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Post by hibernicus on Mar 18, 2013 0:35:23 GMT
Meanwhile, one of the so-called traditionalists posting in the RORATE CAELI comboxes is calling Pope Francis worse than Alexander VI because the latter didn't monkey with the liturgy. Nothing like a sense of proportion, is there?
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 18, 2013 22:39:01 GMT
As a fan of St Bede the Venerable, I am interested to see that Pope Francis takes his motto from Bede's commentary on the Gospel According to St Matthew (the calling of the publican). Fr Zuhlsdorf has the full context of the quote, and it is interesting - it reflects Bede's concern for poverty, simplicity and evangelical zeal as the sign of the true pastor. Bede was particularly concerned at this because he was a monk, yet at the centre of a very expensive scholarly operation, and although he admired the beautiful and elaborate arts and crafts which the noble founder of his monastery, Benedict Biscop, had brought to the service of God, he was concerned that these could be corrupted into pride and worldliness. Hence, although he considers the early Irish missionaries to Northumbria were sadly wrong in their observance of Easter, he nonetheless looks back to them as exemplifying the zeal and austerity recommended by St Gregory the Great, and whose importance he wished to bring home to the more secure and influential church of his own day. So in Pope Francis' motto we can hear a faint echo of St Aidan, the monk-bishop who led the Irish monks from Iona to found the monastery of Lindisfarne, and of St Cuthbert, their greatest pupil, who led the community after the Irish monks left when the Synod of Whitby decided against their form of Easter observance. wdtprs.com/blog/2013/03/what-does-the-popes-motto-really-say-the-latin-motto-explained/#commentsEXTRACT Jesus, therefore, saw the publican, and because he saw by having mercy and by choosing, He said to him, ‘Follow me’”. ’Follow’ means to imitate. ‘Follow’, He said, not so much in the pacing of feet, as in the carrying out of morals. For whoever says that he remains in Christ, ought himself to walk as He walked: which means not striving for earthly things, not eagerly pursuing fallen riches, fleeing honors, willingly embracing all the contempt of the world for the sake of heavenly glory, being advantageous to all, loving, occasioning injuries for no one but patiently suffering those caused to oneself, but seeking always the glory of the Creator, as often as one can raise himself up toward the love of those things which are above. This is what acting in that way is, This is following in the footsteps of Christ. END
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 19, 2013 11:05:12 GMT
I was struck by this comment from a post on the (English) Catholic Herald, about Pope Francis's eschewal of Papal splendour: I am deeply concerned about Pope Francis's "simplicity," although I have little doubt it is genuine.
First, I fear it confuses personality with office. The papacy has existed for 2000 years, and its symbols, traditions, and ceremonial belong not to the personality of any pope, but to the office. To do away with many of its symbols and traditions (within minutes, no less) distracts from the office, calls attention to the office-holder, and does not seem humble. It certainly comes off as a repudiation of past popes, especially Pope Benedict, and so obscures the continuity of the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church. It was the effort to make that continuity visible that lay behind Benedict's sartorial and ceremonial choices. With Benedict we had a man who disappeared into his office. Now I fear the office is disappearing and all we will be left with is a man. A good man, but not a good representation of the continuity of the centuries--which is precisely what Peter must do: preserve the Faith that has been handed down to us. If we cannot recognize that the Faith proclaimed today is the same proclaimed by Pius XII and by Gregory the Great, and by Peter himself, how can we believe it?The entire comment can be found here: www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/03/18/pope-francis-is-preaching-by-his-behaviour/I have the same reservations, and I am by no means a "rad trad". I've never been to a Latin Mass and I only learned what a mozetta was a few days ago. I have no doubt that Pope Francis is the choice of the Holy Spirit and I am very excited about his pontificate, but the Pope is not infallible in everything and I am rather worried about his attitude to the ceremonial trappings of his office.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 19, 2013 17:13:01 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 21, 2013 22:38:30 GMT
Fintan O'Toole had an egregious piece in the IRISH TIMES on Monday suggesting that because Pope Francis had failed a great moral test in that he had not openly opposed the Argentine junta, he may be more humble and flexible and lacking in moral certainty. Apart from the question-begging (when faced with a violent terror regime, is open opposition the only moral course, regardless of circumstances?) this is also a rhetorical device - Fintan O'Toole is presenting moral certainty as a bad thing, but of course he only objects to it in people who disagree with him, and never sees his own certainties as questionable. The Association of Catholic Priests promptly put it up on their website, which says a good deal about the extent to which the ACP are loyally submissive to the Tara Street Magisterium, however much they may complain about the Roman variety. Note the second comment which challenges the article by reference to the views of Adolfo PErez Esquivel on Pope Francis. www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2013/03/pope-francis-genuine-humility-could-be-his-greatest-strength/#comments
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 22, 2013 8:55:27 GMT
I notice Goldvulture refers to Fintan O'Toole as Tintin O'Fool, but the attitude stems from the Provo/Stickie schism in the early '70s.
Fintan made a lot of priests and religious protesting against right-wing regimes in Latin America in the past, so it is surprising he wouldn't do something like this. The second comment is indeed apposite. But it seems Pope Francis is in a Pius XII situation - that he did what he believed he could do, but he will forever be questioned as to whether he could have done more.
The bit that gets me is the fact the ACPI should post this without comment. There was a honeymoon period with Francis, largely due to his eschewal of pomp, which they greatly approve of, but they seem to realise he will not budge on any of their other hobby horses.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 23, 2013 20:40:58 GMT
To be fair, the ACP often post articles without comment, and they have since published a piece by the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff denying that Pope Francis was in any way implicated in the crimes of the junta. (This may be influenced by Boff's own hopes, as he goes on to predict that Francis will create a "church of the poor".) O'Toole does specifically refer in the article to priests and religious who opposed the junta and were killed for opposing it, in order to contrast them with Francis. The Pius XII comparison is quite apposite, since the criticism of both has something in common. (I have seen it noted that the critics of Pius XII seem to see a public declaration as the sine qua non of opposition, irrespective of consequences.) Here are a couple of later comments on the Fintan O'Toole thread. Fr Joseph O'Leary, as usual posing as the fearless maverick, is also clever enough to note that Francis's visiting prisoners and washing their feet is not as big a contrast with Benedict as the coverage makes out. A critical poster compares Fintan O'Toole to the interrogator in the play/film THE CARDINAL, who uses the Catholic guilt-feelings of the central character (based on Cardinal Mindzenty) to make him feel he must be guilty of SOMETHING. He is slightly off in one respect - it is not the Pope himself on whom O'Toole is trying this tactic, but any readers with residual Catholic sympathies who may encounter his column EXTRACT Joe O'Leary March 23rd, 2013 at 1:52 pm Please remember that Benedict washed laymen’s feet, shifting to priests only in later years (perhaps to make some theological point about ministry) and that he celebrated mass in prison at Christmas, even taking a stand for prisoners’ rights. Cosmetic changes are not going to bring about deep church reform. To play the new pope love of Christ off against the old pope’s is childish; both clearly are men of deep devotion. And devotion alone does not bring about church reform, but can actually reinforce conservative policies. Gene Carr March 23rd, 2013 at 3:00 pm O’Toole’s observations remind me of the attitude of the Communist state prosecutor played by Jack Hawkins in the 1960s film “The Prisioner”. His task is to discredit the Catholic Archbishop who is an obstacle to the revolutionary goals of the regime. (The film is based on the case of Cardinal Minzenty). The Archbishop played by Alex Guinness is completely innocent of any allegations made against him. Hawkins is frank with him and even tells him that “as he is an obstacle to the Communist goals, my job is to discredit you”. Cleverly, however he plays on the Archbishops’s Catholic consciousness of sin and repentence and with what came to be called ‘brainwashing’ induced enough ‘guilt’ to persuade the Archbishop that he must have done something wrong. That was then. Nowadays the Marxist virus has mutated and the ‘brainwashing’ is conducted more subtely though the instruments of culture particularly mass media. O’Toole is one of the arch pratictioners. END OF EXTRACT Here is the Boff piece, for what it's worth (which is probably not very much - I notice Boff implies he would even be willing to overlook it if the Pope was much more deeply implicated, just so long as he stands up for the poor and follows Boff's other preferred policies). O'Leary has a comment on this too, suggesting Boff, Kung and Co are guilty of wishful thinking www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2013/03/leonardo-boff-believes-francis/
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Mar 26, 2013 9:02:04 GMT
I think Fr O'Leary is a gadfly, but looking from the liberal point of view, I think that he is the most realistic. The liberals have had a shot in the arm from this election, though the only thing they have to go on is the choice of name and the marked dislike for pomp. Supporting the poor or reforming the curia are not just 'liberal' issues - it will be failure to deliver on their hobby horses that will mark him out in their mind.
On the otherhand, traditionalists are back to an uphill struggle, not that is impossible - if there is willingness to learn lessons of the past couple of decades. But a lot of trads are like the Bourbons so many of them admire - they learn nothing and forgot nothing.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 31, 2013 16:33:39 GMT
Steve Bell of the Guardian is first in the queue of haters, as usual. He has taken to portraying Pope Francis with a senior officers' cap on his skullcap, being advised by Cardinal Rupert Murdoch. (He lifted the latter idea from PRIVATE EYE which noted that from some angles Cardinal Tauran looks a bit like Murdoch). Bell's overall portrayal of the Pope is of course highly xenophobic and would be called racist if a rightie did it. blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100209016/has-steve-bell-of-the-guardian-ever-met-an-ethnic-stereotype-he-didnt-like/ I must say Bell's cartoons have always struck me as eaten up by hate, and he always reminds me that a significant part of the GUARDIANS audience are clearly hard-left types who would love to have their own secret police force if they ever were in power.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 11, 2013 20:01:38 GMT
A statement from Pope Francis meeting with Latin American religious has caused a good deal of discussion. He criticises traditionalists as Pelagians given to mechanical devotions, complains about pantheism in certain religious orders, and also complains about certain orders which have no vocations and an ageing membership but still cling to money and buildings. He also talks of problems in the Curia because of a gay element and declares that as he is not a good administrator he is putting the task of reform on the eight Cardinals he appointed as an advisory commission. This has stirred up a lot of pigeons. The ultra-trads at Rorate Caeli are calling it a sign of betrayal, and Rod Dreher (who left Catholicism for Orthodoxy) complains that equating the trads and pantheists as equal dangers is ridiculous given that the trads are far less powerful and in some parts of the world are the only ones who go to Mass. This is likely to have significant repercussions - I wonder what they will be. www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/pope-francis-orthodoxy/#post-commentsrorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/06/pope-to-latin-american-religious-full.htmlwhispersintheloggia.blogspot.ie/2013/06/francis-unplugged-report-claims.htmlEXTRACTS I share with you two concerns. One is the Pelagian current that there is in the Church at this moment. There are some restorationist groups. I know some, it fell upon me to receive them in Buenos Aires. And one feels as if one goes back 60 years! Before the Council... One feels in 1940... An anecdote, just to illustrate this, it is not to laugh at it, I took it with respect, but it concerns me; when I was elected, I received a letter from one of these groups, and they said: "Your Holiness, we offer you this spiritual treasure: 3,525 rosaries." Why don't they say, 'we pray for you, we ask...', but this thing of counting... And these groups return to practices and to disciplines that I lived through - not you, because you are not old - to disciplines, to things that in that moment took place, but not now, they do not exist today... The second [concern] is for a Gnostic current. Those Pantheisms... Both are elite currents, but this one is of a more educated elite... I heard of a superior general that prompted the sisters of her congregation to not pray in the morning, but to spiritually bathe in the cosmos, things like that... They concern me because they ignore the incarnation! And the Son of God became our flesh, the Word was made flesh, and in Latin America we have flesh abundantly [de tirar al techo]! What happens to the poor, their pains, this is our flesh... The gospel is not the old rule, nor this Pantheism. If you look at the periphery; the destitute... the drug addicts! The traffic of people... This is the gospel. The poor are the gospel... There is something that concerns me, even though I do not know now to understand it. There are religious congregations, very, very tiny groups, a few persons, very old people... They have no vocations, what do I know, the Holy Spirit do not want them to go on, perhaps they have already fulfilled their mission in the Church, I do not know... But there they are, clinging to their buildings, clinging to money... I do not know why this happens, I do not know how to understand it. But I ask you to be concerned with these groups... The management of money... is something that needs to be reflected upon.
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Post by Cameron on Jun 12, 2013 1:43:36 GMT
I can understand a concern about the Pantheism - I've witnessed that in the Church first hand, and I also understand some of his other concerns, but I don't know if we're getting the full story or not. The Pelagians he refers to; maybe they're sedevacantists? He sounds confused to me! Perhaps it's the anxiety of the workload?
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 12, 2013 7:55:25 GMT
Notwithstanding Rod Dreher's criticism that the Pope is not comparing like with like, I understand where he gets the idea.
There was a trad habit of remaking Pope Benedict in their own likeness and I know well informed people of traditional sentiment who continue to do precisely that. From a political point of view, these people were living in a fools' paradise between Summorum Pontificum and the Pope Emeritus' resignation.
Pope Francis is more direct and less nuanced than Pope Benedict. It is also true to say that the gnostic/pantheist problem among neo-modernist is far, far worse than any problem among traditionalists, but that does not mean that trads are problem free. They certainly are not. I suspect that the pledged rosaries is part of an SSPX campaign - they do that sort of thing. And where I think encouraging SSPX adherents to pray for the Pope is good in itself, amassing the number of pledged rosaries is a different thing and the Pope could see the Pelagian attitude of all based on man's efforts without God's grace. In general, the trad take (I'm thinking of the trad in the pew rather than the more thoughtful trad) is that all we need do is forget the Second Vatican Council. Well, this isn't going to work for obvious reasons, but it's also blind to the fact that the Church would have problems even without the Council.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 12, 2013 21:02:51 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 5, 2013 21:13:11 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 19, 2013 21:59:10 GMT
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