the Sacraments…patience.
Excellent question Father Z.
That is out of my league. I could ask why are so many NO Priests bad.
I thank God for Priests like you and others who came to the Church in the NO and through God’s grace came to the Truth.
The NO has made many Catholics become Traditionalist. It also in my experience it has caused many many to leave.
Cavalier: Yes, but not quite. I have in mind Dante’s Geryon, who is not like that earlier one. In the Inferno, Dante and Virgil reach the cliff between the 7th and 8th circles of Hell. There is no way down. At Virgil’s summons out of the shadowy depth comes Geryon, the Monster of Fraud, a beast with the paws of a bear or lion, the body of a wyvern, and a scorpion’s poisonous sting at the tip of his tail, but with the face of an “honest man”. Being tripartite, G. is a mockery of the Trinity. Having a trustworthy face gives lie to the poisonous tail which he uses on the souls who call him. To Dante’s horror Virgil requests a ride on the creature’s back. They board him. To emphasize the fraud, Geryon slowly glides in descending circles around the waterfall of the river Phlegethon down to the great depths to the Circle of Fraud. He lands so that they are almost dashed on a cliff and then, contrary to the glide down, he shoots away like an arrow.
My experience is the lion’s share of polarization is inflicted by those who are set against traditional sacred worship. That results in responses to the inflictions.
Yes, absolutely. We have had 50+ years of “friendly fire” from within the Church herself against people who just want the mass that fed them and their forefathers, and are near-starving at the NO. They have PTSD, and pretending that it’s something like “mistakes on both sides, let’s start fresh” is kind of missing the point.
so polarized that people aren’t willing to listen to one another, oftentimes”. Which side was more unwilling to listen?
Right: in my experience, (and this includes the wooden silence from several popes), the establishment Church has been completely unwilling to dialogue on this point: “Does the Novus Ordo mass conform to the guidelines set forth by VII?” Paul VI didn’t want to engage, JPII side-stepped it with Ecclesia Dei, and Francis completely rejected even the possibility of discussing it, even going so far as trying to declare that the Novus Orde mass is “infallible” or something like that. Benedict bent far enough to admit that the NO mass has significant room for reform, but he too tried to sidestep a DEBATE on where it failed VII and where it is failing now, and instead (with Summorum Pontificum) attempted (in my opinion) to kick the can down the road by ensuring that praxis will allow the TLM to affect the NO, and (maybe?) in some less fractious time a future pope could undertake formal changes to the NO to make it right, or at least better. But he didn’t consider that any pope after him could flat out contradict SP and defeat its agenda.
“bishops …say, ‘we invited them to this and that and they just won’t even hear it’. They don’t even want to talk about it.”
Which bishops? The ones who first imposed tortuous constraints on TLM, then wanted to talk about still more constraints? See above about PTSD, or spiritual abuse: nobody wants to be put in a room with their abuser and be told “you need to try to see it from the abuser’s viewpoint, just as he needs to try to understand yours.”
The people who are “open to different ways of being Church” should practice what they preach: some people want to “be Church” in a certain way, and they don’t like that, so they are suppressing it. How is that open?
What would happen if the pope made the TLM bishops and priests and faithful into a separate eparchy, with their own eparch, with a perpetual right to the old missal for all the sacraments and sacramentals? This would satisfy SSPX, because they would get new bishops with an ongoing guarantee of that persisting, and insulate FSSP and ICKSP from bishops who want to force them into everlastingly smaller boxes. Maybe it would make a lot of current leftists unhappy, but once the TLM crowd are off at their own liturgies at their own churches, the ongoing conflict would have no reason to persist.
At some point, those of us with kids have to actually raise our kids. I’m not sure how much longer we’re supposed to sit around and wait while our bishop cancels Masses, denies Baptism and Confirmation and Matrimony in the Traditional Form, and continues to force people to go to Mass in a school gymnasium rather than their parish church building. And the poor folks in Detroit and Charlotte – there’s an awful lot of very real and utterly unnecessary suffering going on while word parsing and “well we’ll see” going on.
While I’m happy to read an alternative opinion on Pope Leo’s remarks, the “polarizing,” and “political,” and “problem” language still sticks in my craw. The “they won’t listen to their bishop” bit, too, especially after it was revealed that the entire report on the Survey was, as we all suspected, fabricated is a little hard to take.
I just want to go to the TLM at the parish I intentionally moved to be closer to so that I could raise my children there. It doesn’t seem like asking for Heaven and Earth to just let us little people get on with our lives and try to grow in holiness.
But I know that my bishop won’t lift a finger to do a thing to reverse any of the truly stupid restrictions he’s placed on us unless Pope Leo tells him to. All this carefulness not to tarnish the legacy of Pope Francis really does make it seem like the Church considers him the Super Pope. We certainly don’t care even half as much about the legacy of any other popes, including even Pope Benedict.
It drives me nuts. Wait and see and more waiting and more seeing and even more waiting and even more seeing seems like the order of the day. But if the SSPX opened a chapel in my area I’d start going there tomorrow, without hesitation. And I’ve never even set foot in an SSPX chapel before.
I haven’t the faintest idea why you can’t see what is right before your eyes. This is a replay of the last 13 disastrous years.
Leo isn’t meeting with Sister Carem and James Martin to admonish them to forsake their heresies. They’re both making pitches to change church doctrine on homosexuality. Are you familiar with Sister Carem’s stances? And did you see the report Martin made on twitter of his meeting with Leo? Dude is absolutely beaming with joy.
And yeah, I’d love to see Leo rip Martin a new one on video. He’s leading souls to hell.
I’m a wretched sinner, like the rest of us. But I have a good spidey-sense of what is right and what is wrong. Chalk it up to good formation in my early years by my parents and the apologists that began publishing in the late 80’s like Madrid, Hahn and Karl Keating. Match that up with Fatima and Garabandal apparitions (the latter not yet approved, but seems to me to be authentic) and the picture is clear.
I dislike the use of the word “polarization” to mean “alienation.”
Polarization can and should be a beneficial and productive thing, and a sign of energy and life.
Polarization implies the the interaction and interplay between a diverse and complex array of different components of the same, unified thing. Just think of the wonderful effects of magnetism, which only occur when the the magnet is polarized. Think of the the earth itself, whose magnetic poles allow the sailor to fine his way at sea, with only a compass to guide his barque.
And who doesn’t appreciate the tempering effect of polarized sunglasses when the glare from bright sunlight makes it hard to see the road?
No. The problem is not that people are merely “polarized,” like the north and south ends of a powerful magnet. Magnets actually attract other magnets, and electical charges are drawn to the opposite charge.
The real problem is alienation, where people want nothing to do with the “other.” They do not want to interact, but rather to isolate and destroy those who differ.
Dear Father Z,
Our Holy Father is worried about polarization, but that is perhaps exactly wht this is all about. I am put in mind of Matt. 10, especially:
34 Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword.
35 For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
You posted a photo and excerpt of St. John Paul speaking in 1976 about the final trial:
“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think that the wide circle of the American Society, or the whole wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the Antichrist. The confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously.”
Wheat from the chaff…Sheep from the goats. It seems this all about polarization.
In Matthew 10, isn’t Jesus speaking about polarization, about choosing, about speaking the Truth boldly and speaking without concern for worldly considerations?
He does not seem worried about polarization. Exactly the opposite.
It is clear that a course correction is underway. It is not as sharp a course correction as I would like, but I will take it. It will provide more breathing space for the TLM wing of the Church. Pope Leo has said as much. That is what is most essential.
You are so right about people having their hair on fire. Mine was too, because Pope Leo’s talk of changing attitudes before doctrine made me wonder. If he only meant attitudes about Western over-fixation on sexuality, then what doctrines would change, if that attitude (presumably) got healthier?
Also I wonder if the 9/10ths of Catholics who walk away might not have a better chance of saving their souls, through sheer grace and ignorance, than those of us who monitor bishops and gnash our teeth all our lives.
So now to say that homosexuality and trans-sexuality is wrong, sinful, psychologically disordered is harsh, hateful, and divisive, such comments would get you fired, now they are justification for murder?
Kirk’s apostolate of debating those with whom he disagreed is what the Church needs to do with itself and its members, including most especially the bishops and cardinals. Since when has a bishop offered to answer and debate questions from the faithful? They only want to talk with non-Catholics and especially with those with whom they have agreements. Can you imagine Cardinal Cupich sitting in a chair under a tent and actually listening and treating the questioner with respect and patience?? There is so much alienation in our society which also is in the Church. A great number of those under 30 grew up in daycare. So many divorced families. How do children learn to love and to tolerate without mom and dad showing them how it is done? A relative worked in a daycare with the 8-15 month olds. She reported that there was always a biter in every group who would haul and simply bite a fellow toddler. It could not be prevented except by my sharp-eyed relative sticking a popsicle in the mouth of the toddler about to chomp on the other one. We need to imitate Kirk’s willingness to talk and plant seeds of truth with those with whom we disagree, especially in the household of faith. As a convert I still find Catholics to be uninterested in talking to anyone and also uninterested in truth.There was a program in the diocese, called Alpha. It was criticized for its lack of catechetical material and doctrine for newcomers interested in the Church. Catholics were also invited to attend. I had to laugh when I found out that its purpose was to teach Catholics how to carry on a conversation with others, especially non-Catholics!! Northern Catholics need to go live in the South for a little while to learn how to talk with strangers politely and in a friendly manner. Otherwise, northern Catholics are up a creek. Many are offended if they hear truth and refuse to talk. They cut you off, even socalled friends do, just like Charlie Kirk was cut off to prevent unpleasant truths being spoken.
.. and in other news, in my native country of Italy in the diocese of Bergamo, a priest blessed/witnessed & celebrated a wedding mass for 2 men.. as of this writing, no actions, he is still a priest in good standing!
I am so sick of words from the hierarchy, action is demanded!!
God help us
Tony O.
That sounds great to me. If we have a Traditional Mass and a NO Mass, why not do the same with Priest and Bishops. Other than the fact that some heads would explode…. And the Traditional would have more money.