Vatican City, Jan 22, 2017 / 08:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a new interview published Saturday, Pope Francis said he will wait to see what U.S. President Donald J. Trump does before making any judgments, emphasizing God’s own patience with him and his faults.
In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais Jan. 20, the same day as the U.S. presidential inauguration, Pope Francis said he doesn’t like to get ahead of himself “or judge people prematurely.”
“We will see how he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion. But being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting calamities or windfalls that will not be either,” he said.
“We will see. We will see what he does and will judge.” The world is so upside down, that it needs a fixed point, grounded firmly in reality: “what did you do, what did you decide, how do you move. That is what I prefer to wait and see.”
Asked if he wasn’t worried about things he had heard about Trump, Francis responded again that he is waiting. “God waited so long for me, with all my sins…” he said.
In the wide-ranging interview, the Pope was questioned about issues ranging from immigration to economics to Vatican diplomacy to the Gospel, among other things.
On the issue of immigration Francis was clear about his position, that “everyone does what they can or what they want. It is a very hard judgment.”
The most important thing is that those in dire need are helped and rescued, he said. After that we should welcome migrants and refugees and help them to integrate into their new country.
In the context of 1930s Germany, where the people were “in crisis” and looking for a charismatic leader, someone who could give them a clear identity, “we all know what happened,” he said. But what is important is that people did not talk to one another, there was no conversation.
“Yes,” borders can be controlled, he said. Countries have a right to control “who comes and who goes, and those countries at risk – from terrorism or such things – have even more the right to control them more, but no country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk with their neighbors.”
Asked about Vatican diplomacy and its image, including the public thanks of Barack Obama and Raúl Castro on the one hand, and the parties that criticize the Vatican’s interference, on the other, the Pope said that he asks the Lord “that he give me the grace of not taking any measure for the sake of image.”
“Honesty, service, those are the criteria.” Mistakes are sometimes made, your image suffers, “but it doesn’t matter if there was goodwill. History will judge afterwards,” he said.
For him, he said, the clear, guiding principle for both pastoral action and Vatican diplomacy is that they are “mediators, rather than intermediaries.”
“We build bridges, not walls. What is the difference between a mediator and an intermediary?” he said. An intermediary is someone who enters a business agreement, renders a service and then is compensated, “and rightly so, because it is his job.”
The mediator, on the other hand, “is the one who wants to serve both parties and wants both parties to win even if he loses,” the Pope said. “Vatican diplomacy must be a mediator, not an intermediary. If, throughout history, it has sometimes maneuvered or managed a meeting that filled its pockets, that was a very serious sin.”
“The mediator builds bridges that are not for him, but rather for others to cross.”
Asked if his changes to the Vatican, sometimes criticized both by the more traditional sectors of the church and by the more progressive, are a “revolution of normalcy,” or already contained in the “Gospel’s essence,” as he has said, Pope Francis responded simply that he is a “sinner and not always successful.”
“I try – I don’t know if I succeed – to do what the Gospel says. That is what I try,” he said.
“The true heroes of the Church are the saints. That is, those men and women that devoted their lives to make the Gospel a reality,” he said. “The saints are the specific examples of the Gospel in daily life!”
With the emphasis on going out to the peripheries, how would Francis respond to those Catholics that feel that he ignores the people who have remained faithful to the Church and her teachings, was also questioned.
“I know that those who feel comfortable within a Church structure that doesn’t ask too much of them or who have attitudes that protect them from too much contact are going to feel uneasy with any change, with any proposal coming from the Gospel,” he said.
“The novelty of the Gospel however astonishes because it is essentially scandalous,” he continued. “Saint Paul tells us about the scandal of the cross, the scandal of the Son of God become man. But the evangelical essence is scandalous by those days’ criteria. By any worldly criteria, it is an outrageous essence.”
Once questioned by a German journalist about why he never talks about the middle class, “those who pay their taxes…” Francis said he thinks that maybe he is always talking about the middle class, just without calling it that.
“I use a term coined by the French novelist Malègue, who talks about ‘the middle class of sanctity,’” he said.
“I am always talking about parents, grandparents, nurses, the people who live to serve others, who raise their kids, who work… Those people are tremendously saintly!” he said.
“And they are also the ones who carry the Church onward: the ones that earn their living with dignity, that raise their children, that bury their dead, that care for their elders, instead of putting them into an old people’s home: that is our saintly middle class.”
From an economic point of view, the middle class is vanishing more and more, he said. But “the father, the mother, who celebrate their family, with their sins and their virtues, the grandfather, the grandmother,” he continued. “The family. At the center. That is ‘the middle class of sanctity.’”
A final comment reflected that Francis seems to be a very happy Pope. “The Lord is good and hasn’t taken away my good humor,” he said.
[…]
A Pope, resistant to doctrine and the Ordinary Magisterium relative to centuries of Church Tradition, continues to turn the minor experience of a ‘synod’ into the universal importance of a Council under the guise of ‘listening to the people’ and continuing to be indifferent to Revelation and forgetting what it means to bring Souls back to Christ.
Two years instead of one, a great idea! As things now stand, synodality is all over the map in every sense of the word. Time now for a reality check by the one, hole, catholic and apostolic Church…
Yes, extended to two sessions there’s even the opportunity for Batzing to be replaced, and for a smooth replacement of the echo-chamber voices, Grech and Hollerich. And, even for a successor pope (?) to restore all of the Successors of the Apostles as something more than flip-chart “facilitators” for a congeries of interests of one color or another, or of all colors in the rainbow.
Butt, one problem is that the gangrenous German “synodal way” is also likely on a 2024 timeline. With its agenda to mainstream the homosexual lifestyle, masturbation (be inclusive!), bigamy, and priestesses. So, the fly in the ointment (double entendre intended) is the danger of some kind of plebiscite mega-surprise attached in the second year 2024—just as undefined “synodality” itself was annexed in 2018 to the very unrelated “Synod on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment.” Pin the tail on the donkey!
Still, 2024 is a good opportunity in the United States to leaven synodal listening with the 2024 National Eucharistic Conference in Indianapolis. And, of course the year 2023 must be avoided, since that will be the 30th Anniversary of Veritatis Splendor—a modernday “prisoner of the Vatican.”
Great. Another year of confusion, navel-gazing and catering to the zeitgeist.
Or maybe more time to expose the rot so we can excise it.
One can only hope. And pray.
First the synod general secretariat said that the whole-church Synod is the fruit of VATICAN II and now the Holy Father takes it further and says that it is “constitutive dimension of the Church” whereby it will help Christians “proclaim the joy of the Gospel”.
I suspect and I suggest that there is some other cause -misgiving- for the extension but a need to make it known in haste determined a badly crafted explanation.
The thing that constitutes the Church is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
“Synod” being “mentioned throughout the Council documents” refers to subsidiary activity in particular Churches.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/10/10/vaticans-synod-on-synodality-organizers-say-synod-is-fruit-of-second-vatican-council/
‘ “To know the reality of Asia, which is a vast continent starting from Kazakhstan in the far west end to Japan in the far east end, we have to immerse ourselves into the completely diverse stories of each of the 22 countries present,” Kikuchi said.
“We immediately realized that as Asia is a continent of complex realities with different cultures, it is not easy task to make one unified policy for pastoral response. Because of this realization, we understood the meaning of the last phrase of the Theme of the General Conference which is: And they went a different way,” the archbishop said. ‘
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-asia/2022/10/asian-bishops-considers-future-paths-for-church-on-continent-of-complex-realities
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-asia/2022/10/pope-urges-asian-bishops-to-count-on-laypeople-celebrate-diversity
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-oceania/2022/10/fiji-archbishop-warns-against-new-colonial-forces-in-pacific-nation
Many of the buffoons who write for that journal (which often appears as much of a journal of Catholic anti-Catholic bigotry as the bad NCR) never tire of contriving the immutable truth it is the Church’s mission to witness as an act of imperialism which requires heavy doses of moral relativism to counteract, oblivious to how this affects the destruction of life and souls. “Complex” has become the new bludgeon word for denying the reality of God’s gift of truth.
May the Father of Lights prolong and extend their discernment…indefinitely.
My sentiments exactly. Make the Synod a permanent fixture in the Church rather than torturing us with death by a thousand paper cuts.
“The Synod on Destroying Catholicism” is taking longer than originally thought.
If the China Provisional Agreement is renewed later this month on its “anniversary” October 22 and gets another 2-year period, it then coincides with the extended timeline of the “Synod”.
The FIDES article is worth reading in full I think.
‘ In the dominant representations of the relations between China and the Vatican, the factors that pushed the Holy See to follow the path it has taken, and the criteria that have guided it in its choices on questions so vital to the sensus Ecclesiae of Chinese Catholics, are generally suppressed and hidden. ‘
http://www.fides.org/en/news/72835-VATICAN_The_China_Holy_See_Agreement_and_the_treasure_of_faith
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/10/22/201022a.html
Yes, let’s twiddle our thumbs while Rome burns.
I am so done with this S on S.
I’m with Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, “VIII by a thousand cuts” (words to that effect), Oct. 17.
In the photo are 6 people that I wouldn’t entrust to be alone talking to my children, or anyone I cared about.
They oppose the apostolic faith, for instance, they oppose the Church’s moral teaching against sodomy, as stated by Eminence Hollerich, SJ.
They should be shunned, as St. Paul says about disbelievers “inside the Church.”
It’s worth noting that a full half of the Synodality leadership as shown in the photo (3 out of 6) are Jesuits. They’re not doing a very good job of hiding their takeover of the Church, are they?
Wang Libin supplies good information and, I think, analysis, in his article here at THE DIPLOMAT May 7 2022, “China-Vatican Relations in the Xi Era”; however he hasn’t disentangled the problems:
‘ The practical need to gain control, if only nominally, of China’s 12 million Catholics has conflicted with the conscientious need to condemn the CCP, making Pope Francis ambivalent about whether the two sides should sign a formal agreement on the bishop arrangement this October, when the renewed deal will expire. ‘
The problem is serial, i.e., inter-connected with one consequent on the other, etc. The Holy Father identifies “formal” relations as inferior but the Provisional Agreement has fixed faithful Catholics under the legalistic handle of the CPC inside a confusion of ideas; and placed the Holy See in a conflict between not dividing the hierarchy but dividing it. It’s one thing to identify formalism as having a danger of being empty. But are you even able to handle substantial relationships that do not have formalist expression? Do you even care to do so? Mustn’t you at least try? And mustn’t you avoid over-laying your effort with other actions that tend to neutralize it or cancel it?
Why subjugate Chinese Catholics and all Chinese with them, to the ideas of the CPC? How can you do that and in the same moment proclaim that reality is greater than ideas? Which reality is being sustained?
Following Libin’s train of thought, 4 years have passed and nothing has changed.
Then can’t it also be seen that 4 years have passed and nothing has been learned?
https://thediplomat.com/2022/05/china-vatican-relations-in-the-xi-era/
Maybe enough discernment has occurred to discern that the Holy Spirit is busy discerning and is still very confused since Francis has discerned in his many discernments that God is a God in process, a God who discerns through history, uncertain from one age to another of what is really true or not, what is really real or not, what needs to be discerned about right and wrong. After all, the Holy Spirit should not be tempted to be involved in commiting the “sin of backwardness”. Francis must be discerning that discerning is difficult for all beings, greater and lesser.
A famous saying is “ if it ain’t broke, dont fix it”. An extra year of this confused synod is nothing more than an extended opportunity to misdirect and destroy the church. The church has been mostly skidding downhill since V2 wrought so much destruction on tradition, discipline and decimated vocations. This so-called synod is on target to make it worse. Disgusted by the vapidness of the German Bishops.
https://wherepeteris.com/the-synod-on-synodality-mission-accomplished/ – a difft take on the need for the process of listening , in the trusting hope in The Spirit that it would open hearts to hear Him , to bring needed repentance too in all areas where in the enemy voice reverberates .. the decision to extend the synod for another year – ? also as reparation for a Church that has closed its ears and heart , while giving lip service if at that to the role of the Holy Father and The Catholic Church,
? effects of same manifesting in own people as hatred for life and related addictions , lust for power and money among those in authority .. Same then spilling over as wars and vindictiveness, instead of the good will to listen to own people to hear of the help needed , in how to be ‘orthodox ‘in protecting the sacredness of life and marriage ..
Good to see EWTN doing the Rosary devotion for peace in Ukraine by participating in same from Lourdes …Immaculate Conception – a blessed truth given to The Church , to prepare the children for these times of carnal flood waters .. for a deeper awareness that each life has its origin in the Giver of Life , that the noncarnal purity of same is for us through The Mother … ? the fear of that truth as the tool used by the enemy to keep even Churches that claim oneness in Truth , yet reluctant to accept same whole heartedly ..and instead find reasons to magnify perceived errors in the patient , compassionate stand of the Holy Father in his difficult role to deal with the entrenched wounds and sensitivities …the joy and enthusiasm with which the synodal process is accepted in some places to be ? the antidote for the fears and the sclerotic stubborness in other places ..instead to be young at heart, through the young too , who ‘make a mess ‘ – such as the Bl.Carlo Acutis who loved St.Francis and The Eucharist ..The endearing dialogue that St.Luke would have had with The Mother – that they likley continue in heaven , rejoicing in already beholding in the Eternal Now in the Divine Will , how the mighty have been cast down – as given in a recent talking / teaching ‘doctoring ‘ moment by the Holy Father …may The Spirit drown out and remove all dragon flood waters to help us all to heed His whisper – as His Love for the littlest to the least ..
FIAT !
What exactly is “compassionate” from the actions of a “Holy Father” who seeks to trivialize the damage done to the victims of sin through institutionalizing the process of a permanent deconstruction of the objective moral order given to us by God to where it becomes meaningless?
Personally, I’d like to see synodality extended into 2025 as well. But why stop there? Since it’s such a brilliant, stupendous idea, let’s make it perpetual. It will, thus, renew the Church every year like clockwork, long after Pope F. has sailed off into the sunset. What a legacy it will be. Eternal sodality–at least until the Kingdom comes.
Synods will continue until consensus is reached!