Pope Francis meets with members of the French-based academic organization Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute on March 1, 2024, at the Vatican. (Credit: Vatican Media)
Rome Newsroom, Mar 1, 2024 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Friday morning gave an address on the importance of building a culture that protects human and Christians vocations, things he suggested were at risk due to contemporary cultural challenges including gender ideology.
“It is very important that there is this meeting, this meeting between men and women, because today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences,” the pope said during an audience with members of the French-based academic organization Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute (CRAV).
Gender ideology, which seeks to blur differences between men and women through movements such as transgenderism, “makes everything the same,” Francis said.
“Erasing differences is erasing humanity. Man and woman, however, are in a fruitful ‘tension,’” Francis told the assembly, which is gathered in Rome for a two-day international conference titled “Man, Woman, Image of God: For an Anthropology of Vocations.”
The pope did not read the full address, instead delegating the task to Monsignor Filippo Ciampanelli. “I still have a cold and it’s tiring to read for a while,” the pope said to the participants assembled at the Vatican.
Pope Francis meets with members of the French-based academic organization Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute on March 1, 2024, at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
Focusing the Friday morning address on the “anthropological crisis and the necessary promotion of human and Christian vocations,” Pope Francis said this task is challenged by myriad social challenges arising from the cultural zeitgeist, including gender ideology.
Highlighting the anthropological angle of the conference, the pope pointed to “an elementary and fundamental truth, which today we need to rediscover in all its beauty: The life of the human being is a vocation.”
The pope emphasized that this is a foundational element “which underlies every call within the community” and “has to do with an essential characteristic of the human being as such.”
“This discovery,” the pope added, “brings us out of the isolation of a self-referential ego and makes us look at ourselves as an identity in relation.”
The Holy Father emphasized that it is imperative to understand this “anthropological truth,” as it “fully responds to the desire for human fulfillment and happiness that lives in our hearts.”
“We sometimes tend to forget or obscure this reality,” the pope said, which carries the risk of “reducing the human being to his sole material needs or primary needs, as if he were an object without conscience and without will, simply dragged by life as part of a mechanical gear.”
To counteract this trend, the pope stressed that there needs to be a broad recondition that “the life of the human being is a vocation” and that “man and woman are created by God and are the image of the Creator.”
The pope buttressed this remark by highlighting that human beings must cultivate a relationship with “he who generated me, to the reality that transcends me, to others and to the world around me,” as a way to express the universal call we each face “to embrace a specific and personal mission with joy and responsibility.”
The conference includes 15 different sessions and will run from March 1–2. It features a line of speakers, including Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who will evaluate the subjects of the conference through a pastoral lens as well through a study of philosophical and theological anthropology.
Participants will attend Mass on Friday and Saturday, celebrated by Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost and Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, respectively.
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Pope Francis spent time in silent prayer in front of a nativity scene handmade by artisan craftsmen in Guatemala on Dec. 3, 2022. / Photo courtesy of the Embassy of Guatemala to the Holy See
Vatican City, Dec 3, 2022 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
Pope Fran… […]
Pope Leo XIV greets pilgrims at the Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square, Wednesday, June 25, 2025 / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Aug 16, 2025 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Saturday, Aug. 16, marks Pope Leo XIV’s 100th day as pope. Since his May 8 election as the first pope born and raised in the United States, the 69-year-old Chicago native has already left his mark on a jubilee year filled with papal liturgies and a surge in pilgrim enthusiasm.
Here are some of the highlights of the first 100 days of the new Holy Father:
Papal jubilee: Pope Leo offers 16 public Masses in 14 weeks
Pope Leo XIV began his papacy in the heart of the Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, and he made the most of this opportunity to interact with Catholic pilgrims from across the globe by offering many Masses with the public.
Pope Leo XIV celebrates Mass for the Jubilee of Sport on June 15, 2025, in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
Leo XIV offered 16 large public Masses in just 14 weeks — an average of more than one per week — including seven Masses in June alone. The pace marks a significant shift from the final years of Pope Francis’ pontificate when the aging pope was unable to offer Mass himself at the altar. Francis was present at only four Masses with the public in the same time period last year.
The papal Masses have drawn large crowds and significant attention, beginning with his first inaugural Mass, which brought 200 foreign delegations — including heads of state and royalty — to the Vatican. Since then, Leo has celebrated liturgies for the jubilees of Families, Priests, and Youth as well as on major solemnities and feasts including Pentecost, Corpus Christi, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Trinity, Sts. Peter and Paul, and Mary, Mother of the Church.
Leo XIV is the first pope elected during a jubilee year since 1700.
Pope Leo XIV on the solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul in Rome, June 29, 2025. Credit: Vatican Media
A singing pope
One of Pope Leo’s most unexpected moments came during his first Regina Caeli address, when he stunned a crowd of 200,000 in St. Peter’s Square by singing the Marian hymn rather than reciting it in Latin like his recent predecessors. Since then, he has continued chanting during liturgies and leading crowds in sung versions of the Our Father in Latin.
The move inspired the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music to launch “Let’s Sing with the Pope,” an online series aimed at making Gregorian chant more accessible.
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First American pope on White Sox stadium jumbotron
In June, the first pope born and raised in the United States appeared on the jumbotron at a gathering of American Catholics at Chicago’s Rate Field — home of his beloved White Sox. In a video message delivered entirely in English, Pope Leo urged young people to be “beacons of hope” and invited all to see that “God is reaching out to you, calling you, inviting you to know his son, Jesus Christ.”
It was the pope’s first direct address to his hometown since his election and one of the earliest papal speeches given entirely in English.
Pope Leo XIV addresses Catholic faithful on the scoreboard at Rate Field, home to the Chicago White Sox, during a celebration and Mass to honor his election as pope on June 14, 2025, in Chicago. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images
The new pope’s love of sports has led to some memorable moments. He blessed 159 cyclists as they passed through Vatican City in the final leg of the Giro d’Italia.
A self-described “amateur tennis player,” Pope Leo XIV joked with tennis star Jannik Sinner, ranked the world’s No. 1, whether his white cassock would meet Wimbledon’s requirement for all white attire.
Pope Leo XIV meets with Italian tennis star Jannik Sinner on May 14, 2025, at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
The pope has also been gifted White Sox and Bears jerseys and has signed baseballs for enthusiastic pilgrims.
A voice for peace in Gaza and Ukraine
Pope Leo XIV’s first words were “Peace be with you all,” recalling the first greeting of the risen Christ recorded in Scripture. As wars continued and at times intensified during Pope Leo’s first months, the pope has continued to be a voice for peace.
In June, after U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Pope Leo urged world leaders “to stop the tragedy of war before it becomes an irreparable abyss.” Following an Israeli strike that killed three people at Gaza’s only Catholic church in July, he appealed for “a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and full respect for humanitarian law.”
“Today more than ever, humanity cries out and pleads for peace,” the pope said during an Angelus from the window of the Apostolic Palace.
Leo also met with bishops and pilgrims from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Castel Gandolfo in July, where the two discussed the urgency of “just and lasting paths of peace,” according to the Vatican.
Pope Leo XIV greets Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Castel Gandolfo on July 9, 2025. Credit: Vatican Media
Leo carries the Eucharist through the streets of Rome
Pope Leo personally carried the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of Rome during a Corpus Christi procession from the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran to the Basilica of St. Mary Major.
“Together, as shepherds and flock, we will feed on the Blessed Sacrament, adore him, and carry him through the streets,” he said. “In doing so, we will present him before the eyes, the consciences, and the hearts of the people.”
More than 20,000 people turned out for Leo XIV’s first Eucharistic procession as pope.
Pope Leo XIV leads a Eucharistic procession in Rome on June 22, 2025, for the feast of Corpus Christi. Credit: Daniel Ibañez/EWTN
Return to Castel Gandolfo
Pope Leo revived the papal tradition of spending summer days at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo. During his two-week stay in July, he led public Masses in local parishes, greeted pilgrims as he led the Angelus prayer in Liberty Square, and received visiting dignitaries. His stay marks the first papal summer retreat in the lakeside town since the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI.
The sun burst through raindrops right as Pope Leo XIV appeared in front of the apostolic palace of Castel Gandolfo to give the Angelus address on July 13, 2025. Credit: Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
Pope Leo introduces the world to great quotes by St. Augustine
A member of the Augustinian order, Pope Leo has quoted St. Augustine in nearly every one of his homilies as pope. In his first public words on May 8, he said: “I am an Augustinian, a son of St. Augustine, who once said, ‘With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop.’”
Addressing 1 million young people at the Jubilee of Youth in August, he quoted Augustine’s “Confessions”: “You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness… I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.”
Pope Leo XIV greets crowds at the Jubilee of Youth on Aug. 3, 2025, at Tor Vergata in Rome. Credit: Vatican Media
A focus on artificial intelligence
Pope Leo has frequently spoken about artificial intelligence (AI), which is already shaping up to be a topic of interest in his pontificate with many hoping that he will address it in an encyclical.
Early on in his pontificate, Leo drew parallels between his namesake Pope Leo XIII, who responded to the industrial revolution with Rerum Novarum, and today’s digital revolution, explaining that the rise of AI poses “new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.”
“Humanity is at a crossroads, facing the immense potential generated by the digital revolution driven by artificial intelligence,” he warned in a message to the Geneva-based AI for Good Summit. “The impact of this revolution is far-reaching, transforming areas such as education, work, art, health care, governance, the military, and communication.”
Pope Leo XIV smiles during his Wednesday general audience on Aug. 13, 2025, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
The Vatican website received a revamp shortly after Leo’s election, and insiders noted Leo’s relatively tech-savvy background, including a personal Twitter account prior to his papacy.
The pope also expressed concern in a speech to another AI conference about the negative effects that AI can have on the “intellectual and neurological development” of rising generations and the “loss of the sense of the human” that societies are experiencing.
Leo declares a new doctor of the Church
In one of his most significant theological gestures, Pope Leo named St. John Henry Newman, a 19th-century English convert from Anglicanism, a doctor of the Church — a rare title given to just 37 other saints. The title is granted in recognition of an already canonized saint’s significant contribution to advancing the Church’s knowledge of doctrine, theology, or spirituality.
Pope Leo XIV greets hundreds of thousands of youth and pilgrims ahead of a vigil at Tor Vergata, Rome, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025. Credit: Mateusz Opila
Leo also approved the upcoming canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati in September as the first saints of his pontificate. He greenlit seven additional causes for canonization, including that of Blessed Bartolo Longo, a former satanist turned founder of the Marian shrine in Pompeii.
Carrying the cross before a million young people at the Jubilee of Youth
Pope Leo addressed the largest crowd of his papacy to date at the Jubilee of Youth, where an estimated 1 million young adults camped out in fields in Tor Vergata, southeast of Rome.
He surprised them by walking through the crowd to the stage, personally carrying the jubilee cross. During the evening vigil, he answered youth questions in English, Italian, and Spanish, offering reflections on loneliness, discernment, and friendship with Christ.
Pope Leo XIV leads young people from around the world in a procession, carrying the Jubilee Year Cross during the Jubilee of Youth this evening in Tor Vergata, on the outskirts of Rome. pic.twitter.com/XPjOnQg9p9
After Eucharistic adoration, chants of “Papa Leone!” echoed long into the night. Leo stayed past 10 p.m. — well beyond the scheduled end.
Earlier in the week, he made a surprise appearance at the opening Mass, joyfully proclaiming in English: “Jesus tells us: You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world!” and the crowd erupted in cheers.
Denver Newsroom, Aug 25, 2022 / 06:00 am (CNA).
El Nuevo Chipote, or simply El Chipote, opened in February 2019 to replace the old prison of the same name and was soon known as a torture prison, where the Nicaraguan dictatorship… […]
27 Comments
Is this the same Pope who gave the green light for transgender Godparents and who seems to indicate that the disorder is just one amongst many? He needs to get his story straight, in the real world, ordinary Catholics and others are desperate for moral guidance and support, but the main Christian churches seem obsessed with falling in line with secular government.
Yes, in the real world. ordinary Catholics and others are desperate for support. For guidance, though — on this issue? There are indeed some thorny moral issues, but there are others for which “I didn’t know” is simply not a plausible excuse. I think it is genuinely possible for someone not to recognize that a child at the embryonic stage of development really is a human person, but I cannot accept that excuse for partial-birth abortion, let alone allowing children who survive abortion to die due to intentional neglect. Sometimes the problem is not that evil is not recognized, but that evil is desired; in such case support might be needed for those who oppose evil, but guidance is pointless.
This guy talks a good game. And every time he turns right around and undoes it all with his decisions, his actions, his off-the-cuff remarks. He has lost all credibility. Don’t even bother reporting his speeches anymore; it’s all a sick game.
Pure cant and utter hypocrisy from a figure known universally as a man who says one thing in his words while he does the opposite in his actions. He receives transsexual prostitutes regularly in monthly luncheons, supports them financially, and never even remotely attempts their repentance and conversion. For almost 11 years he has surrounded himself with a cabal of grotesque homosexuals in the Vatican and has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect extreme homosexual predators like his favorites Rupnick and Zancetta from canonical and even secular criminal penalties.
The manifestation of God’s love in paradise is going to be Male-Female love, and anyone living in this world fails to conclude so is unlikely to gain everlasting life! There is no marriage (as there is no need of raising children) nor sexless lives, but both males and females are like angels and effectively (material)bodies of invisible and essenceless God, true Advaitha.
It’s the very gender ideology that even suggests that the sexual relationship of two men can be blessed. This Vatican creates confusion at every turn. The value of the Petrine ministry as a visible sign that the Church is One (i.e. a unifying sign) is lost on this pontiff. Even using the term “pontiff” to describe Francis is risable since the word pontiff comes from the root word meaning bridge. If anything, this Pope has been blowing up bridges since the day he was elected.
We read: “…the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences.”
The papal message throughout the article is sound and worthy of respect. And, yet, might the second-ugliest danger be the elevation of differences–as in some aspects of a tensely “polyhedral” and synodal Church?
Instead, how, both, to affirm things concrete (like personal “vocations”), but without appearing to discount the meaning of the “concrete universal” in the historical and incarnate Jesus Christ, as reflected in moral absolutes (Veritatis Splendor)?
How to affirm the existential “conscience” and “will,” but without seeming to omit the more traditional and informative “intellect” (Augustine: Man as memory, intellect and will)?
How to leaven an unfolding future at risk of ideological forwardism, but without demeaning or evading, and never formally contradicting the “backwarist’s” memory and Magisterium?
How to not only maintain the “tension” between man and woman, but affirm the larger and whole unity of “complementarity”? Analogous to the “hermeneutics of continuity” versus discontinuity?
___________________________________________
So, about the dangerous ideology of fluid “gender theory,” and the seeming carve-out of concrete “couples” (Fiducia Supplicans?)….And with Hamlet: “To truly bless the complementary, or to facsimile-bless the irregularly coupled, that is the question.”
No. Trafficking baby immigrants from their mother’s wombs to demonic, barbaric deaths, [before, during or after birth] or in and from the cryogenic wombs, or then, keeping them as cryogenic abandoned orphans for so much time and then killing unjustly…and others….and for money and power!!! These are worse, in kind and in degree.
Who was worse, Hitler, Himmler, or Mengele? Personally, I’m inclined to say Mengele, but (a) it’s really hard to say, and (b) it doesn’t matter at all. Beyond a certain level of nastiness, it’s best not to think about too much. And so it is with the two types of behavior you’re comparing.
They can be isolated and disparaged, but how do we draw them to Christ and his message? One failed Methodology…
Michelle Bachmann and her husband Marcus ran a “clinic” in Minnesota entitled “Pray the Gay away”. It was closed for engaging in a discredited therapy designed to convert gays to straights through prayer and self-reflection and not keeping “patient” records. It appears that lack of documentation includes successes.
Are our prayers unanswered since they continue the “out of the closet in your face” attitude? Am a fortunate father for not having a Gay child? I see no mention of parental guidance
From the very beginning of his papacy the overwhelming focus of Pope Francis has been on seeking Our Lord’s Mercy. This was the reason for declaring the year of mercy. (You protestants out there have you ever kicked off a truly global revival for an entire year? LOL) Everything is spelled out in the book “The Name Of God Is Mercy” in which Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli has long conversations with Pope Francis who explains it all. He NEVER endorses any kind of sin but teaches that there is deliverance even for those so buried in it that they have despaired of ever escaping. There is no confusion here except for those have some confusion originating in some of the storm of conflicting worldly outlooks which the pope has loosely termed ideology.
I beg your pardon, but has Pope Francis ever kicked off a truly global revival (LOL)? Oh, he can give a year a name, just the same as Congress can declare May 10 National Liver and Onions Day — but I would need evidence to believe that the pope’s declaration prompted an ACTUAL revival or to believe that the congressional declaration ACTUALLY increased the consumption of liver and onions.
Concerning the last comments by Ouris and Peter Beaulieu Their contradictions are obvious. If you were a catholic regularly attending mass during the year of mercy and following catholic media you would certainly have known what the focus of the Universal Church was. If you are not catholic and/or were not attending mass regularly then you would not have a clue and your demand for proof is so much liver and onions. Pope Francis preaches the Mercy of Christ. He preaches that people trapped in life of habitual mortal sin can be delivered and healed by seeking forgiveness of Jesus Who IS love and mercy. Teaching this is doing the will of God if anything ever is. To throw Mt.7:21 around as an insinuation is not doing God’s will. The point of mentioning the book “The Name Of God Is Mercy” is that we can no longer be couch potatoes where the facts are concerned these days. We have to the extent reasonably possible go to the trouble to learn the whole story. There are inexpensive books on Pope Francis teachings. They are inspiring as well as informative so check Amazon. At the beginning of this month I did a search for the popes prayer intention for March. I found six good online sources; these will serve to keep up with his teachings and observations without too much trouble. We as Catholics owe this to the man chosen by the Holy Spirit to be the Vicker of Christ.
This pope protects sexual predators, encourages and supports gay clergy, blesses gay couples, prioritizes a leftist climate agenda over more pressing spiritual concerns, and regularly attacks faithful traditional Catholics. Given his track record, there’s nothing this pope says that any discerning believer needs to take seriously.
Yes, of course, about “not all gays are predators.”
But the gayme-changer was when the predatory faction first sought civil unions by saying this was not a half-way house to full redefinition of “marriage;” immediately followed by the aggressive oxymoron of gay “marriage.” Even the ersatz United State Supreme Court got in the act, so to speak.
A tough ratchet to undo, if the compassionate thing is to “‘convert’ them”, not only them but everyone else for whatever temptations afflict the wider population. Instead, why not simply dilute the drop of cyanide in the punchbowl with spontaneous and informal semi-blessings poured on every kind of “irregular” coupling floating around?
Just move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.
Broadbrush! Athanasius did not claim or even imply that all “Gays are predators.”
Broadbrush! The wrongly alleged disparagement is not a blatant reason why “we are failing to ‘convert’ them.”
On the other hand, failing to properly counsel gays who actively engage in homosexual sex that such is mortally sinful, and that they should repent and do what’s necessary to avoid both the sinning and occasions of such sins demonstrates a lack of love for these people and the fate of their immortal souls.
We read: “[Pope Francis] preaches that people trapped in life of habitual mortal sin can be delivered and healed by seeking forgiveness of Jesus Who IS love and mercy.”
OF COURSE! ABSOLUTELY. But, the divisive ambiguity and (some say) capitulation is something else; it’s the inventive half-blessing of doubled “couples” as such, rather than the undivided and real blessing of “individual people” as such.
Might we finally consider the possibility that no longer being able to even SEE the difference (!) between homosexual/anti-binary actions and complementary/binary intercourse between a man and a woman IS an inflicted or acquired blindness at the very center of the parody (not parity)?
Is even the seeing flattened and displaced by the doing?
Homosexuals who successfully free themselves from the non-seeing (!) describe the “AHA MOMENT” that enabled their “conversion.” They report that this moment of freedom and insight is similar to playing cards, and then discovering that they’ve been playing with two cards stuck together, and have been betting on the wrong card.
They want to get back into the real world. The successful conversion therapist Dr. Nicolosi (RIP) explained this moment—as described NOT by him but by his clients!
But, OF COURSE, his finding and the testimony of his clients are often illegal and even punished by the establishment. Thomas More faced a similar persecution under the establishment of his day: “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s [the establishment’s!] command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign” (Robert Bolt, “A Man for All Seasons,” 1962).
So, WHAT ABOUT the difference between the fully real blessing of struggling (and often victimized) persons as such, versus any pseudo-blessing of irregular “couples” as such?
This pope is the worst in my lifetime. He is political. He is singlehanded ly destroying the Catholic Church. I don’t need to hear him speak about climate change. He doesn’t need to tell America to have open borders. I was furious when he opened the door to gays. If they do not like the Catholic beliefs of a man and a woman, go to another church but leave mine alone. He needs to retire. We need a pope that speaks of helping the poor, respecting marriage between a man and a woman, the sanctity of life. I do not want to hear anything political. I go to church for a break from the real world. I need hope.
Is this the same Pope who gave the green light for transgender Godparents and who seems to indicate that the disorder is just one amongst many? He needs to get his story straight, in the real world, ordinary Catholics and others are desperate for moral guidance and support, but the main Christian churches seem obsessed with falling in line with secular government.
Yes, in the real world. ordinary Catholics and others are desperate for support. For guidance, though — on this issue? There are indeed some thorny moral issues, but there are others for which “I didn’t know” is simply not a plausible excuse. I think it is genuinely possible for someone not to recognize that a child at the embryonic stage of development really is a human person, but I cannot accept that excuse for partial-birth abortion, let alone allowing children who survive abortion to die due to intentional neglect. Sometimes the problem is not that evil is not recognized, but that evil is desired; in such case support might be needed for those who oppose evil, but guidance is pointless.
Yep. Same guy. Same one who introduced an Argentinian friend as “she who was he but now is she.”
This guy talks a good game. And every time he turns right around and undoes it all with his decisions, his actions, his off-the-cuff remarks. He has lost all credibility. Don’t even bother reporting his speeches anymore; it’s all a sick game.
Pure cant and utter hypocrisy from a figure known universally as a man who says one thing in his words while he does the opposite in his actions. He receives transsexual prostitutes regularly in monthly luncheons, supports them financially, and never even remotely attempts their repentance and conversion. For almost 11 years he has surrounded himself with a cabal of grotesque homosexuals in the Vatican and has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect extreme homosexual predators like his favorites Rupnick and Zancetta from canonical and even secular criminal penalties.
The manifestation of God’s love in paradise is going to be Male-Female love, and anyone living in this world fails to conclude so is unlikely to gain everlasting life! There is no marriage (as there is no need of raising children) nor sexless lives, but both males and females are like angels and effectively (material)bodies of invisible and essenceless God, true Advaitha.
The Holy Family of Nazareth is an inspiration for all times. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – Pray for us.
It’s the very gender ideology that even suggests that the sexual relationship of two men can be blessed. This Vatican creates confusion at every turn. The value of the Petrine ministry as a visible sign that the Church is One (i.e. a unifying sign) is lost on this pontiff. Even using the term “pontiff” to describe Francis is risable since the word pontiff comes from the root word meaning bridge. If anything, this Pope has been blowing up bridges since the day he was elected.
I’m just glad he didn’t say that the ugliest danger is Tradionalist Catholics.
He might not say it, but that seems to be what he thinks.
Today the greatest danger is mealymouthed Modernism that whipsaws the faithful with a Peronist form of weaponized ambiguity.
We read: “…the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences.”
The papal message throughout the article is sound and worthy of respect. And, yet, might the second-ugliest danger be the elevation of differences–as in some aspects of a tensely “polyhedral” and synodal Church?
Instead, how, both, to affirm things concrete (like personal “vocations”), but without appearing to discount the meaning of the “concrete universal” in the historical and incarnate Jesus Christ, as reflected in moral absolutes (Veritatis Splendor)?
How to affirm the existential “conscience” and “will,” but without seeming to omit the more traditional and informative “intellect” (Augustine: Man as memory, intellect and will)?
How to leaven an unfolding future at risk of ideological forwardism, but without demeaning or evading, and never formally contradicting the “backwarist’s” memory and Magisterium?
How to not only maintain the “tension” between man and woman, but affirm the larger and whole unity of “complementarity”? Analogous to the “hermeneutics of continuity” versus discontinuity?
___________________________________________
So, about the dangerous ideology of fluid “gender theory,” and the seeming carve-out of concrete “couples” (Fiducia Supplicans?)….And with Hamlet: “To truly bless the complementary, or to facsimile-bless the irregularly coupled, that is the question.”
No. Trafficking baby immigrants from their mother’s wombs to demonic, barbaric deaths, [before, during or after birth] or in and from the cryogenic wombs, or then, keeping them as cryogenic abandoned orphans for so much time and then killing unjustly…and others….and for money and power!!! These are worse, in kind and in degree.
Who was worse, Hitler, Himmler, or Mengele? Personally, I’m inclined to say Mengele, but (a) it’s really hard to say, and (b) it doesn’t matter at all. Beyond a certain level of nastiness, it’s best not to think about too much. And so it is with the two types of behavior you’re comparing.
They can be isolated and disparaged, but how do we draw them to Christ and his message? One failed Methodology…
Michelle Bachmann and her husband Marcus ran a “clinic” in Minnesota entitled “Pray the Gay away”. It was closed for engaging in a discredited therapy designed to convert gays to straights through prayer and self-reflection and not keeping “patient” records. It appears that lack of documentation includes successes.
Are our prayers unanswered since they continue the “out of the closet in your face” attitude? Am a fortunate father for not having a Gay child? I see no mention of parental guidance
Pray for God’s help.
From the very beginning of his papacy the overwhelming focus of Pope Francis has been on seeking Our Lord’s Mercy. This was the reason for declaring the year of mercy. (You protestants out there have you ever kicked off a truly global revival for an entire year? LOL) Everything is spelled out in the book “The Name Of God Is Mercy” in which Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli has long conversations with Pope Francis who explains it all. He NEVER endorses any kind of sin but teaches that there is deliverance even for those so buried in it that they have despaired of ever escaping. There is no confusion here except for those have some confusion originating in some of the storm of conflicting worldly outlooks which the pope has loosely termed ideology.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 7:21).
“Everyone, everyone,” an ideology?
I beg your pardon, but has Pope Francis ever kicked off a truly global revival (LOL)? Oh, he can give a year a name, just the same as Congress can declare May 10 National Liver and Onions Day — but I would need evidence to believe that the pope’s declaration prompted an ACTUAL revival or to believe that the congressional declaration ACTUALLY increased the consumption of liver and onions.
Concerning the last comments by Ouris and Peter Beaulieu Their contradictions are obvious. If you were a catholic regularly attending mass during the year of mercy and following catholic media you would certainly have known what the focus of the Universal Church was. If you are not catholic and/or were not attending mass regularly then you would not have a clue and your demand for proof is so much liver and onions. Pope Francis preaches the Mercy of Christ. He preaches that people trapped in life of habitual mortal sin can be delivered and healed by seeking forgiveness of Jesus Who IS love and mercy. Teaching this is doing the will of God if anything ever is. To throw Mt.7:21 around as an insinuation is not doing God’s will. The point of mentioning the book “The Name Of God Is Mercy” is that we can no longer be couch potatoes where the facts are concerned these days. We have to the extent reasonably possible go to the trouble to learn the whole story. There are inexpensive books on Pope Francis teachings. They are inspiring as well as informative so check Amazon. At the beginning of this month I did a search for the popes prayer intention for March. I found six good online sources; these will serve to keep up with his teachings and observations without too much trouble. We as Catholics owe this to the man chosen by the Holy Spirit to be the Vicker of Christ.
This pope protects sexual predators, encourages and supports gay clergy, blesses gay couples, prioritizes a leftist climate agenda over more pressing spiritual concerns, and regularly attacks faithful traditional Catholics. Given his track record, there’s nothing this pope says that any discerning believer needs to take seriously.
Broadbrush! Not all Gays are predators. That very disparagement is a blatant reason why we are failing to “convert” them.
We don’t convert them or anyone else. Repentance and faith are the work of the Holy Spirit alone. Stop defending the indefensible.
Yes, of course, about “not all gays are predators.”
But the gayme-changer was when the predatory faction first sought civil unions by saying this was not a half-way house to full redefinition of “marriage;” immediately followed by the aggressive oxymoron of gay “marriage.” Even the ersatz United State Supreme Court got in the act, so to speak.
A tough ratchet to undo, if the compassionate thing is to “‘convert’ them”, not only them but everyone else for whatever temptations afflict the wider population. Instead, why not simply dilute the drop of cyanide in the punchbowl with spontaneous and informal semi-blessings poured on every kind of “irregular” coupling floating around?
Just move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.
Broadbrush! Athanasius did not claim or even imply that all “Gays are predators.”
Broadbrush! The wrongly alleged disparagement is not a blatant reason why “we are failing to ‘convert’ them.”
On the other hand, failing to properly counsel gays who actively engage in homosexual sex that such is mortally sinful, and that they should repent and do what’s necessary to avoid both the sinning and occasions of such sins demonstrates a lack of love for these people and the fate of their immortal souls.
We read: “[Pope Francis] preaches that people trapped in life of habitual mortal sin can be delivered and healed by seeking forgiveness of Jesus Who IS love and mercy.”
OF COURSE! ABSOLUTELY. But, the divisive ambiguity and (some say) capitulation is something else; it’s the inventive half-blessing of doubled “couples” as such, rather than the undivided and real blessing of “individual people” as such.
Might we finally consider the possibility that no longer being able to even SEE the difference (!) between homosexual/anti-binary actions and complementary/binary intercourse between a man and a woman IS an inflicted or acquired blindness at the very center of the parody (not parity)?
Is even the seeing flattened and displaced by the doing?
Homosexuals who successfully free themselves from the non-seeing (!) describe the “AHA MOMENT” that enabled their “conversion.” They report that this moment of freedom and insight is similar to playing cards, and then discovering that they’ve been playing with two cards stuck together, and have been betting on the wrong card.
They want to get back into the real world. The successful conversion therapist Dr. Nicolosi (RIP) explained this moment—as described NOT by him but by his clients!
But, OF COURSE, his finding and the testimony of his clients are often illegal and even punished by the establishment. Thomas More faced a similar persecution under the establishment of his day: “Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s [the establishment’s!] command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign” (Robert Bolt, “A Man for All Seasons,” 1962).
So, WHAT ABOUT the difference between the fully real blessing of struggling (and often victimized) persons as such, versus any pseudo-blessing of irregular “couples” as such?
This pope is the worst in my lifetime. He is political. He is singlehanded ly destroying the Catholic Church. I don’t need to hear him speak about climate change. He doesn’t need to tell America to have open borders. I was furious when he opened the door to gays. If they do not like the Catholic beliefs of a man and a woman, go to another church but leave mine alone. He needs to retire. We need a pope that speaks of helping the poor, respecting marriage between a man and a woman, the sanctity of life. I do not want to hear anything political. I go to church for a break from the real world. I need hope.