Lifesite News, Church Militant - what is their strategy in attacking the Pope?

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FiveLinden

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I have been reading Lifesite News and Church Militant on the recent developments in the abuse crisis. I do not understand their strategy, which appears to be common to them both. A strategy must have both an end, and means. The means they are deploying are clear: rename the abuse issue as a homosexual issue; accuse liberal priests, bishops and Cardinals as ‘homosexualists’; link them to the Pope; undermine confidence in them. The immediate end as stated seems to be 'remove the ‘homosexualists’, get the Pope to resign.

But if their theories are correct, what does this end achieve? Surely the end would be chaos, with no certainty that things would improve (from their point of view)?

Tactics with strategy it says in "The Art of War’ is the noise before defeat. Do they know what they are doing? What have I missed?
 
It’s basically standard scorched earth policy. They have come to the conclusion that they will never gain control of the Church, and have decided to leave and set out on their own sedevacantist paths, but not before destroying it for those who stay.

There was a time, inspired by something Pope Benedict said, that they had a plan to drive out from the Church anyone who doesn’t agree with them. They seem to have done the demographic mathematics and come to the realization that that wasn’t going to happen. The big trigger seems to be the fact that 50% of the voting-age cardinals are now, or will be within the next month or two, appointees of Pope Francis. Their chances of a “savior” like Robert Sarah being elected are now zero, not that they were ever realistic in the first place.

Traditionalists and what Voris calls his “pro-trump Catholics” will start dropping out of the Church in droves, driven by their desire for ideological purity and the separatism that inevitably flows from it. It’s the same scenario that has played out in the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and is underway in the United Methodist Church and other Churches.

Problem for them is that they will end up scattered in a rag-tag collection of tiny “True Catholics” sects that want little to do with each other, most of which will quickly evaporate due to natural demographic attrition. So their strategy has an element of suicide attack mentality to it.
 
FiveLinden said:
I have been reading Lifesite News and Church Militant
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I’m so sorry. No one should ever be subjected to that. They are the worst kind of anti-Catholics, posing as the only “true, pure” Catholics the rest of us can only ever aspire to become while the Church herself has to take steps to try to limit how they brand their misinformation.
 
Praying for our church and the Pope… all the victims and all the perps…
 
That “full communion” is rapidly emptying out, and will run out entirely if Pope Francis lasts a while and the next pope is not to their liking. Sorry, but I see the exact thing playing out that has already played out in the Protestant churches I listed above, and I see no reason why it should play out otherwise.
 
I don’t see LSN as attacking the pope. (I haven’t been to CM in a while so I can’t say.)

The idea that there’s active homosexuality within the priesthood and Church hierarchy is too unfathomable to believe. But if it’s true, and it is the cause of the sexual abuse scandal, it must be rooted out.

A disease needs to be treated. Pus needs to be drained. Wound needs to be cauterized before causing sepsis.

You may be a faithful Catholic. But an abuse victim, their family and friends, etc may not be so strong to stick around when the Church seems to be deaf to their suffering and pleas.

Sexual morality, social justice. These are both important matters.

So it’s so odd to me that some in the Church hierarchy preaches one and brushes the other under the rug.

We are not in competition. We need to be united. We need to somehow find enough common ground to function.

How scandalous. Bishops against bishops, cardinals against cardinals.

St. Paul chastised lay people who sued each other. But it’s the Church leaders themselves fighting amongst themselves in the sight of the entire world. ::sigh::
 
Most were quite happy with Pope John Paul II. Those that weren’t have long left the Church for schismatic groups.
Ryan1 said:
Drive out of the church or call sinners to repentance?
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Clearly the former, as Nuclear Receptor demonstrates in his post. That strategy has failed, however.
 
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AndrewAxland said:
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mrsdizzyd:
Pope Francis is orthodox.
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The rad trads and ultra-conservatives are not all that convinced.
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It doesn’t much matter what they suspect. He is orthodox. They may not like the way he speaks or how he writes. They may wish he was more of a theologian. They may bristle at his pastoral style. Nevertheless, he is orthodox. To suggest anything else is to defame him.
 
AndrewAxland said:
Problem for them is that they will end up scattered in a rag-tag collection of tiny “True Catholics” sects that want little to do with each other, most of which will quickly evaporate due to natural demographic attrition. So their strategy has an element of suicide attack mentality to it.
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Do you really think this is a likely resolution of this? Are their a sufficient number of priests and other officials as well as people with money, ready to not just split but to organize new sects?

I just don’t see it as very likely at all.
 
Orthopraxy is another doubt. Washing the feet of women on Maundy Thursday is yet another break with our traditions.
 
mrsdizzyd said:
It doesn’t much matter what they suspect. He is orthodox.
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I agree. But that doesn’t change the fact that they don’t.
Augustinian said:
Do you really think this is a likely resolution of this? Are their a sufficient number of priests and other officials as well as people with money, ready to not just split but to organize new sects?
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Very likely. It has been the pattern with other churches like the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American, and several other smaller groups. The rad trads and ultra-conervatives have attempted to create a “church within the Church”, but it’s not getting the traction they expected, mainly because they alienated moderate conservatives. Ideological purity and separatism go hand in hand.

Good that you pointed out the matter of money. You are aware that some of them have ceased donating to the Church?
 
Ryan1 said:
Orthopraxy is another doubt. Washing the feet of women on Maundy Thursday is yet another break with our traditions.
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Exactly. Rad trads and ultra-conservatives are more attached to their conception of “tradition” than they are to the concept of the papacy or a untied institutional church. That is what makes separation so tempting for them.
 
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The Trads that are now “cool” with St. John Paul II would probably have been lighting up this forum in 1988 when Archbishop Lefebvre was excommunicated, if this was around back then. From the changing of Canon Law in 1983 to visiting a Synagogue—I can only imagine the call for heads on this forum (which of course did not exist) in the 1980s.
 
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