Posted on 12/28/2014 3:13:21 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
ABC’s Sunday show, This Week, used its last edition of the year to review 2014’s key stories, and given the media coverage of the Catholic Church and Pope Francis this year, it’s fitting that one of This Week’s contributors, radio host Michael Smerconish, labeled a few things Pope Francis didn’t say as one of the key stories. Smerconish dubbed Pope Francis a “game changer” of the year “because on issues from the treatment of women to the treatment of gays to even whether our pets are going to make it through the pearly gates, he put a soft, overdue face on the Catholic Church.”
Unfortunately, Pope Francis definitely didn’t do at least one of those things. An Italian newspaper reported, incorrectly, that he’d said something about the existence of animals in heaven. It was Pope Paul VI who in fact said what Francis was reported to have said. Pope Francis did deliver a recent homily promising eternal significance to “everything that surrounds us,” but little more, and the correction was widely reported. (It’s possible Smerconish’s comments, which were probably taped and not delivered live in studio, may have come after the initial report before the correction, in which case the fault is not his but ABC’s.)
Smerconish may be right that the pope has struck a softer tone on homosexuals in the Church, although his comments there were widely misunderstood and more or less a restatement of the catechism, too. He’s made few comments on the role of women at all, so what Smerconish is referring to in that regard isn’t clear.
Yeah, I’ll go with “never” as well.
I would like to point out that, although the “all animals go to heaven” was not stated by Francis, it was stated by Paul VI....who brought us Vatican II.
Here’s a man who appears to have allowed the world to believe that the primary role of the pope is not to bring all men to salvation, but to advance a progressive agenda that greatly pleases the media––a media who his apologists claim are completely misquoting the pontiff and misleading people as to what his real beliefs and teachings actually are. Perhaps, and maybe things are not really what they appear to be; but it seems to me that his most recent pronouncement on global warming simply confirms where his head actually is. When the Protestants, the atheists and the media happily salute his flag, I believe it is foolish to ignore these signs as not being warnings.
Nevertheless, if I correctly understand the direction that papal apologists want those of us who question this very confusing Catholic teaching to pursue, it is to virtually ignore what we are actually hearing, and to imagine that he really means something different that is either being ignored or misquoted. That is unreasonable. It is simply too difficult to accept the argument that Pope Francis actually has corrected the great many supposed misquotes and that they simply not being reported.
That is not to say that there have not been some misquotes and misattributions (as there always is) because, clearly, we have read of those. And when the Vatican complained, those complaints were addressed and reported immediately. The animals in heaven thing is one that comes to mind, but there have been others as well. But was his request of the UN that they pursue global warming a misquote? That is Francis! His zeal for spreading the wealth as he has said so often is Francis too. Those aren’t misquotes, and that is what the concern has been.
For a pope to see what is happening to the Catholic Church and continue to pursue the secular causes that so please the media is not the role of the pope. Anyone who has run even a small organization at one time or another recognizes that one will only achieve a successful result when they address the organization’s problems and take steps to correct them. Ignoring them, as this pope is doing, and then playing to the progressive left and the media with his modernist positions on homosexual behavior and Communion for the divorced/remarried is a disastrous policy.
Unfortunately, he is the pope good or bad. St Athanasius had his Liberius and other Catholics had to endure popes like Stephen VI, Urban VI and others. I guess those of us who believe that the traditional Catholic Church is the one true Church, and the modernist schemes that were unveiled during the Second Vatican Council are evil, will have to endure as well.
Those popes can not compare to the post Vatican II popes who encourage, support and teach the “modernist, [evil] schemes that were unveiled during the Second Vatican Council”.
I’m inclined to agree with that statement. Those popes were bad, for sure; but the heresy of modernism is the “synthesis of all heresies”. And modernism is certainly evil.
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