Supporting the Pope

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Tis_Bearself said:
No, please let us apply some common sense about the purpose of having a central leader and how large organizations are supposed to operate in order to provide some stability.
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Your common sense does not change the ecclesiology God set up. Read your catechism on the office of Bishops. That’s something Christ created. You can’t just turn it into “employee of the pope” based on your common sense. The Catholic Church is not a commonsensical institution.
 
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I fully support the unique role of the papacy as indispensable in the Church, though others have unique roles as well, including me.

I haven’t seen evidence the Pope has allowed or covered up sex abuse. The records of the church are not any more “sealed up” than government agencies, including the one I worked for, or other denominations.

The Pope has not taught false doctrine, but allowed prominent appointees to create ambiguity, leading others to that. Unlike his two predecessors he has failed to affirm the most forgotten or unpopular truths, and has often repeated the same good ideas already popular and familiar anyway.

He has been divisive and partisan, firing competent people because they are conservative. St JP 2 appointed people, and retained some who had different views from him. St JP 2 affirmed prolife to the whole world. Francis’ quotes on prolife are mostly given to tiny groups of prolifers. His quotes on popular environment issues are given to the whole world.

I respectfully pray he resigns.
 
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We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, especially since the tone of your comments do not lend themselves to any further discussion.
God bless
 
I understand and please be assured neither I or anyone i have read on this thread thinks we don’t have duties to honour the pope and to obey him in those things that the church has directed us to obedience to, with the pope and with our own Bishop wherever we are.

I have no opinion one way or another about his resignation but I certainly have an opinion about the false “duties” being invented here that try to stop catholics from telling the truth when the Pope does something scandalous.

It is PRECISELY because he is that PRIME witness that we must not lie when he’s going astray, because when he of all people goes astray the damage is far far greater than if any of us does.

I have no opinion on his resignation because I think if he’s there God wants him there. When God doesn’t want him there, he’ll inspire him to resign or will call him home or he will inspire the Bishops to ask for his resignation.
 
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Jerome7 said:
I feel that our primary role, as members of the faithful, is to support Pope Francis
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Although I do support Pope Francis and definitely give him the benefit of the doubt on this issue, I don’t agree with the “primary role” aspect, as our primary role is to love and serve God and one another.

And loving our Holy Father in these times means first of all being charitable, understanding why one would do as he did, given the “evidence”. I can imagine Pope Francis “hearing out” McCarrick and the Pope’s determination that McCarrick had honestly repented and was committed not to sin again. I can also imagine myself believing the Bishop’s denials of severity of past transgressions, i.e. that all the sinful relations were “mutual”. The Pope’s actions could be attributed to naivete instead of some sort of bad intent.

Let us remember that Pope Francis strongly believes in any sinner’s capacity for repentance.
Jerome7 said:
I’m getting pretty tired of reading Catholic blog posts and articles where each author stands in judgment over the Pope and explains what he’s doing wrong.
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Me too. There is a bit of lack in humility in any call for resignation, for example.
 
I agree with everything you wrote except that I hope he doesn’t resign. I hope he starts the process of healing in our Church, and I hope the next pope continues it.
 
I didn’t say she did ask him to resign or that she announced anything to the media (as if that were truly possible in her days).

As for the victims in Chile, Pope Francis spent months calling them gossipers and saying there was no evidence. He said they needed to hush up or provide proof. It took Cardinal O’Malley stating publically that he DID provide him the letter from victims for the pope to to step back from his allegations.

As for saying people who don’t like the pope, well I always did. But when you start noticing that your trust in someone so powerful is so horribly violated, the only way to rebuild that trust is communication, transparency, true repentance, and time. Many of us are simply asking for communication and transparency, not a resignation. Instead we are faced with the silent treatment.

I don’t agree that Viganò or anyone else called for resignation, but they are within their rights to do so. At least one Canon lawyer has affirmed that fact.


We are as Catholics allowed to disagree with on another. We can form our own opinions on what is the best way to move forward.

All of this is off topic anyway. So to bring it back around, the primary role of Catholics is to love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ.
 
All of the hoping for a Pope’s resignation, suggesting he should rsign, etc. would not have even entered our mind 10 years ago. To me, it still seems extremely odd. I suppose Benedict’s resignation was enough to completely change the mindset of many Catholics. I do not think that is a good thing.
I do actually think that having a poor in such bad health as St JP II’s last few years warranted a resignation. I hope in the future we only have papal resignations for extreme health issues. It seems appropriate since modern medicine can keep a sick man alive for so long.
But if a pope makes a mistake or two, I do not think we should all start saying he should resign. We should pray that he fixes the mistake and moves on leading our church.
I have defended AB Vigano’s letter on this forum quite a bit the last two weeks, except for his call for Francis to resign. I continue to say the charges in his letter are credible. Two weeks has stregnthened that thinking, and I am glad he wrote the letter. I wish he would have left off the resignation part.
 
I believe much of the criticisms we are seeing has to do with the fact that many haven’t cared for the Pope from the beginning of his papacy.

If this were a Pope Raymond Burke I’m betting the tone would be very different.
 
Yes, this is the basic talking point of many. And if we look at actual criticism (eg Rod Dreher, Fr Z blog, LifeSiteNews) you are correct. But there has actually been little criticism. Most of the Bishops and prominent lay people and even members of this forum who have issued statements calling for an investigation or testifying toward’s Vigano’s character or stating that Vigano’s letter is credible have not been critical of the Pope (beyond thinking he should have responded sooner). I see no evidence that George Weigel or Cardinal DiNardo or Scott Hahn (to name a few examples) have been that critical of the Pope since the beginning. These are simply people who recognize the seriousness of the situation and are requesting action.
 
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Given the events surrounding Benedict’s resignation, it was apparent that he resigned because he didn’t have it in him to lead the reform that was necessary. Remember the big dossier he left his successor to handle? Francis was elected by many Cardinals to do just that. Instead, he has brought the culprits or those who were found to cover crimes up back to the forefront (e.g. McCarrick and the likes of Danneels and Mahoney, not to mention promotions of priests who have had trouble being chaste with men), generally been squishy with the Sixth Commandment, and favored other novelties. I think many feel if he can’t or won’t do what he was elected to do–carry out the necessary reform, not to mention do what Popes are supposed to do (foster the unity of faith, not undermine it)–then calls for his resignation make sense.

Unfortunately, his most recent homily does not seem like someone who wants to carry out the reform:
“In these times, it seems like the ‘Great Accuser’ has been unchained and is attacking bishops. True, we are all sinners, we bishops. He tries to uncover the sins, so they are visible in order to scandalize the people.
Pope Francis at Mass: Bishops must pray to overcome 'Great Accuser’ - Vatican News
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I don’t see someone committed to a transparent and full investigation for the sake of the Church saying it’s bad to uncover these things.
 
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Genesis315 said:
Given the events surrounding Benedict’s resignation, it was apparent that he resigned because he didn’t have it in him to lead the reform that was necessary. Remember the big dossier he left his successor to handle?
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That is not at all apparent to me. He simply stated that is health was such that he could not meet the demands of the papacy. Which of demands of the papacy he could not handle, he did not say. Do we have any information on what is in that dossier? And do we know that Pope Francis has not been responding to it.
 
Yeah, that was a pretty pathetic response. Not to mention that it sounded more like a confirmation than a denial (though probably not designed to be either). And ignored the whole bit about how things that were hidden being shouted from the rooftops. It isn’t only the devil that reveals things.

But of course he could be right and maybe the accusers do have bad intentions.

I’m a rather skeptical person, though and I’m not sure I like the idea of the Vatican “preparing a response”. What could they possibly say that would need so much preparation? Sounds like they will make their own accusations or some heavy-handed action. But if the response is paired with a release of documents, that would be another reasonable explanation for the delay.

The whole “elites” part of that homily sounds very populist lol.
 
I have seen the reports and I know the rumors surrounding his resignation. But it is all speculation as to his exact motives, beyond what he told us. That is all that is “apparent”.
 
I know for a fact this is not correct. I was so excited and celebrated when our first western (South American like me!!!) pope was revealed to us. For years I supported him. I defended him when the media would “twist his words” or he would “misspeak.” I made excuses for him when people would criticize. I even tried to understand the ways I was spiritually needing to grow so that I could fully understand his ways of doing things. I began to grow weary when it became obvious that he truly was saying things that made no sense, and refusing to clarify points when asked for straight answers. Earlier this year I started to distrust him when it took a member of the C9, Cardinal O’Malley, to publically call him out before he admitted that he knew about the abuses in Chile and that he had heard from the victims. My distrust is steadily growing and I don’t know if or when I can fully trust Pope Francis again. He is making it very hard to trust him and he has done nothing to even attempt to regain anyone’s trust. It hurts me deeply because I rejoiced when he was announced. I took it very personally because I felt like maybe our side of the world would finally be recognized as a Catholic stronghold. Maybe the fact that many of us had a deep trust that was so badly violated, it makes it harder to process. It’s traumatic for many people and they are grieving. They are told they are overreacting, or must have been naive not to know this stuff has always been happening, or only feel this way due to politics/racism/etc, or just plain wrong and bad Catholics. It makes it much harder to process, grieve, heal and move on, and in no way is a damaged relationship going to be repaired in those circumstances. Communication and openness and showing us all that the Vatican is worthy of our trust going forward is what needs to happen.

Please get the idea that if this was some other pope people would feel differently out of your mind because there are a great deal of us who absolutely loved, and STILL love, Pope Francis. Loving him and losing trust can definitely go hand in hand. Ask any mother who has raised a teenager.
 
I don’t feel that I’m in the place to ask the pope to resign, nor do I really feel comfortable weighing in about the scandals, Vigano, or what I think should happen next. All I see are people fighting over it so I’m not touching it with a 10 foot pole, because I don’t think discussing this subject extensively would be spiritually edifying for me. But you have summarized very well why I have grown concerned under this papacy. I applaud his simplicity, concern for the poor, and even his concern for the environment, but the constant moments of confusion and some of the key figures that have been given favor as opposed to others under his papacy is legitimate reason for the faithful to voice concern, and people are allowed to do so, though it should be done with respect. Concerns have nothing to do with “not liking or supporting the pope.” I pray for him every day.
 
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It is always easier to complain and criticize than to do the actual work.
 
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