Flirting with schism: The right-wing effort to delegitimize Pope Francis

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CilladeRoma said:
My experience tells me that those who on this forum who would be labeled heterodox, progressive or liberal, just don’t understand what the Church teaches and why.
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I couldn t agree more about this.
It is also very foreign,at least for me.
 
Thank you for your patience. My Spanglish is a challenge to patience for posters, I know…
Thanks for asking,Magdalena.
 
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You are not from the US, are you?

Everything here falls along political (liberal/conservative) lines.

Drives me batty!! 😒
 
No,I am not.
Yes… It looks kind of a habit.
. But I love " these guys" dearly. Labelling,pigeonholes, and all 😄
 
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CilladeRoma said:
Having been on both sides of the equation,
I find the stuff coming from more traditional camps much more disturbing.
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I am not sure if more disturbing, but definitely louder. I don’t find the liberals less disturbing, I find them less often. The ultra liberal priests and religious of a generation ago did not attract any like minded vocations.

I have have cousins who are intensely liberal laity. They reject Church teaching on gay marriage, abortion, etc, but still identify with the Church, very loudly interested and critical of pastor or bishop. But they are in their 70s. Their kids are essentially outside the Church, couldn’t care less about church issues.

Pope Francis attracts a lot of admirers, inside and outside the Church. But no disciples, unlike his two predecessors.
 
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Reading the article linked in the OP, I feel like we are living on two different planets. He makes it sound like there is no crisis or not much of one at all, it’s all false or just a disgruntled cleric and it’s all falling apart.

The author accuses what he calls “right wing” Catholics or traditional Catholics of deligitimizing Pope Francis and causing schism all the while the author does nothing but put down past Popes, point fingers at those he disagrees with and makes it sound like this is just a U.S. problem.

Very disturbed by the link to National Catholic Reporter, as I said it is not a good place to find sound Catholic news.
 
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What, specifically, does he say about Benedict XVI that is untrue? Or JPII?
 
gracepoole said:
What, specifically, does he say about Benedict XVI that is untrue? Or JPII?
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It wasn’t that he was saying things untrue about Pope Benedict XVI or Saint Pope John Paul II but he was comparing them with Pope Francis, which if that is what the article woud have been about or titled fine, but it was about the causes of schism.

In other words, here is an article stating that some Catholics are causing schism because they are bothered by recent events and Pope Francis’ handling of such events while the author himself is comparing Pope Francis to past Popes who many Catholics are very devoted to. To me this author is causing divisions his ownself with this article.
 
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I’m not sure I understand. The crisis involves the current and past two popes. Yet the focus in many conservative outlets is Francis alone, which is what may cause division. ?
 
gracepoole said:
I’m not sure I understand. The crisis involves the current and past two popes. Yet the focus in many conservative outlets is Francis alone, which is what may cause division. ?
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Some “conservative outlets” are irresponsible. They will attack anything, were never approved by the Church.

But there are responsible people, always in union with their bishop, who did raise concerns about some in the hierarchy long before Pope Francis. Some of this was doctrinal, some other moral.(Doctrinal confusion leads to immoral actions, played out in seminaries, and other places).

Responsible conservatives are not blaming Pope Francis for causing the crisis, but he seems unable to respond to the underlying problems, part of which is manifested in this crisis.

St JP 2, and Benedict, were making progress addressing the underlying problem. Francis is not.
 
But isn’t Francis the only one of the three who actually took meaningful action against McCarrick?
 
Regarding the crisis, I don’t know which Pope had what specific info, and took what action.

I’m referring to the underlying problem. Since the late 1960s there were many signs of doctrinal confusion, especially on sexual matters in seminaries and elsewhere, as well as countless rumors of sexual immorality there.

We now know some of the rumors are true. Doctrinal confusion increases the chance of moral confusion, in the bedroom or in the chancery.

I don’t fault Pope Francis’ response to the crisis of the moment, I fault him for not taking positive actions taken by the 2 prior popes.
 
When you’re demanding a Pope resign, you’ve gone a great deal further than mere disagreement.
 
gracepoole said:
I’m not sure I understand. The crisis involves the current and past two popes. Yet the focus in many conservative outlets is Francis alone, which is what may cause division. ?
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So, instead of the author of the article looking at the crisis, as you point out, involving the current and past two popes in a nonbiased way, he appears, to me anyway, to be pitting the popes against each other and putting the focus on the past popes and conservative Catholics who are devoted to them. I found it ironic that the title was flirting with schism when the author himself appeared to be causing division also.

There are responsible, Catholic web sites and news outlets who are reporting the crisis in a non biased but very serious way. I did not see that with this article.
gracepoole said:
But isn’t Francis the only one of the three who actually took meaningful action against McCarrick?
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I can not answer for Pope John Paul II because I haven’t heard or read anything about his actions but Pope Benedict did take action against McCarrick. It was apparently privately. It is just since this came out publicly and we are in a way more public world today, Pope Francis had to act. As the article says Pope Francis is the only one who took public action against McCarrick but according to reports Pope Francis had earlier removed the sanctions Pope Benedict had on McCarrick and placed him in the position he was in and involved him in the process of choosing others in the hierarchy. This is what is upsetting.
 
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… and involved him in the process of choosing others in the hierarchy. This is what is upsetting.

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Upsetting is right.
Did Pope Francis rely on the judgement of ++ McCarrick as one of his go to people in dealing with the US? If so, what appointments did he influence?

Francis didn’t cause the divisions in the US Church. But his actions, and his advisors, made the divisions worse. The Vaticans silence on the McCarrick connection to the pope as advisor, and (possibly) to the US Cardinals Francis appointed will not be released in this pontificate, maybe not in our lifetime.
 
MagdalenaRita said:
but according to reports Pope Francis had earlier removed the sanctions Pope Benedict had on McCarrick and placed him in the position he was in and involved him in the process of choosing others in the hierarchy. This is what is upsetting
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There were no canonical sanctions. The most I have heard is that Pope Benedict asked cardinal McCarrick to keep a low profile, but McCarrick still testified in front of Congress, received awards (at a public event where Vigano spoke highly of him), visited Pope Benedict and the Vatican and still celebrated Mass in public. And even if there was a private request for Mccarrick to do anything at all, it was not enforced and Pope Benedict let it slide. The USCCB let it slide.

It was only after allegations in NY of abuse of minors in the 1970s were made in 2017, and the finding of the NY Archdiocese in June 2018 that the allegations were credible caused any actual punishment to happen.
 
One of the issues with the sanctions on McCarrick was that his earlier allegations and rumors being floated around involved misconduct with other adult seminarians, not minors. Which probably explains why there were no formal and public sanctions and why a lot of people sat on their hands and looked the other way about it. He was not actually formally sanctioned publicly until it came out earlier this summer that his misconduct also involved minors. It’s possible that attempts could have been made to discipline McCarrick privately because it was a matter concerning adults, but I’m not expecting that we will ever really know what happened.

I certainly do find it credible that he would have ignored any penance or sanctions that would have been given to him privately if any of that had ever happened. He flat out ignored then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter to the bishops in 2004 about not giving communion to pro-choice politicians and was a very influential fundraiser who pretty much felt he could do whatever he wanted.
 
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