Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; ‘and even if my head would go through,’ thought poor Alice, ‘it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only knew how to begin.’ For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.
– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
– Morpheus
It’s time to make a choice. We’ve got to figure out which side we’re on — the side of truth, or the side that makes us feel safe and warm in our beds.
Things have been happening which Catholics might understandably believe to be impossible. Yet here we are. I don’t want to linger in Alice’s dark hall, do you? I have other things to do.
Fortunately, the situation in the Church is changing so rapidly that much of the wake-up work is being done for me. After everything else, the reinstatement of a public heretic without the requirement of the public renunciation of his scandalous writings makes me think we’re running out of catalysts. Any fence-sitters who don’t hop off soon are likely too afraid to ever come down.
Already there are some signs in the writings of mainstream Catholic figures that at last, they are being forced to confront difficult possibilities. Even if only to tell us that there is nothing to worry about. For example, see Simcha Fisher on “the phone call“:
What is not possible is that the Pope called her and said, “Feel free to flout Catholic teaching, disrespect your priest and your bishop, set an example of sin and rebellion for your two teenage daughters.” Much as the Catholic Franciscophobes would like to believe it, the Pope has never said or taught anything that contradicts Church doctrine. Never.
(What was that Shakespeare said about protesting too much?)
Elizabeth Scalia has a more astute observation on the pope’s phone call:
Pope Francis is not stupid. He’s media savvy enough to understand that his personal phone calls can become fodder for anyone with an agenda. That leads many to conclude that he either doesn’t care and is content to “make a mess” and let the Holy Spirit sort it out (an idea I reject because I do not believe Francis wants the destructive energy of chaos about him) or that he wants to create a buzz that will influence discussions at the Extraordinary Synod of the Family which will take place in October. That would be a manipulative, rather Machiavellian tactic suggesting a pope who works in bad faith, embracing very worldly tactics while fomenting confusion.
Phil Lawler made a reluctant admission of his own about Francis’s penchant for obfuscation:
[I]t’s no longer possible to deny that some of the Pope’s offhand comments have created confusion, in ways that he should have anticipated. Some of those statements were bound to be interpreted in ways that will cause future problems for the Pope, and for countless other Catholics.
Father Dwight Longnecker, who has been very astute in his observations of the present situation, also wrote this week on the same topic. In his post, the problems which have arisen from this “papal style” (even if the pope is not “Machiavellian”) are very cogently articulated:
When he behaves in this way he is causing confusion among the faithful. Should a pope interfere in the pastoral matters of an individual in another country? Shouldn’t it be the responsibility of the local pastor and bishop? Isn’t it a fair observation to ask why a pope who is all for downsizing the papacy, delegating and handing over to the people should then step in an get involved at a very local level? To ask these questions does not mean one is an arch conservative semi sedevacantist. It’s a matter of common sense.
Furthermore, shouldn’t a pope realize he is pope and behave accordingly? No matter what the pope’s personal style and personal preferences, he is now the pope and whether he likes it or not, people hang on his every word and action. Yes, yes, we all know that a chat with reporters on a plane or a personal phone call by a pope are not infallible doctrinal statements. The problem is, a huge number of people in the world don’t realize that. Pope Francis should therefore understand that he is no longer Padre Bergoglio and learn that one of the greatest things a pope can do is to not do anything.
There is another problem with Pope Francis’ style which is lurking in the background which I have not heard anyone else commenting on, and it is this: if a person in a public role trivializes that role with a very personal and informal style, then when they want to make a formal pronouncement the chances are that they will not be taken seriously. Make enough gaffes and speak off the cuff enough and soon the world will consider everything you say to be a gaffe and all your pronouncements to be inconsequential, off the cuff matters of opinion.
So when Pope Francis makes an off the cuff remark or an informal phone call that has to be “re-interpreted” and “put into context” by everyone from mommy bloggers in Iowa to the Vatican press office it cheapens all his statements. When he stands up and speaks formally about the evils of greed, the threat of war, the horrors of abortion or the crime of human trafficking–because he has made public off the cuff remarks which are matters of opinion hoi polloi and the press will treat those comments also as being no more than a matter of opinion.
When our modern relativistic society already considers most statements on everything to be no more than a matter of opinion, then the pope’s serious statements will then be dismissed as no more than one man’s opinion. He’s a nice man and everybody likes him, but his informality and off the cuff remarks have then cheapened his authority and whatever he says will be treated as no more than the opinion of that nice old codger in the white outfit in Rome. Catholics around the world are right to be alarmed at the Pope’s style.
Father Longnecker presents us with a conclusion-by-way-of-dichotomy, and it’s a doozy (emphasis mine):
The way things stand at the moment there are only two conclusions one can draw: first, that the Pope knows exactly what he is doing and the consequences of his style, and that it is his intention to weaken the authority of the papacy and bring it down to no more than the opinion of one person or second, that in this area of personal style and communications he is an amateur and he needs to stop, take stock, listen to the experts and reign in his style.
You may have surmised which theory I subscribe to.
There is a famous quote from Sherlock Holmes in which he asks Watson the rhetorical question, “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
Earlier in the same book (The Sign of Four), he ascertains a great deal of information about Watson’s tragically deceased brother — much to Watson’s disbelief and dismay — merely by evaluating the condition of his watch, which remains in Watson’s possession. When confronted about the conclusions he has reached, and whether or not it was “mere guess-work”, Sherlock explains his method.
“I never guess.” Says Holmes. “It is a shocking habit,—destructive to the logical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not follow my train of thought or observe the small facts upon which large inferences may depend.”
The small facts upon which large inferences depend. These are the things that have begun to rise to the surface of this papacy. Seemingly insignificant occurrences when taken by themselves, but which add up to a tidal wave of change and misdirection. The interviews, the phone calls, the casual statements, the changing of rubrics, the breaking of traditions, the ostentatious humility, the endless stream of insults directed at traditional Catholics and Catholic piety, the cavalier attitude toward discipline, the reinstatement of unrepentant heretics, the frequent self-contradiction (making it impossible to pin down what he really believes), the praising of heterodox thinkers, the affectionate feelings expressed toward members of dangerous ideologies, the releasing of information before pulling it back, the setting of expectations long enough in advance that a course seems set, the glossing over of all manner of bad behavior under the auspices of “mercy” or “pastoral concern”…it all adds up.
It paints a picture of a man who may very well have said, “Feel free to flout Catholic teaching, disrespect your priest and your bishop, set an example of sin and rebellion for your two teenage daughters.” Of a pope who is “not stupid” and is “media savvy enough to understand that his personal phone calls can become fodder for anyone with an agenda”. Of a shepherd who “doesn’t care and is content to ‘make a mess'” and is not afraid to employ a “manipulative, rather Machiavellian tactic” and do so “in bad faith, embracing very worldly tactics while fomenting confusion.” It is true to say that “it’s no longer possible to deny that some of the Pope’s offhand comments have created confusion” that he not only “should have” but must have anticipated. And it is thus not at all illogical to conclude that “the Pope knows exactly what he is doing and the consequences of his style, and that it is his intention to weaken the authority of the papacy and bring it down to no more than the opinion of one person.”
I would suggest to you that the diminishment of the papacy — or as he would call it, the Roman See — is something he will not fully embrace until he has used every last drop of that authority to change all that he can; to set an unalterable future course for the Catholic Church. He is opposed to the centralization of authority in the papacy except when he is ecstatically for it. I see it as a papal kamikaze mission, set to self-destruct the institution but still wringing from it the maximum benefit to the revolutionary agenda which animates this papacy.
Please. Take the red pill. Stop trying to find a way to tell yourself that what is happening is impossible, and start trying to understand what it means, and how we can survive it and rebuild.
Yup.
I was never much of a Malachi Martin fan, but I do have all of the interviews he gave in the nineties. In one of them he said that the time would come when our faith would be sorely tried. I believe we are there.
God help us all.
You’re exactly right, Steve, and this is precisely what Francis’ closest associates in Argentina have said about him. On 04/13/14, Doug Keck interviewed Alejandro Bermudez about his new book wherein he spoke with 20 of Pope Francis’ peers, fellow Jesuits, family, and friends from Buenos Aries. You can listen to the full interview here:
http://ewtn.edgeboss.net/download/ewtn/audiolibrary/bookmark2692.mp3
However, if you jump to 13:05 you’ll hear quotes Francis’ longtime confrere, Fr. Carlos, testifying to the fact that Francis was renowned for being “very clever”; meaning that he “manages his words very well and knows how to take advantage of situations”. From there, the author, Mr. Bermudez states that, at times, the Pope may SEEM like he’s not very conscious of what he’s going to say, but that he in fact knows exactly what he’s doing. Bermudez and Keck go on to admit that this is causing mass confusion, but ultimately conclude that Francis is well intended; namely, that in an effort to reach to the margins of society, the Pope wants a Church that is “prone to having accidents, to being hurt, rather than one that is sick at home”.
Ironically, the apology is contradicted by very observation it’s trying to defend. On the one hand Francis is clever, knows how to take advantage of situations, and knows what he’s doing, but on the other – in an effort to avoid concluding that Francis is deliberately sowing confusion – the Pope is said to be merely having accidents, brought on by his intense desire to reach the margins of society.
Sorry, add Francis’ reputation clever opportunist to the top-shelf PR firm, and the idea that this pontificate is just a long litany of “accidents” is too much to swallow.
It would certainly help confusion , when we are not sure what the Pope intended by a comment or an act,if he would come out and publicly clarify with an official response. Why won’t he do this? So much could be cleared up this way. It does leave one wondering if the confusion was intentional!
If it wasn’t intentional, surely by now someone in the Vatican would have sat him down and made him aware of the confusion his statements are causing and advise him that perhaps it would be for the greater good of the Church to speak clearly? I would think Fr. Lombardi would be very happy if he didn’t have to clarify, every other day, something the pope said.
Isn’t it true that ‘confusion’ in matters of faith is not from God? This is what we’ve been taught and logically and by matters of reason believe to be true. Our God is not a God of ‘confusion’ and/or ‘disorientation’. The Pope’s statement to go into your Parishes and Communities and ‘Make a Mess’ are unsettling when taken in the context of his own self contradictions. He is constantly talking out of both sides of his mouth it seems to me. He may indeed be trying to pull in the fringes of society by this tactic, but in the meantime, he’s causing confusion and division within the faithful of his flock. We are in for a roller coaster ride.
I cannot say for sure just where this Pope is coming from. He can kiss a bunch of babies and wash women’s feet but will he uphold the teachings of the Church? I cannot trust that he will. And that is a bad thing. I never in my life thought this would be the case. He certainly is no friend of tradition and knows perfectly well that he is allowing the dismantling of a holy Order like the Franciscans of the Immaculate who were faithful to him and only wished to further embrace all the legitimate traditions of our holy Church. But modernists hate, hate tradition. Perhaps he could throw them a bone in between restoring heretical priests and approving Kasper’s new ideas on marriage and allow them to be restored. Just for the sake of being ‘merciful’.
The list of names he has hurled against various ones is getting very long. He is all confusion–at best. We do not know what will happen.
May you live in interesting times!
At this point, I have the same feeling about the occupant of the Chair of Peter as I have concerning the current occupant of the Resolute Desk.
Either he (Francis or Barack, take your pick) is tragically unintelligent to the point of either mental illness or retardation (or both)
Or
He (Francis or Barack) has set out on a (literally) diabolical path to destroy the (Church or US), and has many willing accomplices, high and low, some ignorant, some willingly complicit.
Either option is tragic. I have long since given up hope on the mental retardation theory.
I used to hold firmly to the conviction that one should never write off to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. I do not hold to this theory anymore, having replaced it with the Sherlock Holmes bit that you quoted.
I understand that Our Lord has promised that the Church shall endure until He returns, but he never said in what form. I reread the letter of St. Athanasius regarding the Arians the other day. It gave me a glimmer of hope.
An astute observation. The parallels are unnerving. I get the feeling there is a 1917-level convergence at work in the world today.
Another home run essay Steve. I, however, get the feeling that there is a never-before seen level of convergence at work in the world today. An awesome priest (with a nationally-known name) gave a brilliant talk on moral relativism some years back at the Institute of Catholic Culture in Virginia. He stated that every age feels it is possibly the last; that things are worse in that particular age than have ever been before, so in that respect, we are no different from the generations before us. But if we are to look around us and analyze with an informed eye, it must be admitted that there is truly something “uniquely sinister”, about this current time; never quite seen before. This talk was given before the current craziness, all of which has only intensified exponentially since he first made his observations.
The entire world is on fire, having lost it’s moral mooring, having rejected God with fullness of will. God has preserved His remnant (and always will), but we are seeing here-to-fore unimaginable levels of apostasy and blindness, from here-to-fore unimaginable quarters. “Watch, and pray”…be ready at all times. The temptations and pressure to conform are going to be intense. Keep the Faith…THE Faith, and remain always faithful to Him. It is most certainly going to get very ugly.
I respectfully disagree with your conclusion that Pope Francis is deliberately sowing confusion to lower the importance of the papacy and that he knows it. As much as it pains me to say it, I have to admit that I think he is simply incompetent in the duties of being a Pope, especially in his communication abilities (both oral and written). I say this with no malice towards Pope Francis. I love him as a brother in Christ, pray for him and hope that God will pour his graces on him.
That would make some sense, but for the fact that the Vatican apparatchik does not seem to be reigning him in. Which leads to one of two conclusions, neither of which is comforting – he knows what he is doing and essentially intends the confusion (maybe in some misguided thinking that it would somehow renew the Church), or, he is being used to create confusion (again, whether for misguided good intentions or for nefarious, I do not know). What we do know for certain is that he is creating confusion to the detrimant of the Church.
And, it is also interesting that he does not have the virulent opposition that BXVI had.
quite the opposite: he has the full-throated support of mainstream media. A telling fact in itself.
This past year has been a very painful time for me. Thanks mostly to Pope Francis, my firm foundations have been shaken. I was a fairly typical devout Novus Ordo Catholic. I had a strong interest in Tradition, but kept quiet about it because most priests and other leaders at my parish frowned upon anything pre-Vatican II. I thought that Pope BXVI had us on a path that was leading back to Tradition, and I was very pleased with the direction that the Church was going, or the direction I thought it was going.
I learned from people like Jimmy Aiken and Mark Shea that the Church had never been in better shape, and that the Church was a solid rock whose teachings had never and could never change. I was always troubled by Vatican II, but was reassured by the “Neo” crowd that Vatican II was super-fantastico. It was just being misrepresented.
Then as I’ve watched our Holy Father encourage rebellion and mock the ancient teachings of our faith I have become more and more confused. And to add to the confusion has been the constant barrage of articles from our “Neo” friends entitled “14 reasons why Pope Francis didn’t say what he said,” or “12 ways Pope Francis’ words were misunderstood.” Why are these people (like Aiken and Shea) adding to the confusion? Why are they more loyal to the pope than to the Catholic Church?
I finally decided that I was not going to believe all the b.s. I was hearing from the “Neos” and the Vatican, and I was going to focus exclusively on the pre-Vat II teachings. That’s the only way I can keep my sanity and stay Catholic. I am teaching my kids from the Baltimore Catechism, and we assist at TLM once a month. (I wish we had a TLM closer, but at least we’ve got it once a month.)
I have tried and tried to give Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt, but his antics are wearing thin. And now he truly does seem to be on a path to destroy what is left of the Catholic Church. It’s hard to be a papist, to believe firmly in the role of the Holy Father as leader of the Christian Church, but to feel like the current pope is a traitor to the Faith.
Let’s not forget that there is bigotry at work here. The evidence might have to pile up a little higher before certain people are going to be willing to be seen to agree with people like us.
Or maybe he’s going senile? Or maybe he’s just a one of those kids who sang hymns to Evita when he was a child and never recovered. I’ve only met one Argentinian who grew up in the Peron era but her family had the sense to get out of dodge and come to America before things fell apart.
My hunch is that you do not rise to the level he has within the Jesuit order and Latin American episcopate without at least some savvy. You very well can rise to that level with a modernist bent.
Well said!
Does anyone have info on whether this level of “unease” is shared outside of the US? Aside from Rorate-Caeli blog, I don’t get a sense of the whether others are raising the same concerns.
And in Australia too
Yes, I can tell you authoritatively that it is being felt very strongly among our Catholic counterparts in Italy, the UK and Ireland, as well as Slovenia, Poland, Malta, France, Belgium and Germany. Faithful Catholics are worried about what might be coming from Rome, and all for the same reasons.
I got the strangest sense when reading the comments reporting in from around the world that after half a century of the Church trying to destroy its own unity, suddenly that mark of the Church is rising again as the world’s Catholics unite in their concern over this common threat.
Steve — I pray you are correct.
All – Thanks for your response on my earlier question about “on the ground” 🙂 observations.
Yes indeed Steve…..the good Lord does have a way of bringing clarity out of chaos. Good insight.
Good article, unfortunately. As shocking as it is with your list, you forgot a couple of things, namely the incredible statements by Cardinal Maridiaga, the attack on the FFI, the fact that no one can understand what the heck his encyclical means, etc.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-kisses-the-hand-of-gay-activist-priest-allowed-to-concelebrate-mass
This stuff keeps happening.
We’re sedevacante.
Why? Can you make a clear, concise argument, without using the failures of the person of The See of Peter, juxtaposed to The Office? I find Sedavacantists make excellent arguments, but their conclusions are flawed. It’s as if proving their Dad is a drunk and a fornicator, they conclude that the man who married their mom, and knew her, was not their Dad, and thus they are the bastard child of a single mom. Concilliar Popes, with the possible exception of a formerly liberal, repentant Ratzinger, have, for the most part, been a disgrace, discipline wise. However, we’ve had horrible Popes like Liberius, Honararius, Alexander VI, and others, who participated in drunken debaucheries, fathered children, made offspring Cardinals at young ages, and even privately penned heretical viewpoints. The problem with your “no Pope” is that everyone tries to sit in your “empty seat.” You don’t have “no Pope” you make 1.2 billion Faithful their own Popes. Why is it so difficult to imagine God punishing an unfaithful Church Council, who used sophistry and purposeful ambiguity to undermine Traditional Ecclesiology, i.e. approach, what the modernists called “pastoral”, as a way to ignore Defined Dogma and Doctrine, and open (“agornamento”) windows to every filthy thing they had formerly stood so vigilant against? The “open window”, Paul VI misnamed a fissure, from which he, incredulously lamented, (having been played the buffoon by Bugnini, and others) that the smoke of satan had somehow entered The Church. The mistakes of the last 50 years will be corrected in the promised Restoration (after much tribulations, terrors, and tears it must be said), but why abandon The Institutional Bride, despite her harlotry. David recognized Saul, despite his failures. Elijah recognized Ahab, despite his syncretism. And Our Lady kept The Old Covenant’s Passover, despite the tearing of The Temple’s Curtain, and an Immaculate Heart, with every human justification to ignore what God had buried in favor of a new Catholic Church that would begin with The Resurrection in just 40 hours, yet Ever Faithful, despite the worst thing imaginable, DEICIDE, and murder of Her SON, Religious Authorities had conspired to do. Do you have some reason greater than Our Lady’s, David’s, or Elijah to abandon The One Holy Faith because, like Peter, Popes occasionally think like satan, or are, occasionally, cowards in time of persecution, or must be corrected by Paul’s, occasionally, when they seek the approval of the world? Do tell, my friend, do tell..