Vatican City, Jun 21, 2018 / 04:29 pm (CNA).- In a June 21 conversation with journalists on the way back from a trip to Geneva, Pope Francis touched on an array of topics, including ecumenism, intercommunion, peace and just war, and refugees.
Please read below for CNA’s full transcript of the Pope’s inflight press conference:
Greg Burke:
Thank you, Your Holiness… we wait a second, here we go… perfect! Thank you in the meantime. To journey, to pray, to work together… we have walked, we have prayed also, at various times, and now we touch on work a little, even to eat after, so that it is seen that to journey together brings fruit.
Today the welcoming- we have seen, after many speeches that it is the mutual respect and it is something more, it is also friendship. However, there is still so much work to do and so many challenges and this interests us normally, the challenges… so, to you journalists… but, if you want to say something first [Holy Father]?
Pope Francis:
Thank you for your work, the day was a little heavy, at least for me… but I am content, I am content [ed. note: or ‘happy’] because the various things that we have done — that is, the prayers to begin, then the speech during lunch it was the most beautiful, then the academic meeting, and then the Mass, they are things that have made me happy… The tiring but beautiful things! Thank you so much! Now I am available to you.
Greg Burke:
Good. We begin with the Swiss. (Arnaud Bedat of L’Illustre magazine)
Bedat:
Holy Father, you have been in Geneva, but also in Switzerland. What are the images and what are the strong, important moments that had an impact on you during this day?
Pope Francis:
Repeat for me.
Bedat:
(repeated)
Pope Francis:
I believe that it is a common word: encounter. It was a day of varied encounters. The right word of the day is ‘encounter,’ and when a person encounters another and feels appreciation for the meeting, this always touches the heart, no? They were positive meetings, good even, beginning with the dialogue with the president at the beginning; it was not a speech of courtesy, as usual… [it was] a deep speech on the profound world debates and [spoken by him] with an intelligence… that I remain astonished, beginning from that.
Then the meetings that you all saw, and that which you did not see is the meeting at lunch, that was very profound [or deep] in the way it touched on many debates, mabe the debate we spent the most time on is “the youth.” Because even all of the churches are concerned, in the good sense, for the youth and the pre-synod that occurred in Rome from March 19 and then attracted enough attention, because there were youth of all [different] beliefs, even agnostics and of all the countries. Think, 315 youth there and 15,000 connected [ed note: via Facebook] that they entered and exited and this perhaps awakened a special interest.
But the word that came to me maybe the whole trip is that it was a voyage of ‘encounter.’ Maybe… I don’t know… an experience of encounter… no rudeness, nothing entirely formal. A human encounter. And this… between Protestants, Catholics and all [people] it says a lot, eh!
Greg Burke:
Thanks, Holiness. Now the German group. Roland Juchem of the German Catholic CIC Agency is here.
Roland Juchem:
Thanks, Holy Father. You speak often of concrete steps toward ecumenism. Today, for example, you again referred to that, saying “Let’s see what is possible to do concretely rather than getting discouraged for what isn’t.”
The German bishops recently have decided to take a step and so we ask ourselves why Archbishop Ladaria wrote a letter that seems like an “emergency brake.” After the meeting May 3, it was affirmed that the German bishops would have had to find a possibly unanimous solution. What will be the next steps? Will an intervention from the Vatican be necessary to clarify or will the German bishops have to find an agreement?
Pope Francis:
Well. This is not a novelty because in the Code of Canon Law, what the German bishops were talking about is foreseen: communion in special cases. And, they were looking at the problem of mixed marriages, no? If it is possible or it isn’t possible. And the Code says that the bishop of the particular Church – this word is important, “particular,” if it is of a diocese – must read that. It’s in his hands. This is in the Code. The German bishops, because they had seen that it wasn’t clear… also some priests did things who weren’t in agreement with the bishop, have wished to study this theme and have made this study that I don’t want to exaggerate, but it was a study of more than a year, and more… it’s more than a year… well done… and the study was restrictive.
What the bishops wanted is to say clearly what is in the Code. And, I read it and said: this is a restrictive document, no? It wasn’t open to everyone. It’s a well thought-out thing, with ecclesial spirit. And they wished to do it for the local Church, not the particular. The thing slid along up until there for the German [bishops’] conference. And there, there is a problem, because the Code does not foresee that. It foresees the bishop of the diocese, but not the conference, because a thing approved by an episcopal conference immediately becomes universal.
And this was the difficulty of the discussion: not so much the content, but this. And they sent the document. Then, there were two or three meetings of dialogue or of clarification and Archbishop Ladaria sent that letter, but with my permission. He didn’t do it alone! I told him: ‘Yes, it’s better to make a step ahead and say that the document isn’t yet mature and that the thing needed to be studied more.’ Then, there was another meeting and at the end they will study the thing.
I think that this will be an orientative document so that each of the diocesan bishops can manage what canon law already permits.
It wasn’t a brake … it is reading the thing so that it goes along the right path. When I made a visit to the Lutheran Church of Rome, a question of the kind was posed, and I replied according to the spirit of the Code of Canon Law. It is the spirit that they are seeking now. Maybe it wasn’t the right information in the right moment, a little bit of confusion, but this is the thing: the particular Church, the Code permits it, the local Church [episcopal conference] cannot because it would be universal.
(journalist inaudible)
But the conference can study and give orientative opinions to help the bishops to manage the particular cases. Thanks.
Greg Burke:
Now from the Spanish group there is Eva Fernandez of COPE agency and Spanish radio
Pope Francis:
They are good, these [journalists] of COPE
Eva Fernandez:
Thank you, Holy Father! We have seen that even the secretary general of the Ecumenical Council of Churches spoke of help to refugees. Just recently we have seen the incident of the Aquarius ship, also the separation of families in the United States. Do you think that some leaders instrumentalize/use the tragedy of refugees. Do they use them…?
Pope Francis:
I have spoken a lot on refugees, the criteria are those that I have said: to welcome, to accompany, to place, to integrate. This is the criteria for all refugees. Then I have said that every country should do this with the virtue of the rule of prudence, because a country should welcome as many refugees as it can and as many as it can integrate, educate, assimilate, give work to. This I would say is the straightforward/easy, serene plan for refugees. Here we are living [with] a wave of refugees that flee from wars and from hunger. The war and hunger of many countries in Africa, wars and persecution in the Middle East. Italy and Greece were very generous in welcoming [refugees], and for the Middle East, Turkey [was also], in respect to Syria, it has received many… Lebanon many… Lebanon has as many Syrians as Lebanese… and then Jordan… other countries, also Spain has received [them? some?].
There is a problem of trafficking migrants, and also there is the problem when in some cases they return, because they should return if this — I do not know/understand well the terms in agreement — if they are in the Libyan water, they should return… and there, I have seen the photographs of the detention centers controlled by the traffickers. Traffickers immediately separate the women from the men… women and babies go… God knows where! This is what the traffickers do! There is even a case that I know of where the traffickers were close to a ship that had accepted barges and… [they were saying] “give us the women and the babies and take the males.”
These traffickers and the detention centers of the traffickers eh, that have returned, they are terrible… terrible! In the detention camps of the Second World War they saw these things! And also the mutilizations in the torture of [forced?] labor and then they threw them to be in the comunes of the men. For this the leaders are concerned that they [the people] do not return and fall into the hands of these people [the traffickers]. It is a world-wide concern! I know that the leaders speak on this and they want to find an agreement, even to modify the Dublin agreement and all of this.
In Spain you have had the case of this ship that is docked in Valencia, but all of this is a mess… the problem of the wars is difficult to resolve. The problem of the persecution also of Christians in the Middle East, also in Nigeria… but the problem of hunger they can resolve, and many European leaders are thinking of an emergency plan to invest in these countries, to invest intelligently, to give work and education in these two things in the countries from which those people come… because — [I’ll say] one thing, not to offend, but it is the truth — in the collective subconscious, is a bad motto: Africa is exploited. And Africa is to be preyed on… this is in the subconscious… ‘eh, they are Africans.’ Always ‘land of slaves.’
And this should change with this plan of investment, and to increase education, because the African people have many cultural riches, many, and they have a great intelligence. The children are very intelligent and they, with a good education, can go beyond… this will be the road halfway to the goal, but in the moment leaders should make an agreement between themselves to go forward with these emergency fixes… this here in Europe! We go in America: in America there is a great migration problem.
(journalist inaudible)
In Latin America too there is an internal migration problem… in my homeland there is a migration problem from North to South and even these people leave the countryside because there is no work and the go to the big cities and where there are these megacities [or huge cities], the slums and all these things, but it is also an external migration to other countries that have work… and speaking concretely of the United States, I back that which the bishops of the country say. I side with them. Thank you.
Greg Burke:
Thanks, Holiness. Now is the English group: Deborah Castellano Lubov of the Zenit Agency.
Deborah Castellano Lubov (Zenit):
Thanks, Holiness! Holiness, in your address today to the ecumenical encounter you made reference to the enormous strength of the Gospel. We know some of the Churches, now the World Council of Churches, the so-called “pacifist Churches” who believe that a Christian cannot use violence. We remember that two years ago in the Vatican there was as conference organized. Do you think that it would be the case for the Catholic Church to unite to these so-called “Churches of peace” and set aside the doctrine of just war? Thanks.
Pope Francis:
A clarification, why do you say that there are “pacifist Churches?”
Deborah Castellano Lubov:
They are considered as pacifist because they have this way of reasoning that if a person (intuits) a violence, at that point they can no longer be considered Christians.
Pope Francis:
Thanks. I understand. Because you put your finger right in the wound, eh? I think that… today at lunch a pastor said that maybe the first human right is the right to hope and I liked that. And this has to do a bit with this and we spoke about the crisis of human rights today. I think that I have to begin from this to arrive to your question. The crisis of human rights is clearly seen. They speak a bit about human rights but so many groups or some countries take a distance, and “yes, human rights,” but there isn’t the strength, the enthusiasm, the conviction. I don’t say 70 years ago but 20 years ago. And this is grave because we have to see the causes, but what are the causes for which we have arrived to this that today human rights are relative. Also the right to peace is relative. It is a crisis of human rights. This I think that we must think it through to the end, or with certainty.
Then, Churches of peace. I think that all the Churches that have this spirit of peace must reunite and work together as we said in the speeches today, myself and the other people that spoke. And at lunch, unity for peace was spoken of. Peace is an exigency because there is risk of a war that we … some have said this: this third world war, if it is done, we know with which arms it will be done… but if there were a fourth, it would be done with sticks because humanity will be destroyed. The commitment for peace is serious, but when you think of the money that is spent on weapons… for this, the religions of peace… is the mandate of God. Peace, fraternity, human unity. All of the conflicts, don’t resolve them like Cain, resolve them with negotiations, with dialogue, with mediations… for example, we’re in a crisis of mediations. The mediation as a juridical figure (very rich) today is in pure crisis. Hope is in crisis, crisis of human rights, crisis of mediations, crisis of peace.
But then if you say that there are religions of peace, I ask myself, where are the religions of war? It’s tough to understand this. It’s tough. But, some groups, I would say in almost all of the small religious groups, I will say a bit simply fundamentalists, seek wars… Also we Catholics have some. They always seek destruction, no? And this is very important to have our eyes on it. I don’t know if I replied. Thanks.
They say that the population is asking for lunch, eh, dinner, that there is just enough time to arrive with a full stomach. It’s just to tell you… a word that I want to say clearly that today was an ecumenical day, really ecumenical! And at lunch we said a beautiful word, a beautiful thing, that I leave with you so that you think on it and reflect, you make a nice consideration of this. In the ecumenical movement we have to take from the dictionary a word: “proselytism.” Clear? You cannot have ecumenism with proselytism. You have to choose. Either you have an ecumenical spirit or you are a proselytizer.
Thanks! I would continue speaking because I like it… but now let’s make the Substitute [of the Secretariat of State] come because it is the last trip he’ll make with us, because now he’s going to change color, but not for embarrassment! We want to say goodbye to him. It’s a Sardinian cake to celebrate!
Cardinal-elect Angelo Becciu (Sardinian-born Substitute of the Holy See Secretariat of State):
Thanks! It is a double surprise of calling me and thanking me in front of you! And then there’s a Sardinian cake. Well, then, we’ll try it with pleasure! I truly thank the Holy Father for this occasion, but for everything, because he has allowed me this magnificent experience of traveling so much with him. At the beginning, he scared me saying, ‘No, I’ve made few trips.’ Do you remember? And then after one, he added another and then another and we said to ourselves, ‘good thing he said there would be few and they’ve been many.’ A magnificent experience of seeing the Holy Father spread the Word of God courageously. My service has been only this: to help him in this. Alright? Thanks to all of you and to those who have helped us! Thanks.
Pope Francis:
Buon appetito, have a good dinner and thanks so much! And pray for me, please. Thanks.
[…]
That the Pontiff finds it necessary to criticize doctrinally traditional American Catholics as ideologues who look backwards, and in doing so divest themselves of Church membership is quite startling. Plainly speaking, he judges that Catholics who hold on to Apostolic tradition ‘replace’ the faith. Are we, then, the apostates the Apostle Paul warned of? That Christ is expected to crown with glory those who repudiate what he commanded?
How is it possible to hold that Christ’s words, If you love me you will keep my commandments – is an error? Clearly there’s a contradiction. If I’m in error to teach parishioners that breaking the commandments is serious sin, that it requires repentance, then Christ who spoke those words is in error, and that he, the Pontiff, is correct.
This should shake the foundations of the world’s episcopate and oblige them to challenge what is said, that he either correct or disavow. Clergy, all of us who have faith in Christ are obliged, by their invested office, especially bishops who are ordained as defenders of the faith to correct such an outstanding error.
Amen.
Amen, Father.
But who is he to judge? Hypocrite.
Arn’t you doing the same? 😇
God bless you, Father Peter Morello; defending our faith and the truth of Christ Jesus our Lord and God.
Those d*** American backwardists.
I sort of like the sound of backwardist.
🙂
This word is an irony to amuse homosexualism camps. We have to be careful when we really don’t know what is being said and advanced or who’s involved.
And as I mentioned earlier, irony is a sin.
‘ My grandmother, who was a wise old woman, told us one day, “In life you have to progress, buy land, bricks, a house…” Clear words, they came from the experience of an immigrant. Dad was an immigrant, too. “But don’t confuse progressing,” Grandma added, “with climbing. In fact, he who climbs goes up, up, up, and instead of having a house, setting up a business, working or getting a position, when he is at the top the only thing he shows is his butt.” This is wisdom. ‘
https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/the-water-has-been-agitated/
Some changes are indeed happening and they are not occurring together nor are they transparent right away for what they contain and how they could relate.
2014
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2014/09/19/report-bishop-cupich-of-spokane-to-succeed-cardinal-george-in-chicago-updated/
2023
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/08/28/opus-dei-does-not-want-to-be-an-exception-in-the-church-prelate-says/
Pope Francis once again is saying layered wrong things.
1. Homosexual inclusion means they are not bound by the morality they way the rest are because the rest have faults too and shouldn’t be bound that way either.
2. This can be discovered by looking at your own faults and seeing that your own faults shouldn’t exclude you.
3. Therefore no-one actually is ever bound by the morality in such a way that anyone is excluded. We are all to be included via the lowest denominator morality to be devised.
4. Development necessarily means that the morality must yield. Development can not mean deepening in the moral prohibitions.
5. These approaches are never spiritual worldliness.
6. Doctrine does not assist you from collapsing into “inner refuges”; and at the same time it stands in the way of homosexuals becoming truly free.
Fact is these are not new positions. Anyone who was around in the Seventies and Eighties would immediately recognize them, i.e., how the Devil was attacking in those days too.
What you learn from faith is precisely that the rejection of faith is devastating and there is no disconnection between faith and joy except sin.
Here is the seduction – here:
‘ Francis said the effects on this backwardness on morality “are devastating.” ‘
A mess indeed. Here he goes again with his long-standing grievance with USA Backwardists do not accept the evolution of doctrine. Ideology replaces faith (um..;)
Since slavery and capital punishment were accepted in the past but are now condemned, sodomy, concubinage, etc. can sometimes be good and God’s will, if I listen to my conscience. (Ah…)
My nerves. The upcoming Synods are being run on the ideas of discredited 70’s theologians like, Curran, Häring, Küng and assorted octogenarian Latin American marxists in wheelchairs. All of this ancient hippy sociology is backwardist ideology seeking to replace the Deposit of Faith/Truth. I’ll take Christ! He is alive and has a future.
Actually, concubinage was tolerated by the Church around the time of Augustine. The Council of Toledo, held in 400, in its seventeenth canon legislates as follows for laymen: after pronouncing sentence of excommunication against any who in addition to a wife keeps a concubine, says: “But if a man has no wife, but a concubine instead of a wife, let him not be refused communion; only let him be content to be united with one woman, whether wife or concubine”
So are you advocating for fornication? Is sex with someone you’re not married to a virtue to be admired and emulated? If this Council of Toledo taught the same, the Council was in error.
There were as many as 30 or more Councils of Toledo in the early Church from the 5th through the 7th centuries, depending upon how they were counted. It sounds like the unidentified Council of Toledo you cite was an early exercise in synodal robber-council confusion and heresy. Please indicate whether its 17th canon that you cite was accepted and approved by the Roman Pontiff. Surely you are aware that “a council apart from the pope is but a lifeless trunk”.
The Council of Toledo in 400. 😂 Yes, Frank, and as any Jesuit will tell you, Toledo synods went on to approve slavery. Please read the Pope about not being such a backwardist! Fornication hasn’t been talked about since the 50’s. Replacing the Apostolic Faith with sociology is more on trend. Spanish concubinage is too Luis Rubiales.
Fear not Frank. For a more a more au courant heterodox gathering look no further than present day Germany. The German synodalers simply assume that everyone who wants Communion is already fornicating. Get with the times!
What was the definition of a concubine at that point in time?
The “theologians” you cite remind me of the dumbest aspect of their thought inspiring my three questions for Francis.
Looking “backward,” why was God so stupid and evil to the peoples of the past to deprive them of an adequate understanding of right and wrong necessary to be decent human beings? And where exactly is this magical land of forward, and what will utopia be like when we finally get there?
Oh, I forgot. He did answer these questions almost ten years ago when he expressed his agreement with the theology of Walter Kasper, and others from the 70s, who promoted process theology that describes God essentially as being as much of a nincompoop as the rest of us and in the process of “learning” how to be a good God through history like His creatures. No one seems willing to point out how atheistic it is for the emperor to so clothe himself.
More derisive and divisive remarks by Pontiff Francis toward faithful orthodox American Catholics made to assembled Jesuits. You know the Vatican is off the rails when you begin to sympathize with Daniel Ortega.
Deacon:
I love your second sentence.
Touché
What an astonishing and scandalous exhibition of ignorance that is matched and exceeded only by his arrogance. It is impossible to accept, or even imagine, that this is the way a Catholic pope speaks and thinks: the acidic contempt, the narcissistic derision, the vulgar mockery, the vile epithets. And all directed to whom? Those whom he has pushed to the margins of his counterfeit Church for the crime of professing the apostolic Catholic Faith in harmony with 2,000 years of infallible dogma and doctrine.
How ironic — and how infuriating.
Like all leftists, Bergoglio projects his tactics on his perceived opponents.
For him to accuse American ‘backwardists’ of losing the true tradition and turning to ideologies for support is nothing short of appalling.
Keep in mind that he’s saying this to an audience of Jesuiticals whose organization is responsible for the travesty of ‘liberation theology’ which has been leading Latin Americans into atheism for more than a generation.
CWR will need to stand strong. This Synod on Synodolatry is going to unleash the hounds of hell on the faithful.
Of Vincent of Lerins, we read: “In other words, doctrine also progresses, expands, and consolidates with time and becomes firmer but is always progressing.”
But, the Church did move “progress”, under the greater and coherent elucidation of some saint named John Henry Cardinal Newman, and his “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.” Not much room there for Muslim-like “abrogation” or with Thomas Kuhn’s “paradigm shifts” in the natural sciences:
In the Essay, Newman appeals, in part, to a biological analogy whereby growth (“development”) is one thing, while corruption and mutation another:
“I venture to set down seven notes of varying cogency, independence, and applicability to discriminate healthy developments of an idea from its state of corruption and decay, as follows: “There is no corruption if it retains:
(1) One and the same TYPE [doctrine/ natural law vs a disconnected degree of pastoral “accompaniment/accommodation”?],
(2) The same PRINCIPLES [sound philosophy v. neo-Hegelianism],
(3) The same ORGANIZATION [the Barque of Peter v. all religions equivalently (?) “the will of God”?];
(4) If its beginnings ANTICIPATE its subsequent phases [the moral absolutes of the Catechism/Veritatis Splendor (VS) vs normalization of homosexual activity, etc.?],
(5) Its later phenomena PROTECT and subserve its earlier [VS and Familiarus Consortio vs fluid social-science and the “arc of history”?];
(6) If it has a power of assimilation and REVIVAL [Evangelization vs Amazonia/Germania and a Synod on Synodality?], and
(7) A vigorous ACTION from first to last…” [steadfastness (!) while also engaging fully our new challenges vs double-speak in need of a spinal implant?].
Personally I stopped listening to the Pope, as in taking him seriously, some time ago.
He wants to abolish the Latin Mass, he gives a public audience to Fr. James Martin and Nancy Pelosi, and now it emerges that he thinks of us as reactionaries and – this is a new one – ‘backwardists’.
And the beat goes on.
When are we going to get a Catholic Babylon Bee??
Such a great question, Gilberta!
Comments like this are why you’re my favorite CWR poster.
Try The Eye of the Tiber
http://www.eyeofthetiber.com/
I am in Italy now and ran into a priest friend of mine who has worked for various cardinals at the Vatican. I will say nothing more about him for fear of revealing his identity. After exchanging cordialities we spoke briefly about the Pope’s recent derisive remarks about Catholics in America. This priest has had contact with Francis and commented that he has always treated him kindly and cannot explain his frequent nasty remarks. He ended by saying that Francis seems to always make trouble for himself. He said the future will not augur much change as Francis has stacked the deck with cardinals he’s appointed. We both pointed to the need to rely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
“What the pope [Francis] is doing – [is] forcing us to choose between himself and Jesus Christ.”
https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2018/04/05/more-merciful-than-jesus/
The Pope complains that Catholics such as I look backwards. Doesn’t he see how rotten the present is and the prospects for the future?
Always this trash talk against American Catholics but never a harsh word for the Germans. That tells us all we need to know.
True barometer.
Given his shallow mind, I suspect his narcissism leads Francis to think much like an American celebrity. Just say something outrageous to prove you’re a misunderstood genius instead of just plain stupid.
Some 40 years ago, during a summer school event, I came face to face with divorce for the first time.
One of the most popular boys, certainly the cutest, moderately athletic (he was short but scrappy), and very smart (was in both the accelerated reading and math class), was shattered.
Never had I seen him with that kind of look on his face. He told me and my friend his parents had divorced (we were all just going into the 7th grade).
I have despised divorce ever since.
I’ve seen the damage it does play out among adult friends and their own children.
I don’t consider myself too hard core on this issue. Abuse, alcohol, abandonment, addiction–I think there can be a reason why a couple may part ways and a Declaration of Nullity might be warranted.
But those are rare cases. Ironically, I know two cases–one alcoholism and one drug addiction–were the couple overcame the issues and are still together. The other cases of divorce around me seem to be the so-called “no fault” variety with which I have no sympathy.
So no thanks. I’ll keep my “ideology” on contraception (not warranted ever), abortion (ditto), divorce (well, Jesus said no, so I guess no) and that man can keep his “development” and “progress.”
Prayer, meditation, examination of conscience, discernment, and constructive action are known to be part and parcel of every genuine pilgrim’s toolkit.
Prayer in Christ, meditation on Christ, examination of conscience when I sinned against Christ and others, discernment regarding the will of Christ, and constructive action as the charity of Christ are known to be part and parcel of every genuine Christian pilgrim’s toolkit.
Paul in Toronto: I am not American but rather your closest neighbor and friend from up north. I am appalled that the Pope refers to the American Church as ‘backward’. He’s very adept at ‘naming and insulting’, a lower version of Trump. First, it must be said that the present Holy Father doesn’t speak any English at all, very unusual for an international leader today, to not know the ‘lingua franca’, but has plenty to say about that culture. We know he knows nothing about American life and the Church. He’s using the old anti-American slogans from the seventies, much coming from Latin America. Does “backward” mean all Americans!>? How absurd! The Pope should get on his knees and thank the great many wonderful American Catholics.. the Church would be bleak without the Americans. As it is, the Pope is following the ‘evolutionary’, relativistic approach to some sort of theology, which most Catholics want nothing to do with… he seems more drenched in the culture that he seems aware of. “Backward”, to PF, means ‘those who disagree with me”. For those who remember, PF emerged as Pope from the balcony not wearing the traditional ‘ mozetta’. That was a sign he’d become as Pope as he has: scornful of traditional and traditional people, all issues being ‘equal’, he does nothing about the rampant gay network, which is for sure, the number one animus against the faith today. No sympathy for the tens of thousands of abused men and the heartbreak of their families. I suppose ‘forward’ means just walking past them, as they /he has done. No ‘Fratelli tutti’ there. He shunned the great Dubbia Cardinals when the points they were making were extremely relevant. Worst, he has shunned Cardinal Zen…never asked for his release. No accompaniment there and lots of ‘throwing away’. Who would have believed it? I have felt opposed to most of what he does. He has had such ‘experts’ to visit him though: Bernie Sanders, Chelsea Clinton, Deepak Choprah.. but not the Dubbia Cardinals, nor the 65 theologians who wrote a magnificent request for clarification from PF: snubbed also. I am amazed that PF doesn’t see his own hypocrisy. In the meantime, I will follow the Church I love; I teach the Bible and RCIA and no Pope can remove me. But I’m Canadian, so I guess that makes me ‘backward” too. No one can take those words very seriously. Let’s move on, to love and live our faith. One thing is for sure, in one hundred years, the Church will be up and running in a new and beautiful way. It will be the same and forever the Catholic Church. No need for us to get ruffled about these ‘simple’ attacks.
Will the next Pope be called
Pope Francis II ?
There are many ideological terms being thrown around on this “thread about ideology”. Perhaps I might “look backwards” aways to get a different perspective on matters. My father once ran a construction business building houses and selling them. His stories told to me about another time were endlessly fascinating. One thing he explained was about how the law regarded workers wages and pensions. When a company went bankrupt the employees had prior claim on its assets ahead of anybody else. That includes the claims of banks, bond holders, stock holders, anybody period. They worked to support their families, educate children, pay medical bills and prepare for their old age –In other words just to live. They had priority over anyone’s money changing or speculation. Dad was no radical he had been not only a businessman But a conservative Republican which was very uncommon in the South of that day. Then many of the big companies were caught with unfunded pension liabilities during the late seventies. Then came the Reagan Revolution. Most people do not know this but the Constitution only allows limited jurisdiction to the federal courts; any extension of this jurisdiction must be granted by congress. The new Republican congress removed the jurisdiction of the federal courts to hear cases regarding worker pensions and wages due. This destroyed the pensions of an entire generation but it made big business a lot richer. The Republicans assured the prolifers that if they kept getting elected they would eventually appoint enough judges to overturn Roe vs Wade. For some reason the now liberal controlled Democratic party did not wise the people up and many millions of babies died. Then along came a very eccentric fast talking businessman who actually got elected (to his own utter surprise I think). He then kept his promise to make the necessary appointments. Biden then proclaimed he would “codify Rowe vs Wade” which meant that congress would deny the court’s jurisdiction to stop abortion. This ended the matter when he could not get enough votes. Now those of us old enough to have read old catechisms might remember about the four Sins That Cry to Heaven For Vengeance. Two of them are (1) shedding innocent blood and (2) defrauding a worker of his wages. Please note that both supposed political and moral opposites are guilty in these vast crimes. Each is guilty of a crime of commission and also omission. The Republicans for example committed a crime by in effect making pensions due not a property right and situationally pretending that they had no power to limit the court’s jurisdiction in the case of child murder. The same was the case with the Democrats. Both parties actually cooperated in deceiving the public about the power congress has over the courts.