Perhaps leading to the phrase about smoke being blown up one's rectum.
“So all that means to convey the lack of concern about apostasy. The Church is impressive, even invincible. People believe in her. Bergoglio has raised fears among those who follow all the details, but most Catholics keep their interests local.”
This comes across to me as if many practicing Catholics just go through the motions and “go along to get along”.
The premise of the Reformation was that there were certain intolerable practices and errors of Church teaching that had to be corrected. Over the years, prior to the Reformation attempts were made to reform from within. But at a certain point, Protestants (or their predecessors within the Catholic Church) concluded that change would only happen apart from the infrastructure that was never really part of the Universal, Invisible Church. In other words, buildings, furniture, art, relics, and even locations, schedules, and rituals can belong to the Church but are not the Church itself. And so, members of the Church felt the need to go “outside of the camp” so-to-speak in order for the corrections to happen.
I’ve heard arguments that most of the claims of Protestants about historical abuses of the Catholic Church are simply fabrications. If so, there is no need for a Reformation. The argument is also made that reform, the correction of heresies, and the call for repentance for sin happening in the Church must remain inside the Church.
But the current suggestion that the Pope and other high-ranking Church leaders could change historical Church views or practices seems inconsistent with what I thought I knew about the Catholic position on this subject.
Perhaps leading to the phrase about smoke being blown up one's rectum.