Pope Francis meets with representatives of DIALOP, Transversal Dialogue Project, an association of European leftist politicians and academics that seeks to bridge Catholic social teaching and Marxist theory, on Jan. 10, 2024, at the Vatican. (Credit: Vatican Media)
Rome Newsroom, Jan 12, 2024 / 10:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis this week called for cooperation between Christians and Marxists as a way to achieve greater “dialogue” and help in the search for the “common good.”
“I thank you for your commitment to dialogue,” the pope said in a private meeting on Jan. 10 with 15 representatives of DIALOP (Transversal Dialogue Project), an association of European leftist politicians and academics that seeks to bridge Catholic social teaching and Marxist theory.
“There is always a great need for dialogue, so do not be afraid,” the pope said during the event at the Paul VI Audience Hall.
Highlighting the nexus between social, economic, and ecological issues, the pope said that “politics that is truly at the service of humanity cannot let itself be dictated to by finance and market mechanisms.”
The pope buttressed his call for a more inclusive participation in economic and political decision-making by suggesting that “instead of rigid approaches that divide, let us cultivate, with open hearts, discussion and listening.”
“And not exclude anyone at the political, social, or religious level, so that the contribution of each can, in its concrete distinctiveness, receive a positive reception in the processes of change to which our future is linked,” the Holy Father added.
“Don’t back off, don’t give up, and don’t stop dreaming of a better world. For it is in imagination, the ability to dream, that intelligence, intuition, experience, and historical memory come together to make us be creative, take chances, and run risks.”
Pope Francis meets with representatives of DIALOP, Transversal Dialogue Project, an association of European leftist politicians and academics that seeks to bridge Catholic social teaching and Marxist theory, on Jan. 10, 2024, at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
The pope argued that “solidarity is not only a moral virtue but also a requirement of justice, which calls for correcting the distortions and purifying the intentions of unjust systems, not least through radical changes of perspective in the sharing of challenges and resources among individuals and among peoples.”
The pope closed his speech with a reflection on the importance of the rule of law, saying: “It is only in honesty and integrity that healthy relationships can be established and that we can cooperate confidently and effectively in building a better future.”
Pope Francis has made critique of the market economy one of the defining themes of his pontificate. In his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, the pope wrote: “We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market.”
🎥 HIGHLIGHTS | Pope Francis met at the Vatican with members of the DIALOP transversal dialogue project, which brings together socialists/Marxists and Christians in order to propose a common social ethic for Europe. pic.twitter.com/V27TaxfgUf
“Growth in justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: It requires decisions, programs, mechanisms, and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment, and an integral promotion of the poor, which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality.”
Vatican News noted that the Jan. 10 audience was “not a short greeting but an interview that lasted with spontaneous questions and answers for about 40 minutes.”
DIALOP was founded in 2014 after a meeting between Pope Francis, the Vienese leftist politician Walter Baier, former Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, and Franz Kronreif of the Focolare Movement, a spiritual and social renewal founded in 1943 — and approved by the Church in 1962 — to promote universal brotherhood and to foster dialogue between different religious groups.
Both Baier and Kronreif were present at the Jan. 10 meeting. In an interview with Vatican News following the audience, Baier noted that during the speech the pope highlighted “the need for solidarity” especially “toward socially disadvantaged people.”
“He called for a dialogue that goes beyond historical patterns, a dialogue that deals primarily with the excluded and vulnerable and that respects the principles of the rule of law.”
Kronreif said to Vatican News that following the pope’s call from the meeting, the association is “preparing a two-year project that should start in the autumn on peace, on how to build peace … a project to involve especially the young generations in how to make peace grow from below, so that everyone feels called upon to create peace around themselves, to help the victims of war to realize what the roots of war may be and what are the tools to prevent it.”
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Vatican City, Dec 6, 2020 / 06:40 am (CNA).- We should ask God for the gift of conversion this Advent, Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Sunday.
Speaking from a window overlooking a rainswept St. Peter’s Square Dec. 6, the pope described … […]
Rome Newsroom, Oct 30, 2020 / 07:18 am (CNA).- An Italian woman under investigation by Vatican authorities for suspected embezzlement was released from a jail in Milan on Friday, as she awaits a decision on the Vatican’s extradition request.
Maureen McKinley milks one of her family’s goats in their backyard with help from three of her children, Madeline (behind), Fiona and Augustine on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. McKinley and her family own two goats, chickens, a rabbit, and a dog. / Jake Kelly
Denver Newsroom, Aug 10, 2021 / 16:32 pm (CNA).
With five children ages 10 and under to care for, and a pair of goats, a rabbit, chickens and a dog to tend to, Maureen and Matt McKinley rely on a structured routine to keep their busy lives on track.
Chores, nap times, scheduled story hours – they’re all important staples of their day. But the center of the McKinleys’ routine, what focuses their family life and strengthens their Catholic faith, they say, is the Traditional Latin Mass.
Its beauty, reverence, and timelessness connect them to a rich liturgical legacy that dates back centuries.
“This is the Mass that made so many saints throughout time,” observes Maureen, 36, a parishioner at Mater Misericordiæ Catholic Church in Phoenix.
“You know what Mass St. Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Therese, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Augustine were attending? The Traditional Latin Mass,” Maureen says.
“We could have a conversation about it, and we would have all experienced the exact same thing,” she says. “That’s exciting.”
Recent developments in the Catholic Church, however, have curbed some of that excitement. On July 16, Pope Francis released a motu proprio titled Traditiones custodis, or “Guardians of the Tradition”, that has cast doubt on the future of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) – and deeply upset and confused many of its devotees.
Pope Francis’ directive rescinds the freedom Pope Benedict XVI granted to priests 14 years ago to say Masses using the Roman Missal of 1962, the form of liturgy prior to Vatican II, without first seeking their bishop’s approval. Under the new rules, bishops now have the “exclusive competence” to decide where, when, and whether the TLM can be said in their dioceses.
In a letter accompanying the motu proprio, Pope Francis maintains that the faculties granted to priests by his predecessor have been “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”
Using the word “unity” a total of 15 times in the accompanying letter, the pope suggests that attending the TLM is anything but unifying, going so far as to correlate a strong personal preference for such masses with a rejection of Vatican II.
Weeks later, many admirers of the “extraordinary” form of the Roman rite – the McKinleys among them – are still struggling to wrap their minds and hearts around the pope’s order, and the pointed tone he used to deliver it.
Maureen McKinley says she had never considered herself a “traditionalist Catholic” before. Instead, she says she and her husband have just “always moved toward the most reverent way to worship and the best way to teach our children.”
“It didn’t feel like I became a particular type of Catholic by going to Mater Misericordiæ. But since the motu proprio came out, I feel like I have been categorized, like I was something different, something other than the rest of the Church,” she says.
“It feels like our Holy Father doesn’t understand this whole group of people who love our Lord so much.”
McKinley isn’t alone in feeling this way. Sadness, anger, frustration, and disbelief are some common themes in conversations among those who regularly attend the TLM.
They want to understand and support the Holy Father, but they also see the restriction as unnecessary, especially when plenty of other more pressing issues in the Church abound.
Eric Matthews, another Mater Misericordiæ parishioner, views the new restrictions as an “attack on devout Catholic culture,” citing the beauty that exists across the rites recognized within the Church. There are seven rites recognized in the Catholic Church: Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian or Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite, and Chaldean.
“It’s the same Mass,” says Matthews, 39, who first discovered the TLM about eight years ago. “It’s just different languages, different cultures, but the people that you have there are there for the right reasons.”
Eric and Geneva Matthews with their four children. / Narissa Lowicki
Different paths to the TLM
The pope’s motu proprio directly affects a tiny fraction of U.S. Catholics – perhaps as few as 150,000, or less than 1 percent of some 21 million regular Mass-goers, according to some estimates. According to one crowd-sourced database, only about 700 venues – compared to over 16,700 parishes nationwide – offer the TLM.
Also, since the motu proprio’s release July 16, only a handful of bishops have stopped the TLM in their dioceses. Of those bishops who have made public responses, most are allowing the Masses to continue as before – in some cases because they see no evidence of disunity, and in others because they need more time to study the issue.
But for those who feel drawn to the TLM – for differing reasons that have nothing to do with a rejection of Vatican II – it feels as if the ground has shifted under their feet.
Maureen McKinley wants her children to understand the importance of hard work, of which they have no shortage when it comes to their urban farm. After morning prayer, Maureen milks the family’s goats with the help of the children. Madeline (age 10) feeds the bunny; Augustine (7) exercises the dog; John (6) checks for eggs from the chickens; and Michael (4) helps anyone he chooses.
With a noisy clatter in the kitchen, the McKinleys eat breakfast, tidy up their rooms, and begin their daily activities. They break at 11 a.m. to head to daily Mass at Mater Misericordiæ, an apostolate of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), where they first attended two years ago.
Matt, 34, wanted to know how the early Christians worshipped.
“The funny thing about converts is they’re always wanting more,” says Maureen, who was, at first, a little resistant to the idea of attending the TLM because she didn’t know Latin. “Worship was a big part of his conversion.”
Maureen agreed to follow her husband’s lead, and they continued to attend the TLM. What kept them coming back week after week was the reverence for the Eucharist.
“Matt had a really hard time watching so many people receive communion in the hand at the other parish,” says Maureen. “He says he didn’t want our kids to think that that was the standard. That’s the exception to the rule, not the rule.”
Reverence in worship also drew Elizabeth Sisk to the TLM. A 28-year-old post-anesthesia care unit nurse, she attends both the Novus Ordo, the Mass promulgated by St. Paul VI in 1969, and the extraordinary form in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her parish, the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, offers the TLM on the first Sunday of the month.
Sisk has noticed recently that more people in her area — especially young people who are converts to Catholicism — are attending both forms of the Mass. While the Novus Ordo is what brought many of them, herself included, to the faith, she feels that the extraordinary form invites them to go deeper.
“We want to do something radical with our lives,” Sisk says. “To be Catholic right now as a young person is a really radical decision. I think the people who choose to be Catholic right now, we’re all in. We don’t want ‘watered-down’ Catholicism.”
Elizabeth Sisk stands in front of Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina.
With the lack of Christian values in the world today, Sisk desires “something greater,” which she says she can tell is happening in the TLM.
Many TLM parishes saw an increase in attendance during the pandemic, as they were often the only churches open while many others shut their doors or held Masses outside. This struck some as controversial, if not disobedient to the local government. For others, it was a saving grace to have access to the sacraments.
The priests at Erin Hanson’s parish obtained permission from the local bishop to celebrate Mass all day, every day, with 10 parishioners at a time during the height of the COVID pandemic.
“We were being told by the world that church is not necessary,” says Hanson, a 39-year-old mother of three. “Our priest says, ‘No, that’s a lie. Our church is essential. Our salvation is essential. The sacraments are essential.’”
Andy Stevens, 52, came into the Church through the TLM, much to the surprise of his wife, Emma, who had been a practicing Catholic for many years. Andy was “very adamantly not going to become Catholic,” but was happy to help Emma with their children at Mass. It wasn’t until they attended a TLM that Andy began to think differently about the Church.
“He believed that you die and then there is nothing, and he never really spoke to me about becoming a Catholic,” says Emma, 48, who was pregnant with their seventh child at the time.
Andy noticed an intense focus among the worshippers, which he recognized as a “real presence of God” that he didn’t see anywhere else. After the birth of their 7th child, he joined the Church.
All 12 of the Stevens’ children prefer the TLM to the Novus Ordo.
Emma and Andy Stevens with their 12 children in Oxford, England.
“It’s a Mass of the ages,” says their eldest son, Ryan, 27. “I can feel the veil between heaven and earth palpably thinner.”
A native of Chicago, Adriel Gonzalez, 33, remembers attending the TLM as a child, which he did not particularly like. It was “very long, very boring,” and the people who went to the TLM were “very stiff and they could come off as judgmental” towards his family, he says.
Gonzalez, who also attended Mass in Spanish with his family, didn’t understand the differences among rites, since Chicago was a sort of “salad bowl, ethnically,” he says, and Mass was celebrated in many languages and forms.
He took a step back from faith for some time, he says, noting that he had a “respectability issue” with the Christianity he grew up with. He watched as some of his friends were either thoughtless in the way they practiced their faith, or were “on fire,” but lacked intentionality. When he did come back to the faith, it was through learning about the Church’s intellectual tradition.
He spent time in monasteries and Eastern Catholic parishes with the Divine Liturgy because there was “something so obviously ancient about it.” He decided to stay within the Roman rite with a preference for a reverent Novus Ordo.
When he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gonzalez committed to his neighborhood parish, which had a strong contingent of people who loved tradition in general. The parish instituted a TLM in the fall of 2020, when they started having Mass indoors again after the pandemic.
Hallie and Adriel Gonzalez.
“If I’m at a Latin Mass, I’m more likely to get a sense that this is a time-honored practice, something that has been honed over the millennia,” he says. “There is clearly a love affair going on here with the Lord that requires this much more elaborate song and dance.”
For Eric Matthews, the TLM feels a little like time travel.
“It could be medieval times, it could be the enlightenment period, it could be the early 1900s, and the experience is going to be so similar,” he says.
“I just feel like that’s that universal timeframe – not just the universal Church in 2021 – but the universal Church in almost any time period. We’re the only church that can claim that.”
What happens now?
The motu proprio caught Adriel Gonzalez’ attention. He sought clarity about whether his participation in the extraordinary form was, in fact, part of a divisive movement, or simply an expression of his faith.
If it was a movement, he wanted no part of it, he says.
“As far as I can tell, the Church considers the extraordinary form and the ordinary form equal and valid,” says Gonzalez. “Ideally, there should be no true difference between going to one or the other, outside of just preference. It shouldn’t constitute a completely different reality within Catholicism.”
With this understanding, Gonzalez says he resonated with some of the reasoning set forth in the motu proprio because it articulated that the celebration of the TLM was never intended to be a movement away from the Novus Ordo or Vatican II. Gonzalez also emphasized that the extraordinary form was never supposed to be a “superior” way of celebrating the Mass.
Gonzalez believes the Lord allowed the growth in the TLM “to help us to recover a love for liturgy, and to ask questions about what worship and liturgy looks like.” He would have preferred if what was good was kept and encouraged, and what was potentially dangerous “coaxed out and called out.”
Mater Misericordæ Catholic Church in Phoenix, Arizona. / Viet Truong
Erin Hanson, of Mater Misericordiæ, agrees.
“If [Pope Francis] does believe there is division between Novus Ordo and traditional Catholics, I don’t think he did anything to try to fix that division,” she says.
Hanson would like to know who the bishops are that Pope Francis consulted in making this decision, sharing that she doesn’t feel that there is any of the transparency needed for such a major document. If there are divisions, she says, she would like the opportunity to work on them in a different way.
“This isn’t going to be any less divisive if he causes a possible schism,” Hanson says.
According to the motu proprio and the accompanying letter, the TLM is not to be celebrated in diocesan churches or in new churches constructed for the purpose of the TLM, nor should new groups be established by the bishops. Left out of their parish churches, some are worried their only option to attend Mass will be in a recreation center or hotel ballroom.
Eric Matthews hopes that everyone is able to experience the extraordinary form at least once in their life so they can know that this is not about division.
“I can’t imagine someone going to the Latin Mass and saying, ‘This is creating disunity,’” he says. “There’s nothing to be afraid of with the Latin Mass. You’re just going to be surrounding yourself with people that really take it to heart.”
Maureen McKinley was home sick when her husband Matt found out about the motu proprio. He had taken the kids to a neighborhood park, where he ran into some friends who also attend Mater Misericordiæ. They asked if he had heard the news.
“I felt disgust at a document that pretends to say so much while actually saying so little and disregards the Church’s very long and rich tradition of careful legal documents,” Matt McKinley says.
Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix stated that the TLM may continue at Mater Misericordiæ, as well as in chapels, oratories, mission churches, non-parochial churches, and at seven other parishes in the diocese. Participation in the TLM and all of the activities of the parish are so important to the McKinleys that they are willing to move to another state or city should further restrictions be implemented.
For now, their family’s routine continues the same as before.
At the end of their day, the McKinleys pray a family rosary in front of their home altar, which has a Bible at the center, and an icon of Christ and a statue of the Virgin Mary. They eat dinner together, milk the goat again, and take care of their evening animal chores. After night prayer, the kids head off to bed, blessing themselves with holy water from the fonts mounted on the wall before they enter their bedroom.
“The life of the Church springs from this Mass,” Maureen says. “That’s why we’re here—not because the Latin Mass is archaic, but that it’s actually just so alive.”
It’s time for a chat across ideological boundaries. And a chat that reaffirms LAW and yet is not burdened by HISTORY? Which law, and what history?
“…one can and must say simply that Marxism failed as an all-embracing interpretation of reality and a directive for action in history [!]. Its promise of freedom, equality and welfare for all was not verified by the empirical facts; it was shown to be false on the basis of political and economic facts. Although these assessments are correct, one would remain on a superficial level if one were to be content with them. Rather, we must take one step farther [today, synodally “walking together”?] and ask: But what is specifically false in this interpretation of the world and in the praxis [Stalinism, etc.] deduced from it? An exact observation of the events leads directly to the heart of the matter: the power of the spirit, the power of convictions, of suffering and hopes, has thrown down the existing structures. This means that the materialism which wanted to reduce the spirit to a mere consequence of material structures [the “law” of history!], to the mere superstructure of the economic system [!], has been brought down. But here we are no longer speaking only of the problem of Marxism and its world of states [now the paradisiacal China, Venezuela, North Korea, etc.]—we are speaking about ourselves. For materialism is a problem that affects us all; its breakdown compels all of us to an examination of conscience” (Ratzinger, “Turning Point for History,” Ignatius, 1994).
The FAMILY, too, is only a consequence of economic forces (F. Engels, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, originally Zurich 1884). What, then, of Natural Law?
So now, a dialogue with “concrete” Marxists–in what way distinguishable from Marxism (?)–and this theological riddle in the hands of Prefect Fernandez who seems skilled in only the rhetorical harmonization of contemporary “polarities,” since nothing deeper or more concrete (!) seems to be on the synodal roundtable.
Skilled and skilleted—”from the frying pan [the, yes, imperfect market economy] into the [perfect]fire”?
About any “chat across ideological boundaries,” the presumed “harmonization of polarities” (both my wording), and the fallacy (!) of any third way between Capitalism and Socialism, the Catholic Social Teaching is not a middling third way, but rather the “negation of ideology”.
So, in regard to the noted rule of LAW (Pope Francis), and from a predecessor who lived through the (erased?) HISTORY of Communism and who wrote on the threshold of the 21st Century, the following clarification from St. John Paul II—when asked whether capitalism was the path for a post-Soviet eastern Europe and beyond:
“The answer is obviously complex. If by ‘capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector [papal caricature: “invisible hand”, “finance and market mechanisms”?], then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a ‘business economy,’ ‘market economy’ or simply ‘free economy.’ But if by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a STRONG JURIDICAL FRAMEWORK which places it at the service of HUMAN FREEDOM IN ITS TOTALITY, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the CORE OF WHICH IS ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS, then the reply is certainly negative” (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, CA n. 44, caps added).
Without diminishing the value of grounded dialogue (more than a flat-table synodal “process”?), what more is the perennial and incarnational Catholic Church bringing to its engagement with Marxists/Marxism, in addition to only a call for “poetry” and “creativity” (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/january/documents/20240110-dialop.html). More than a polarity, the Catholic Social Teaching “belongs to the field . . . of theology and particularly moral theology” (CA n. 55; Rerum Novarum n. 153).
Peter. This may well be, reading with moderately jaundiced eyes an adroit overture by His Holiness to expand the cooperative success of his Vatican China policy to include the universal Church.
Humor aside, admittedly, this pontificate has attracted ranking churchmen who have an affinity with Marxist socialist doctrine. We’re aware of high praise for the China regime being touted as a near perfect assimile of Christianity. Indeed there is that resemblance of communal equanimity inclusive of goods. His Holiness has expressed as much in his social doctrine, we recall his universal salary proposal, also his consistent appeal for the poor which is the perceived good of Marxism, a tenet of the Gospels. The difference is this pontificate minimizes the moral dimension as revealed by Christ in favor of a Marxist type of communal justice.
And it is hard to avoid wondering if his minimalizing of personal moral dimensions and heroic responses of personal virtue to heal fragile human woundedness or combat darkest humanity, inspired in ways only accessible through religion, from divinely endowed graces and sacraments, might be due to a dearth of authentic faith in whatever vestigial religious sense does inspire or fails to inspire his mind and soul. Marxists have never hidden their absolutist faith, and conceits, in elitist ordered social engineering, murderously intolerant of counterrevolutionaries. A faith in an eventual restructuring of the Church and the world to eradicate all evil often seems to govern Francis’ publicly expressed values, no matter how he might use prepared, perfunctory Christian rhetoric in Angelus addresses that would imply the imperfectability of the human condition, short of Our Lord’s return, were he to consider the meaning of the actual words.
Any political or social system that cancels or curtails the freedom of human persons to choose between right & wrong ethics is a system that opposes what God is doing in this Universe & World.
God, the source of all, is the freely choosing Spirit who always autonomously chooses merciful self-giving love, right-ethical holiness, & perfectly just goodness.
Humans are the only living beings that we know of that share the capacity to choose godly right ethics, or devilishly wrong ethics. We are all EChOs – ethically choosing organisms. It is a maximally serious matter to be a person “in God’s image & likeness” – the opportunities are truly spectacular, the dangers really dreadful.
When militia, politicians, and other social managers (including AI) coerce or dictate in such a way as to diminish or remove the possibility for individual ethical choice, they quench the image of God in us.
Regimented societies have a certain appeal to demi-god rulers and even, tragically, to many who simply want to live a simple life according to the ‘rules of the system’.
This is de-humanizing because it suppresses the freely ethically choosing image of God in us, our source of personhood and our resonance with Heaven.
May God preserve us from Marx, Putin, Xi Jin Ping, ‘Pope’ Francis, and all their like.
Ever in the freedom won for us by Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
“Pope Francis this week called for cooperation between Christians and Marxists as a way to achieve greater “dialogue” and help in the search for the “common good.”
Yes, because 20th Century history has given us ample evidence that Marxists have people’s best interests in mind 🙄. Francis, please just stop talking.
All sorts of useful idiots were conducting “dialogues” with the Marxists: PAX in Poland, Pacem in Terris in Czechoslovakia, etc. Under Paul VI, Catholic-Marxist dialogue went on steroids under the leadership of Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli, a lunacy that did not stop until somebody who had real experience of Marxists — Karol Wojtyla — ended it. By then, the Hungarian hierarchy was largely a branch wing of the Hungarian Communist Party, the Czechoslovak sees were vacant, Uniate Catholics in Russia abandoned, etc. Now, the same mindset pursues this policy vis-a-vis Beijing, even though it is clear it is yielding nothing. One wishes Francis would stop his incessant “dialogues” and get down to doctrine (as it exists, not as he might wish it to be).
I was so tempted to quip, when was the last time any Jesuit did an honest day’s work? Then my guardian angel kicked me and reminded me of the good Jesuits I met when I did some amount (not enough) of missionary work in the third world.
It’s great to see the pope getting past “rigid ideologies,” isn’t it? Ideologies that don’t starve millions, put opposing voices in gulags, build iron curtains to keep people from fleeing oppression, suppress religion, on and on. Marxism has such a stellar resume of greater dialogue and search for the greater good.
I am increasingly of the opinion that Pope Francis is not stupid at all. He and those he elevated to be cardinals know exactly what they are doing. They are working according to the plan worked out by the modernists at Vatican II to make the Church more compatible with the spirit of the modern age. A spirit directly contrary to the teachings of Jesus and they will fail. As Pope Benedict predicted we will become a much smaller Church, as many will decide they don’t need the Church at all. They will not see them selves as sinners in need of salvation.
You get the BINGO prize! The Pope and his cardinals know EXACTLY what they are doing. Just as former president Obama, upon becoming a US President, advised that “America is about to undergo a “fundamental” change”, so to is Francis implementing fundamental changes with the other men who seem to be acting as politicians in the Vatican. Yes, they know exactly what they are doing, and perhaps, Archbishop Vigano has it right that the Swiss Guards at the Vatican should arrest the Pope and his seditious and heretical cohorts and remove them from the Lord’s Holy of Holies here on earth.
The Christian and Marxist conceptions of the common good are diametrically opposed. We should dismiss the Holy Father’s call for cooperation with groups and governments who have murdered well over 100 million in the last century and are determined to finish the job. The ongoing betrayal of Catholics and others who continue to suffer vicious persecution under Communist regimes like those in China and Nicaragua is one of the many and most serious scandals that will be this papacy’s legacy.
I’m already imagining what the “anti-everything-Francis” squads will say about this. I am personally hoping we can see a rejection of capitalism (state sponsored usury) as well as Marxism and a renewed interest in Solidarism. It is a real shame how most people have no idea that there is another, CATHOLIC way to run an economic system.
The Pontiff Francis is himself “not burdened by the history” of the sadistic, mass-murdering Marxist ideology, because he doesn’t identify with the millions of souls slaughtered in the name of his political hero, the psycho-sexual sociopath Karl Marx.
What’s important to “his purpose in life” is that homicidal, sociopath, anti-Christ tyrants, like General Secretary Xi, are preferred to to ascend to establishment power on every continent.
This is the gruesome reality signified by the two photo-stunts staged by the Pontiff Francis, when he first received his gift of the Hammer-and-Sickle-Crucifix, and subsequently orchestrated the worship of the idol Pachamama: what he reveres is not Christ crucified, but the empire that built the cross used to crucify him.
So the Pontiff Francis now presides over the “marriage-he-made-in-hell,” having collaborated with his longtime friend McCarrick, the sociopath-sodomic-sex-abuser, to sign the Pontiff’s “secret accord” with “their one, true god,” the Communist Party in China.
And now the self-identified progressive church apologists, in alliance with self-identified “moderate” and even “conservative” church apologists, have the opportunity to don the costume of the neo-ultramontanists, and sheepishly bleat out their message of the day, that the Church is not utterly polluted, but instead, it is “indefectible.”
But in battle against those voices is the Lion of Judah, the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, who is the head of the Body of Christ, and supreme Judge of the steward.
The denial of The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), is the source of all heresy including the modernist Marxist heresy of the atheist materialist over population alarmist globalists whose end goal is the objectification of the human person, as they designate the State to be their god of tyranny.
Shall we now ask God to Bless this tyranny even though such tyranny is anathema?
Surely if we choose to have that which is not Holy Blessed we become accursed.
Catholicism is Holy while Marxism, which can never be reconciled with Christ, is not.
A better world will only come when nations embrace the Catholic faith and proclaim Christ as King. It will not come from atheistic ideologies or compromising with them. Our Lady of Fatima warned us.
This is actually quite terrifying. I think human history gives us a darn pretty good idea of what Marxism does to governments and the people who are governed under Marxism. God help us.
“The common good” is not at all what most people assume it is. The truism, “a rising tide lifts all boats” shows a particular element (in this case water) affecting all that it touches, but just because all boats are lifted doesn’t mean that the water has advanced the common good, rather it has only facilitated a [universal] composite of particular goods.
Moving from boats to people, just because a particular political act has increased prosperity (and of course socialism hasn’t a track record proving anything of the sort) that also would be an amalgam of individual goods—the common good hasn’t been affected in any way. Even the building of a dam or a road or a reservoir for the benefit of those living nearby only multiplies individual goods.
The common good has to do with the ability of individuals to advance towards perfection, and thus economic questions have little to nothing to do with it. Our perfection consists in holiness, a deepening relationship with God, the proliferation of the sacraments, and freedom to choose the good. (Charles de Koninck has a lifetime of work dedicated to explaining this.)
Moreover, the suggestion that this project will allow peace to “grow from below,” beginning on the human level, woefully misunderstands grace as a gift from above, and that peace is “the tranquility of order, (Augustine) which again requires a turning to God and rejection of materialistic solutions to spiritual problems.
You can’t mix oil and water no matter how much you talk about it. Dialogue in this case is only good in clarifying both positions and acknowledging the impossibility of reconciliation. From there mutual agreement on respecting rights of both parties to live separately in peace could POSSIBLY be worked out. But this is highly unlikely long term due to our sinful nature.
Marxism is an ideology of building a perfect world through the murders of millions of innocents. That poor old man who envisions a dialogue with satanic evil is either uneducated or demented.
With a head stuck in the sixties this individual has us doing déjà vu all over again? This is pitiful, pathetic and scandalous. One would ascribe it to geriatric diminishment but he operates with a staff of the equally ideological malcontent who are not quite as advanced in the life journey.
Marxism has a trail of corpses behind it far, far longer than National Socialism and it continues its holocaust at this very moment. Our Chinese brothers and sisters in the Faith have been sold into its slavery by the present Vatican administration. In all honesty, this pronouncement actually makes the recent endorsement of blessings for sodomites look quite tame.
No one is undermining the Bergoglian enterprise with any honest critique. It is doing it to itself and boldly.
One wonders if Francis’ embrace of the road to serfdom stems from his resentment of market economies having to regularly impose sensible terms for bailing out his persistently failed country.
A financial version of the classic definition of insanity is buying Argentine government bonds and expecting it won’t default on them again.
A theological version might be trying to unite Catholicism with Marxism and expecting the combination not to be a betrayal of Catholic principles.
I say let the global Marxists send financial support to the Vatican and the real Cathokics in the Church use their dobations to support well-documented orthodox efforts regarding charity.
Maybe a visit to the iron law of oligarchy is needed in order to understand what went wrong with Marxism and what goes wrong with most human ideologies and what will always go unless one is grounded in humility and under the Lordship of a higher authority. The RCC learned very early in its history that an oligarchic structure was needed. Is the RCC now seriously trying to change that to a more democratic ‘synodality’? Is that the ‘why’ for the new (well more open) attraction to Marxism. Hmm. OK, how about Francis present another document comparing the lives of Christ and Marx. Marx was a horror especially to his own family. By their fruits you shall know them. The only reason I can think of for Francis wanting to ‘dialogue’ with Marxists is that he probably does really believe that religion is merely an opiate, the dispensing of which is carried out by his men in black, in order to pacify the masses from an otherwise meaningless existence and from questioning the oligarchs and those who seek to control them. Sometimes, often actually, it has been so. But Jesus, in righteous anger, overturned that mentality (in the temple) – he didn’t flirt with it or try to incorporate it into his teachings. Just a few thoughts.
OK, dialogue and seeking to understand other beliefs is always good but we’ve done this already in relation to Marxism (Liberation Theology???) and it indeed has become the co-foundation for the social justice movement in the Church. The difference between the two (Christ and Marx (besides their whole life example) is the means of achieving justice especially in regard to those who well, don’t cooperate – what do we do with those pests? (We can excommunicate them I suppose both spiritually and physically – cut them off paint them as evil). So, why these headlines? To make the world like the RCC more? Yes, there are sociological similarities between what most perceive as a Marxist approach (distribution of wealth) and the first Christian communities; yes, there’s a similarity there, but really, there’s not a lot more.
Because of my research into clergy sexual abuse, misconduct, activity, crimes, and Francis’s approach to especially adult victims of the likes of Randy Rupnik the Misconductor, which I am quite sure now is founded on some weird perception that these victims simply should not feel like victims and only do so because they have an approach to sex of someone ‘still in diapers’ and, therefore, it is they who are actually in the wrong. I cannot fathom that he does what he does otherwise. I really have come to believe that Francis believes that Catholicism is or should be merely a psycho-social humanism, a philosophy, able to be changed with debate and ‘new discoveries’ – very Jesuit. Nah, not for me or billions of others – makes no sense without a higher divinity beyond the mere wording of concepts God, Trinity, Christ, which I’ve come to think Francis has become a master at (wording), using all his Jesuitical training and prowess. He seems like a nice chap, though, doing all the nice justice things. And I often hear him talking, preaching, and then think it must be me who has it wrong.
We read: “The only reason I can think of for Francis wanting to ‘dialogue’ with Marxists is that he probably does really believe that religion is merely an opiate…”
I do disagree, but just for fun, over half century ago and as a student before one doctoral seminar in interdisciplinary urban and regional planning, I pulled the screen down about one foot after chalking atop the green board “planning is the opiate of the intellectuals.”
For writing space and midway through the class the screen was lifted, and was met with a long and blank silence at both the front of the class and among all the students. I realized that no one in the group even recognized what was being parsed. An eraser fixed the cognitive dissonance and we moved collectively into the future, some would say a bit like rhetorically erasing the magisterium.
Well, Peter, I do sort of say that (that Francis probably really does believe that religion is merely an opiate) with a little smile, sort of how I respond when people use that saying, “Is the Pope Catholic”? Hmm…. But my conclusions come from, yes, a very deep cynicism which has developed because of my insights into the minds and politics of the clergy or more so, the hierarchy, and the scales sort of fell away; my naivety was very traumatically dissolved; and all I saw before me where men who weren’t just sinners – I can cope with that – but more so, men who when push came to shove, really didn’t care about those they said they cared for; really didn’t believe in the Gospels, and what they taught us; holiness; prayer; purity; none of it, and for some not even God. But, they had found a lifestyle in which they were so well catered for, so why leave? They don’t really practice poverty in any meaningful way (I do, or have to not the least becasue of the effects of abuse), they in turn have all their needs catered for; obedience has come to mean more or less nothing, but I need to practice ‘obedience’ because of my committment to my wife and family; and as for cchastity, well, the research suyggests its a myth – so easy for clergy to get sex on the side. HOWEVER, when this is exposed, they have a huge institution of other men who when it comes to sex and relationships are for the most, stuck in an adolescent mentality anyway so they just don’t get it, and so are ready to defned them like Francis has done with Rupnik, (this is also clericalism by the way), and who have so much money and power with which to do this. As such, generally, any accusations are dismissed by clergy who have little sense of the damage that has been caused – to have this would be too convicting – as well as a general attitude of the flock that those on the noble journey of celibacy are more readily believed over those who it is too often believed, must have tempted them off that journey.
So, yes, I really have come to believe that the RCC and its leaders are mere politicians and sociologists but fully understand the power of spiritual language not because they actually really do believe what they say but because they believe people need to believe it, so this is what they give them – ‘spiritual’ opioids. The only thing that makes me doubt my conclusion here, is Frank’s fight against the traditional Catholics about whom many might say are fully addicted to a certain type of opiate. And then I came across this little gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t02XoELK1Xo
An act of mutual contradiction! History tells us that such cooperation is an illogical proposition! The Marxist leftists hate the unborn in particular and are at the forefront of ensuring that they perish! Where Is there even a hint of basic logic in what the Pope is asking?
With all the questionable goings on in the Vatican finances, shouldn’t the Vatican be working on its own problems to establish its competency to speak?
Marxists cannot be taken lightly. As human beings, Marxists have a lot to contribute in enriching fellow mortals to realize their true and full potential.
An absolutely ridiculous and shameful comment. I think the 500 million bodycount argues against that. There is nothing that Marxists say that believers need to hear.
It’s time for a chat across ideological boundaries. And a chat that reaffirms LAW and yet is not burdened by HISTORY? Which law, and what history?
“…one can and must say simply that Marxism failed as an all-embracing interpretation of reality and a directive for action in history [!]. Its promise of freedom, equality and welfare for all was not verified by the empirical facts; it was shown to be false on the basis of political and economic facts. Although these assessments are correct, one would remain on a superficial level if one were to be content with them. Rather, we must take one step farther [today, synodally “walking together”?] and ask: But what is specifically false in this interpretation of the world and in the praxis [Stalinism, etc.] deduced from it? An exact observation of the events leads directly to the heart of the matter: the power of the spirit, the power of convictions, of suffering and hopes, has thrown down the existing structures. This means that the materialism which wanted to reduce the spirit to a mere consequence of material structures [the “law” of history!], to the mere superstructure of the economic system [!], has been brought down. But here we are no longer speaking only of the problem of Marxism and its world of states [now the paradisiacal China, Venezuela, North Korea, etc.]—we are speaking about ourselves. For materialism is a problem that affects us all; its breakdown compels all of us to an examination of conscience” (Ratzinger, “Turning Point for History,” Ignatius, 1994).
The FAMILY, too, is only a consequence of economic forces (F. Engels, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, originally Zurich 1884). What, then, of Natural Law?
So now, a dialogue with “concrete” Marxists–in what way distinguishable from Marxism (?)–and this theological riddle in the hands of Prefect Fernandez who seems skilled in only the rhetorical harmonization of contemporary “polarities,” since nothing deeper or more concrete (!) seems to be on the synodal roundtable.
Skilled and skilleted—”from the frying pan [the, yes, imperfect market economy] into the [perfect]fire”?
About any “chat across ideological boundaries,” the presumed “harmonization of polarities” (both my wording), and the fallacy (!) of any third way between Capitalism and Socialism, the Catholic Social Teaching is not a middling third way, but rather the “negation of ideology”.
So, in regard to the noted rule of LAW (Pope Francis), and from a predecessor who lived through the (erased?) HISTORY of Communism and who wrote on the threshold of the 21st Century, the following clarification from St. John Paul II—when asked whether capitalism was the path for a post-Soviet eastern Europe and beyond:
“The answer is obviously complex. If by ‘capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector [papal caricature: “invisible hand”, “finance and market mechanisms”?], then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a ‘business economy,’ ‘market economy’ or simply ‘free economy.’ But if by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a STRONG JURIDICAL FRAMEWORK which places it at the service of HUMAN FREEDOM IN ITS TOTALITY, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the CORE OF WHICH IS ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS, then the reply is certainly negative” (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, CA n. 44, caps added).
Without diminishing the value of grounded dialogue (more than a flat-table synodal “process”?), what more is the perennial and incarnational Catholic Church bringing to its engagement with Marxists/Marxism, in addition to only a call for “poetry” and “creativity” (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/january/documents/20240110-dialop.html). More than a polarity, the Catholic Social Teaching “belongs to the field . . . of theology and particularly moral theology” (CA n. 55; Rerum Novarum n. 153).
Peter. This may well be, reading with moderately jaundiced eyes an adroit overture by His Holiness to expand the cooperative success of his Vatican China policy to include the universal Church.
Humor aside, admittedly, this pontificate has attracted ranking churchmen who have an affinity with Marxist socialist doctrine. We’re aware of high praise for the China regime being touted as a near perfect assimile of Christianity. Indeed there is that resemblance of communal equanimity inclusive of goods. His Holiness has expressed as much in his social doctrine, we recall his universal salary proposal, also his consistent appeal for the poor which is the perceived good of Marxism, a tenet of the Gospels. The difference is this pontificate minimizes the moral dimension as revealed by Christ in favor of a Marxist type of communal justice.
And it is hard to avoid wondering if his minimalizing of personal moral dimensions and heroic responses of personal virtue to heal fragile human woundedness or combat darkest humanity, inspired in ways only accessible through religion, from divinely endowed graces and sacraments, might be due to a dearth of authentic faith in whatever vestigial religious sense does inspire or fails to inspire his mind and soul. Marxists have never hidden their absolutist faith, and conceits, in elitist ordered social engineering, murderously intolerant of counterrevolutionaries. A faith in an eventual restructuring of the Church and the world to eradicate all evil often seems to govern Francis’ publicly expressed values, no matter how he might use prepared, perfunctory Christian rhetoric in Angelus addresses that would imply the imperfectability of the human condition, short of Our Lord’s return, were he to consider the meaning of the actual words.
Thanks, dear Fr Peter Morello PhD.
Any political or social system that cancels or curtails the freedom of human persons to choose between right & wrong ethics is a system that opposes what God is doing in this Universe & World.
God, the source of all, is the freely choosing Spirit who always autonomously chooses merciful self-giving love, right-ethical holiness, & perfectly just goodness.
Humans are the only living beings that we know of that share the capacity to choose godly right ethics, or devilishly wrong ethics. We are all EChOs – ethically choosing organisms. It is a maximally serious matter to be a person “in God’s image & likeness” – the opportunities are truly spectacular, the dangers really dreadful.
When militia, politicians, and other social managers (including AI) coerce or dictate in such a way as to diminish or remove the possibility for individual ethical choice, they quench the image of God in us.
Regimented societies have a certain appeal to demi-god rulers and even, tragically, to many who simply want to live a simple life according to the ‘rules of the system’.
This is de-humanizing because it suppresses the freely ethically choosing image of God in us, our source of personhood and our resonance with Heaven.
May God preserve us from Marx, Putin, Xi Jin Ping, ‘Pope’ Francis, and all their like.
Ever in the freedom won for us by Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
“Pope Francis this week called for cooperation between Christians and Marxists as a way to achieve greater “dialogue” and help in the search for the “common good.”
Yes, because 20th Century history has given us ample evidence that Marxists have people’s best interests in mind 🙄. Francis, please just stop talking.
All sorts of useful idiots were conducting “dialogues” with the Marxists: PAX in Poland, Pacem in Terris in Czechoslovakia, etc. Under Paul VI, Catholic-Marxist dialogue went on steroids under the leadership of Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli, a lunacy that did not stop until somebody who had real experience of Marxists — Karol Wojtyla — ended it. By then, the Hungarian hierarchy was largely a branch wing of the Hungarian Communist Party, the Czechoslovak sees were vacant, Uniate Catholics in Russia abandoned, etc. Now, the same mindset pursues this policy vis-a-vis Beijing, even though it is clear it is yielding nothing. One wishes Francis would stop his incessant “dialogues” and get down to doctrine (as it exists, not as he might wish it to be).
A revealing history! Thanks, dear John Grondelski.
Do you think this leopard can change his spots . . ?
I think Fidel Cadtro needs help harvesting his sugar cane crop. I’ve volunteered the name of one Jorge Bergoglio as sumpathetic to the cause.
I was so tempted to quip, when was the last time any Jesuit did an honest day’s work? Then my guardian angel kicked me and reminded me of the good Jesuits I met when I did some amount (not enough) of missionary work in the third world.
It’s great to see the pope getting past “rigid ideologies,” isn’t it? Ideologies that don’t starve millions, put opposing voices in gulags, build iron curtains to keep people from fleeing oppression, suppress religion, on and on. Marxism has such a stellar resume of greater dialogue and search for the greater good.
This pontiff continues to astonish.
O Lord, how long?
I’m getting confused.
Didn’t Pope Francis recently say that you weren’t supposed to sup with the devil?
Yes, but he was referring to other people, not himself 🙄.
(Sigh.)
Why am I not surprised?
One hundred innocents murdered over the past century isn’t enough to show what a bad idea this is?
How could someone this stupid have tied the Church into such knots?
I meant one hundred *million* innocents murdered over the past hundred years.
Sorry.
Actually, historians have now revised the figure closer to 140 million. And this does not include the aborted babies.
I am increasingly of the opinion that Pope Francis is not stupid at all. He and those he elevated to be cardinals know exactly what they are doing. They are working according to the plan worked out by the modernists at Vatican II to make the Church more compatible with the spirit of the modern age. A spirit directly contrary to the teachings of Jesus and they will fail. As Pope Benedict predicted we will become a much smaller Church, as many will decide they don’t need the Church at all. They will not see them selves as sinners in need of salvation.
Mr. Snow,
You get the BINGO prize! The Pope and his cardinals know EXACTLY what they are doing. Just as former president Obama, upon becoming a US President, advised that “America is about to undergo a “fundamental” change”, so to is Francis implementing fundamental changes with the other men who seem to be acting as politicians in the Vatican. Yes, they know exactly what they are doing, and perhaps, Archbishop Vigano has it right that the Swiss Guards at the Vatican should arrest the Pope and his seditious and heretical cohorts and remove them from the Lord’s Holy of Holies here on earth.
JCALAS!
“Dialogue” often leads to compromise. As in, you say 2+2=4; I say 2+2=6; so the correct answer must be that 2+2=5.
Someday, will we have St. Marx, patron of murderous ideologies? Perhaps there will be St. Pollyanna, patroness of dangerously naive dialogue?
As a Jesuit, this meeting is like the Pope talking to himself.
The Christian and Marxist conceptions of the common good are diametrically opposed. We should dismiss the Holy Father’s call for cooperation with groups and governments who have murdered well over 100 million in the last century and are determined to finish the job. The ongoing betrayal of Catholics and others who continue to suffer vicious persecution under Communist regimes like those in China and Nicaragua is one of the many and most serious scandals that will be this papacy’s legacy.
I’m already imagining what the “anti-everything-Francis” squads will say about this. I am personally hoping we can see a rejection of capitalism (state sponsored usury) as well as Marxism and a renewed interest in Solidarism. It is a real shame how most people have no idea that there is another, CATHOLIC way to run an economic system.
The Pontiff Francis is himself “not burdened by the history” of the sadistic, mass-murdering Marxist ideology, because he doesn’t identify with the millions of souls slaughtered in the name of his political hero, the psycho-sexual sociopath Karl Marx.
What’s important to “his purpose in life” is that homicidal, sociopath, anti-Christ tyrants, like General Secretary Xi, are preferred to to ascend to establishment power on every continent.
This is the gruesome reality signified by the two photo-stunts staged by the Pontiff Francis, when he first received his gift of the Hammer-and-Sickle-Crucifix, and subsequently orchestrated the worship of the idol Pachamama: what he reveres is not Christ crucified, but the empire that built the cross used to crucify him.
So the Pontiff Francis now presides over the “marriage-he-made-in-hell,” having collaborated with his longtime friend McCarrick, the sociopath-sodomic-sex-abuser, to sign the Pontiff’s “secret accord” with “their one, true god,” the Communist Party in China.
And now the self-identified progressive church apologists, in alliance with self-identified “moderate” and even “conservative” church apologists, have the opportunity to don the costume of the neo-ultramontanists, and sheepishly bleat out their message of the day, that the Church is not utterly polluted, but instead, it is “indefectible.”
But in battle against those voices is the Lion of Judah, the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, who is the head of the Body of Christ, and supreme Judge of the steward.
Pope Francis can’t quit talking.He has the condition known as compulsive talking. I think it’s a mental and or emotional illness.
It called loggorheia. It’s a chronic condition in his case.
Correct.
Silence is of little value to him. Deep thought, not his strong point, ever. Only the endless nonsense of jesuit-speak.
The denial of The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), is the source of all heresy including the modernist Marxist heresy of the atheist materialist over population alarmist globalists whose end goal is the objectification of the human person, as they designate the State to be their god of tyranny.
Shall we now ask God to Bless this tyranny even though such tyranny is anathema?
Surely if we choose to have that which is not Holy Blessed we become accursed.
Catholicism is Holy while Marxism, which can never be reconciled with Christ, is not.
Didn’t our Immaculate Mother warn us about this at Fatima?
A better world will only come when nations embrace the Catholic faith and proclaim Christ as King. It will not come from atheistic ideologies or compromising with them. Our Lady of Fatima warned us.
This is actually quite terrifying. I think human history gives us a darn pretty good idea of what Marxism does to governments and the people who are governed under Marxism. God help us.
“The common good” is not at all what most people assume it is. The truism, “a rising tide lifts all boats” shows a particular element (in this case water) affecting all that it touches, but just because all boats are lifted doesn’t mean that the water has advanced the common good, rather it has only facilitated a [universal] composite of particular goods.
Moving from boats to people, just because a particular political act has increased prosperity (and of course socialism hasn’t a track record proving anything of the sort) that also would be an amalgam of individual goods—the common good hasn’t been affected in any way. Even the building of a dam or a road or a reservoir for the benefit of those living nearby only multiplies individual goods.
The common good has to do with the ability of individuals to advance towards perfection, and thus economic questions have little to nothing to do with it. Our perfection consists in holiness, a deepening relationship with God, the proliferation of the sacraments, and freedom to choose the good. (Charles de Koninck has a lifetime of work dedicated to explaining this.)
Moreover, the suggestion that this project will allow peace to “grow from below,” beginning on the human level, woefully misunderstands grace as a gift from above, and that peace is “the tranquility of order, (Augustine) which again requires a turning to God and rejection of materialistic solutions to spiritual problems.
You can’t mix oil and water no matter how much you talk about it. Dialogue in this case is only good in clarifying both positions and acknowledging the impossibility of reconciliation. From there mutual agreement on respecting rights of both parties to live separately in peace could POSSIBLY be worked out. But this is highly unlikely long term due to our sinful nature.
Marxism is an ideology of building a perfect world through the murders of millions of innocents. That poor old man who envisions a dialogue with satanic evil is either uneducated or demented.
With a head stuck in the sixties this individual has us doing déjà vu all over again? This is pitiful, pathetic and scandalous. One would ascribe it to geriatric diminishment but he operates with a staff of the equally ideological malcontent who are not quite as advanced in the life journey.
Marxism has a trail of corpses behind it far, far longer than National Socialism and it continues its holocaust at this very moment. Our Chinese brothers and sisters in the Faith have been sold into its slavery by the present Vatican administration. In all honesty, this pronouncement actually makes the recent endorsement of blessings for sodomites look quite tame.
No one is undermining the Bergoglian enterprise with any honest critique. It is doing it to itself and boldly.
One wonders if Francis’ embrace of the road to serfdom stems from his resentment of market economies having to regularly impose sensible terms for bailing out his persistently failed country.
A financial version of the classic definition of insanity is buying Argentine government bonds and expecting it won’t default on them again.
A theological version might be trying to unite Catholicism with Marxism and expecting the combination not to be a betrayal of Catholic principles.
I say let the global Marxists send financial support to the Vatican and the real Cathokics in the Church use their dobations to support well-documented orthodox efforts regarding charity.
Maybe a visit to the iron law of oligarchy is needed in order to understand what went wrong with Marxism and what goes wrong with most human ideologies and what will always go unless one is grounded in humility and under the Lordship of a higher authority. The RCC learned very early in its history that an oligarchic structure was needed. Is the RCC now seriously trying to change that to a more democratic ‘synodality’? Is that the ‘why’ for the new (well more open) attraction to Marxism. Hmm. OK, how about Francis present another document comparing the lives of Christ and Marx. Marx was a horror especially to his own family. By their fruits you shall know them. The only reason I can think of for Francis wanting to ‘dialogue’ with Marxists is that he probably does really believe that religion is merely an opiate, the dispensing of which is carried out by his men in black, in order to pacify the masses from an otherwise meaningless existence and from questioning the oligarchs and those who seek to control them. Sometimes, often actually, it has been so. But Jesus, in righteous anger, overturned that mentality (in the temple) – he didn’t flirt with it or try to incorporate it into his teachings. Just a few thoughts.
OK, dialogue and seeking to understand other beliefs is always good but we’ve done this already in relation to Marxism (Liberation Theology???) and it indeed has become the co-foundation for the social justice movement in the Church. The difference between the two (Christ and Marx (besides their whole life example) is the means of achieving justice especially in regard to those who well, don’t cooperate – what do we do with those pests? (We can excommunicate them I suppose both spiritually and physically – cut them off paint them as evil). So, why these headlines? To make the world like the RCC more? Yes, there are sociological similarities between what most perceive as a Marxist approach (distribution of wealth) and the first Christian communities; yes, there’s a similarity there, but really, there’s not a lot more.
Because of my research into clergy sexual abuse, misconduct, activity, crimes, and Francis’s approach to especially adult victims of the likes of Randy Rupnik the Misconductor, which I am quite sure now is founded on some weird perception that these victims simply should not feel like victims and only do so because they have an approach to sex of someone ‘still in diapers’ and, therefore, it is they who are actually in the wrong. I cannot fathom that he does what he does otherwise. I really have come to believe that Francis believes that Catholicism is or should be merely a psycho-social humanism, a philosophy, able to be changed with debate and ‘new discoveries’ – very Jesuit. Nah, not for me or billions of others – makes no sense without a higher divinity beyond the mere wording of concepts God, Trinity, Christ, which I’ve come to think Francis has become a master at (wording), using all his Jesuitical training and prowess. He seems like a nice chap, though, doing all the nice justice things. And I often hear him talking, preaching, and then think it must be me who has it wrong.
We read: “The only reason I can think of for Francis wanting to ‘dialogue’ with Marxists is that he probably does really believe that religion is merely an opiate…”
I do disagree, but just for fun, over half century ago and as a student before one doctoral seminar in interdisciplinary urban and regional planning, I pulled the screen down about one foot after chalking atop the green board “planning is the opiate of the intellectuals.”
For writing space and midway through the class the screen was lifted, and was met with a long and blank silence at both the front of the class and among all the students. I realized that no one in the group even recognized what was being parsed. An eraser fixed the cognitive dissonance and we moved collectively into the future, some would say a bit like rhetorically erasing the magisterium.
Well, Peter, I do sort of say that (that Francis probably really does believe that religion is merely an opiate) with a little smile, sort of how I respond when people use that saying, “Is the Pope Catholic”? Hmm…. But my conclusions come from, yes, a very deep cynicism which has developed because of my insights into the minds and politics of the clergy or more so, the hierarchy, and the scales sort of fell away; my naivety was very traumatically dissolved; and all I saw before me where men who weren’t just sinners – I can cope with that – but more so, men who when push came to shove, really didn’t care about those they said they cared for; really didn’t believe in the Gospels, and what they taught us; holiness; prayer; purity; none of it, and for some not even God. But, they had found a lifestyle in which they were so well catered for, so why leave? They don’t really practice poverty in any meaningful way (I do, or have to not the least becasue of the effects of abuse), they in turn have all their needs catered for; obedience has come to mean more or less nothing, but I need to practice ‘obedience’ because of my committment to my wife and family; and as for cchastity, well, the research suyggests its a myth – so easy for clergy to get sex on the side. HOWEVER, when this is exposed, they have a huge institution of other men who when it comes to sex and relationships are for the most, stuck in an adolescent mentality anyway so they just don’t get it, and so are ready to defned them like Francis has done with Rupnik, (this is also clericalism by the way), and who have so much money and power with which to do this. As such, generally, any accusations are dismissed by clergy who have little sense of the damage that has been caused – to have this would be too convicting – as well as a general attitude of the flock that those on the noble journey of celibacy are more readily believed over those who it is too often believed, must have tempted them off that journey.
So, yes, I really have come to believe that the RCC and its leaders are mere politicians and sociologists but fully understand the power of spiritual language not because they actually really do believe what they say but because they believe people need to believe it, so this is what they give them – ‘spiritual’ opioids. The only thing that makes me doubt my conclusion here, is Frank’s fight against the traditional Catholics about whom many might say are fully addicted to a certain type of opiate. And then I came across this little gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t02XoELK1Xo
Dear Stephen, thank you for your insightful analyses of our dire situation.
Thanks for the brilliant Cardinal Sheen clip; I’ve never appreciated a prophet in action as much as by this.
Stay strong in The Love of The LORD; blessings from marty
An act of mutual contradiction! History tells us that such cooperation is an illogical proposition! The Marxist leftists hate the unborn in particular and are at the forefront of ensuring that they perish! Where Is there even a hint of basic logic in what the Pope is asking?
With all the questionable goings on in the Vatican finances, shouldn’t the Vatican be working on its own problems to establish its competency to speak?
How long before even the secular media start to wonder if Francis has rocks in his head?
Marxists cannot be taken lightly. As human beings, Marxists have a lot to contribute in enriching fellow mortals to realize their true and full potential.
And, brain washing camps, are a great marxist tool to do that!
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free!
An absolutely ridiculous and shameful comment. I think the 500 million bodycount argues against that. There is nothing that Marxists say that believers need to hear.