Tag Archives: Pope Francis

CATASTROPHE! A Cardinal’s Warning

January 13, 2023 – 1:54 pm

CATASTROPHE!: A WARNING FROM THE LATE CARDINAL PELL

The late Cardinal Pell has been revealed as the source of a scathing indictment of the current pope, posted anonymously (by “Demos”) last April in a letter to all Catholic Cardinals and Bishops.

The charges are clear and damning.  The papal failure to respond to heretical teachings by the Germans. The idolatrous Pachamama worship. The persecution of charismatics and contemplative orders of nuns. The ghettoization of Latin Mass traditionalists.  The abandonment of faithful Catholics in China and Ukraine. The corruption of the Jesuit order. The Academy for Life gravely damaged, e.g., some members recently supported assisted suicide. The Pontifical Academies have members and visiting speakers who support abortion.

“After Vatican II, Catholic authorities often underestimated the hostile power of secularization, the world, flesh, and the devil, especially in the Western world and overestimated the influence and strength of the Catholic Church.

He summarizes: in the past, the saying was “Roma locuta. Causa finita est.” (Rome has spoken; the case is closed). Today it is: “Roma loquitur. Confusio augetur.” (Rome talks, confusion grows.)

And he wisely warns: “Schism is not likely to occur from the left, who often sit lightly to doctrinal issues. Schism is more likely to come from the right and is always possible when liturgical tensions are inflamed and not dampened.”

I have attached here the full text of Cardinal Pell’s prophetic letter.

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THE VATICAN TODAY

Commentators of every school, if for different reasons, with the possible exception of Father Spadaro, SJ, agree that this pontificate is a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe.

Continue reading →
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Letter to My Listening Bishop

March 12, 2022 – 8:46 am

[As you probably know, the Catholic Church has directed all bishops to hold “listening sessions” with parishioners, to inquire how well the Church is “accompanying” Catholics through their faith journeys. I sent the following letter to my bishop since I could not attend the session near me. Whether you attend or not, please consider sending a similar letter.]

Dear Bishop Dewane,

The Listening Sessions present a great opportunity for laity to express our thoughts and concerns, for which I am grateful.  I may have difficulty getting to any of the sessions, so I want to express in written form what I would say to you if I were present in person.  (I also look forward to a possible Virtual Session, if it occurs.)

I am an adult convert and a parishioner of St. Raphael’s in Englewood, attending mass weekly. I also serve as an Extraordinary Lay Minister of the Eucharist, bringing communion to shut-ins. I participate in the Cornerstone Catholic Bible Study group.

The Church has accompanied me well in the brief years since my conversion, through good priests, good churches, and good friends.

But many things that I see in the wider Church are deeply disturbing to me. 

I see “Gay Pride” rainbow flags adorning churches, where humility should be preached and homosexual acts identified as sins.

I see the Holy Father cause pain to many faithful Catholic hearts by papal remarks mocking fruitful Catholic families “breeding like rabbits”.  My closest Catholic friends have four beautiful children, and I saw the hurt in their eyes when they heard this.

Continue reading →
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God’s Will? Really?

May 18, 2020 – 6:56 pm

In a recent scriptural reading from First Peter, I was struck by this: “It is better to suffer for doing good, if this should be God’s will, than for doing evil.” (1 Peter 3:17) I wondered, as I often have: is it God’s will that some must suffer from the evil deeds of others?

I have always taken comfort from the inherent realism of Catholic doctrine. Evil exists because we have free will (or free choice), and we sometimes choose to do evil. It is really as simple as that. We cannot blame God for the evil that men choose to do, no matter how they hurt us in the process. This is the fundamentally difficult truth underlying the Holocaust.   Even though God could choose to intervene to prevent evil acts or their consequences, he does not do so because that would rob our freedom of all meaning. If we were free only to do good, then we would not be free, or human. Evil would not exist, and so neither would good.  I know that Christian theology declares that evil is only a negative, the absence of good; but without the possibility of evil, good also has no meaning in strictly human terms.  So for us, evil does indeed exist.

But does God will evil? Does he want person A to do evil deeds that hurt person B? I realize this is a central problem in the Bible. When Jesus prays in the Garden, he sets up an inherent dichotomy: “If it is possible, may this cup of suffering be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” This dual prayer reflects his dual nature, but in its ambiguity it raises the same question: Lord, do you really want me to suffer?

This could also be called the Judas problem. Does God really want Judas to betray His son?

In the Lord’s prayer, we ask (in a somewhat confusing subjunctive phrase) that “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We are asking that God help us to conform our will to his, so that we may want (and do) what he wants us to do. But what if He wants me to hurt another?  Is that possible?

This also drags me unwillingly into a confusion I have over the expression “God’s permissive will.” It was offered as a quick walk-back explanation for Pope Francis’ incomprehensible announcement that the existence of many religions in addition to the true Catholic Church must be God’s will. Early in 2019, in a joint statement with an Islamic leader, he stated “Plurality and diversity of religions…are an expression of the wise and divine will by which he created human beings.” Can heresy be God’s will, I ask? Religions espousing hate and encouraging murder are God’s will?

Relax, we are told, it only means God’s permissive will: not what He wants, but what He allows. Which presumably includes the Holocaust, communism, Rwandan genocide, and every other waking nightmare in human history? Thanks for the explanation, but…

It doesn’t help.  I’m still confused.

Can someone help me out with this?

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Vatican Betrayal of China Continues

March 24, 2020 – 10:25 pm

While keeping the past, present and future victims of the Wuhan Chinese Coronavirus Covid-19 are on your mind and in your prayers, give an extra prayer for the oppressed Catholics of the Middle Kingdom, crushed by the Chinese communist Party and cynically abandoned by the Vicar of Christ.

The heroic Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong has repeatedly rung the alarm bell about this crisis (see an article in Gatestone here), pounding on the Vatican doors to get the attention of the “people’s pope” (or am I thinking of Princess Diana?).  As usual, only silence in response.

Join me in praying for the success of Cardinal Zen. And when you pray for Pope Francis, join me in praying for his enlightenment and repentance, rather than his intentions. I shudder to think what those really are.

By davidsmith4002 | Posted in Church | Also tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Grow Up, Francis!

October 10, 2019 – 7:36 pm

A good friend, an Irish-Notre-Dame-cradle catholic, says “I still like this pope”. Despite the clue contained in that “still”, he seems mystified why anyone (like me) thinks the papacy (and the Church) took a nosedive when Benedict retired.

My own spiritual journey, leading to my now-two-year-old conversion, owed a great deal to Benedict XVI, and found me towards the end hung up on the problems of joining his successor’s church. I finally made it over that obstacle, but I came into the Church as a worried layman wondering why the current management seems so unworthy and unlike its predecessors.

My PF concerns do not entirely overlap with those of some of his conservative critics. The divorced/remarried communion issue is not mine. I am not divorced, and I certainly can understand why pastors do not want to confront their divorced/remarried parishioners with such a tough choice as no sex or no Eucharist. [I do think the church’s teaching errs by considering divorce as a matter between two adults (and God, of course), thereby making the same mistake as our courts do: treating the children as a collateral issue. In my view, divorce between childless adults is one thing, while divorce with children is wanton, cruel family destruction, a particularly hypocritical form of child abuse. But that does not make “Amoris Laetitia” a problem for me. I wrote about this in “Suffer the Little Children: Aquinas on Divorce“, below.]

His non-response to the sexual abuse crisis is another matter. Continue reading →

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PF and the Mirage of Fraternity

January 10, 2019 – 9:48 am

The most insightful thing I have read online lately comes from the always-insightful Maureen Mullarkey at studiomatters.com. Entitled “Francis and Mirages of Fraternity Part I”, it is an analysis of this pope’s Christmas message, filled as it is with the French Revoliution’s favorite cliche.

MM shares the trenchant analysis of Daniel J. Mahoney’s The Idol of Our Age, subtitled How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity.

You don’t need to be as brilliant as MM to notice that PF generally sounds like an episcopalian, modernizing, progressivist, liberation-theologist cum-feel-good political therapist.  Even while  abandoning the legacy of his predecessors’ rich theology, he exceeds their worst failings in the oversight of his clergy’s sins.  Where John Paul and Benedict too often failed to drive the worst abusers from the temple, PF welcomes them back.  Where they were too ready to forgive, he seems too eager to seat them at his right hand.

Anyway, I strongly recommend that you take a look here.

By davidsmith4002 | Posted in Church | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)

I’m back…

January 8, 2018 – 10:53 am

I must apologize to you, faithful reader, for my long absence.  I have been busy with a big change in my life.

I have joined the Catholic Church.   Finally.

You, faithful reader, are probably not surprised.  If you have followed my “spiritual progress reports” on this site, you must have seen it coming.  Strangely, I did not.

My reasons are easily summarized.  The gratitude problem: having no proper way to say “Thank You” for so many inexplicable blessings.  My need for moral guidance and support in battling my pride, my selfishness, my sloth, and my many other sins.

My need to make sense of existence.  My need for awareness of sanctity.  My need to learn to love better.

And, perhaps above all, my need for Hope in the face of despair.  Seeing this beautiful western world falling apart, seeing evil triumph on every side, seeing madness replace sanity.  If we are not in God’s hands, then all is lost.

“But what about the Pope?””, I hear you ask.  This bizarre modernist clown of a pope?  Join him?

For decades I have been growing closer to the Church precisely because of its popes.  Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI were the world’s clearest voices for reason, reality, and love.  JPII on communism, BXVI on Islam, and both on Western modernism, were lighthouses in a darkening world.  They showed the way.

I have written elsewhere on the shabby, secular, relativist, liberation-theologist, enemy of all that his predecessors built.  His presence was the final hurdle I had to get over before I could seal the deal.

But I was reassured by several thoughts.

First, I was asked by a counselor: “Who is the Head of the Church?”  I am old enough to spot a trick question when I hear one, so I caught the point.  Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church.  Not the Pope.

Second, I was reminded that the Catholic Church has survived intact, with doctrine essentially unchanged, for twenty centuries of  turmoil, often led by bad, weak or foolish popes and filled with cynical, power-hungry, licentious agnostic priests.  The only word for such vigorous survival is “miraculous”. No other human institution even comes close.

Third, I see daily demonstration that my concerns about the present pope are shared by many, many others in the Church.  I want to join and support them in their brave, often lonely defense of truth.

So, on September 21, I became a Catholic.  A dissident Catholic, but Catholic nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Progress Report on the Search for Faith

December 1, 2013 – 2:17 pm

[Written November 11, 2013]

Still searching.

The best result so far is that I can accept the Thomist logic of a plausible God.  But I cannot make the leap from this Philosopher’s God to a loving, caring, father God; and only such a God can offer Hope for what I love. (see previous posting)

The Catholic Church attracts me, calls to me.  Its commitment to Faith and Reason is essential: I cannot believe in a God who makes no sense.  This Thomist thought is one of the Catholics’ greatest contributions to humanity.  (Not to mention other gifts such as clarified morality, organized charity, and the sanctity of marriage.)

But sometimes the church seems to know too much.  Too much confident Dogma where it seems only Trust can serve.  Too much certainty regarding details of God’s thinking.

On this too-great certainty the Church has constructed a demand for trust in its own thinking; and the Church has too often been too wrong.  It has been the fountainhead of anti-Semitism.  It has massively and brutally inquired into individual souls.  It has criminalized heresy and apostasy.

To its credit, the modern Church has purged itself of these errors (sins).  This has been late in coming and grudgingly accepted, but it has happened.  The heroic efforts of the modern popes (from Pius XII to Benedict XVI) deserve honor.

I cannot oppose myself to the Catholic Church of today.  Indeed, the Church today stands as the leading champion in defense of almost all that I hold dear and that is now under such attack.  Family, Life, Truth.

So I find myself standing with the Church…but apart from it. Continue reading →

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