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Monday, January 22, 2018

THE SECULAR PRESS' TAKE ON POPE FRANCIS' PILGRIMAGES TO CHILE AND PERU



My comments first: Pope Francis' pilgrimage to Chile was an unmitigated disaster with His Holiness making two major missteps both of which are contributing to the worldwide Church's free fall in Catholics leaving the Church usually becoming "nones." These are the sex abuse scandal, first and foremost and the trivialization of the Liturgy.

Pope Francis accused victims of calumny and performed a wedding ceremony in the most banal and illicit way which appeared to be a self-serving stunt at best and a way to deflect press attention away from Pope Francis' angry outburst towards sex abuse victims.

The trivialization of the liturgy actually preceded the pilgrimage with a 1960's type Folk Mass in St. Peter's last Sunday.

In addition, the controversies surrounding the footnote on the possibility of some adulterers having a way to "licitly" receive Holy Communion while remaining in a public, adulterous relationship, without living as "brother and sister" has opened the door to the complete collapse of Catholic Moral Theology and Doctrine on sexuality in general. The pope, in an ecumenical way, has chosen to follow the path of liberal Protestantism in this regard. And of course liberal Protestantism is on the verge of collapse too because of its liberal leanings on all things.

The Holy Father's fortunes changed in Peru and his pilgrimage ended on a more positive note. Although His Holiness' spoke about secular government's corruption, the Holy Father should also point fingers towards the corruption His Holiness is fomenting in not answering the concerns of the Dubia Cardinals in an orthodox way. This creates anger among the cardinals and the bishops in union with him.

Over a million were expected for Pope Francis' closing Mass in Chile but only 50,000 showed up in the photo above.

Peru's pilgrimage was triumphal for the most part with His Holiness' final Mass having nearly 1.3 million attending.

Here's a good secular media's wrap-up:

Droves fill pope’s final Mass in restive Latin America trip

5 comments:

Gene said...

Hey, ya'll....listen...do you hear that...it is Martin Luther and John Calvin laughing and whooping it up in the foyer...LOL!

rcg said...

Gene may have a point that Martin Luther’s three walls are still wobbly. Do the laity exhibit hypocrisy demanding sexual liberty, tolerance, and forgivness that they would not grant the clergy? Or do they instictivly see the flaw in that approach when they are asked to forgive something that injured them personally? I feel pretty confident now in my hypothesis that Pope Francis has a week personality that he hides in the Vatican Motel 6 and behind a quick temper. I don’t think this was lost on his electors and may have been their hope all along. The poor guy is as much a victim as anyone.

Anonymous said...

Gene, do not forget what John Nolan wrote recently about how important and helpful it is to have an historical perspective.

Over 2,000 years the Church was had popes who were very competent leaders, holy men and even saints. The Church has also had many popes who were just average, ruthless, European politicians more than they were religous and spiritual leaders. And we had history lecturers who told us (in 10th century or 15th century or both?) that there were popes and cardinals who were more like Chicago gangsters than anything else; as in killing opponents, taking Church money to make rich their extended families and having young mistresses and enough illegitimate children to fill an orphanage and so on.....

Was it Belloc or Chesterton who often said and wrote something like the Church must be a divine institution as no other organization could have lasted a year after being led by such scoundrels!!. ie: the sort of scoundrels who have led the Church as popes and cardinals at different times over 20 centuries!

Who knows? Perhaps the next 100 to 200 years could see the Church being led by a new pope as great as Gregory VII or Innocent III?

KPK.

Anonymous said...

One does not need to go back to the 10th or 15th century.
Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli (1806 to 1876) was the last of the "lay Cardinals".
He was a deacon. Never ordained a priest. Antonelli was Papal secretary of state for almost 3 decades, 1848 to 1876.
He was a significant player in Italian and European politics and diplomacy and for a time he was even embroiled in the diplomacy of the American civil war.
Antonelli probably was never directly involved in the killing of anyone but he clearly took Church money to make his family wealthy and fathered many children with different women.
The Church has survived much worse than the Francis papacy.

Anonymous said...

"An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight."

Hilaire Belloc, Catholic writer and historian. 1870 - 1953.

By the way, Belloc also wrote: "The grace of God is courtesy."
Is that sound theologically?
God as polite and respectful; God as all knowing, all loving and all powerful and also by His nature very generous?