[Barf Alert] Spadaro defends Pope Francis on China

The Tablet ^ | August 11, 2020 | Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

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[Barf Alert] Spadaro defends Pope Francis on China

In a seven-page interview entitled This Pontificate is a time for sowing and not for reaping in the August issue of the German theological monthly Herder Korrespondenz,the editor in chief of the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, Fr Antonio Spadaro SJ, discussed Pope Francis’ style of governance and the Vatican’s policy on China. 

“The place where Francis makes his decisions is not at his desk but in his chapel at morning prayer,” he told his interviewer. Francis did not have a detailed reform plan but proceeded by listening and meditating. “If he sees that, after inner discernment, a decision is mature, he gets it off the ground and espouses it.”

At the Amazon Synod, however, although there had been a “great discussion” on the question of ordaining married men, the Synod had not put the Pope in a position “to understand God’s will (on this question)”, Spadaro said.

All in all, Francis’ pontificate was more a “pontificate of sowing and not of reaping”, he noted. “The Pope has sown a great deal in recent years,” he recalled. “His successor will not be able to ignore that. He will not be able to go back but will forge ahead.”

In Pope Francis’ words, La Civilta Cattolica was the “unofficial journal of  the Pope”, Spadaro recalled.

Asked why the Pope had not spoken out against the continuing and increasing violation of human rights by the Chinese government, Spadaro recalled that Pope Francis had on several occasions, as recently as 24 May, called for prayers for the Chinese people. 

“He is very much aware that it must be a case of solving the problem instead of merely condemning [the violations] and grandstanding. … Who says that the Pope has to speak out personally on all the world’s problems?” Spadaro said. 

He thought the present agreement between the Holy See and China, which expires in September, would be extended.

Meanwhile Jimmy Lai, the publisher of Hong Kong’s popular pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was arrested on suspicion of foreign collusion under the new national security law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong last month. 

Police arrested Mr Lai at his home Monday morning according to an executive of Apple Daily’s publishing company. His two sons and four company employees were also arrested. 

About 200 police also raided Apple Daily’s newsroom, stringing up cordons as staff members live-streamed the raid. At one point, police brought a shackled Mr Lai, who is in his 70s, into the newsroom.

“This is for sure thwarting the freedom of press, it’s needless to say,” he said in Cantonese on the live stream.

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“The Pope has sown a great deal in recent years,” he (Spadaro] recalled. “His successor will not be able to ignore that. He will not be able to go back but will forge ahead.”

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“The place where Francis makes his decisions is not at his desk but in his chapel at morning prayer,” he told his interviewer.

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Jesuit priest and papal confidant Father Anthony Spadaro said that Pope Francis holds that the Catholic Church can no longer set down general norms that apply to entire groups of people. Spadaro, editor of the Italian magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, made the comment today at a conference at Boston College where liberal Cardinals met with dissident theologians to discuss strategies for implementing Pope Francis’ controversial teachings on marriage and family in dioceses across the United States. The Jesuit priest told attendees that Amoris Laetitia, the Pope's 2016 teaching on marriage and family, recognizes that people living in "irregular" family situations, such as the divorced and remarried living in adultery, "can be living in God's grace, can love and can also grow in a life of grace. We must conclude that the Pope realizes that one can no longer speak of an abstract category of persons and ... [a] praxis of integration in a rule that is absolutely to be followed in every instance". . .: Papal adviser: We can no longer ‘judge people’ based on moral norms

Two close advisers to Pope Francis have published an article in Civilta Cattolica in which they decry a “Manichean” strain in American conservativism and a political alliance between Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. . .The Civilta Cattolica essay is co-authored by Father Antonio Spadaro, the journal’s editor, who has been a regular adviser to the Pontiff; and Marcelo Figueroa, the Argentinean Presbyterian pastor who was recruited by Pope Francis to launch an edition of L’Osservatore Romano for that country.: Papal Advisers Lash Out at American Conservatives, Catholic-Evangelical Alliance

In their essay, Figueroa and Spadaro decried what they called the “problematic fusion between … faith and politics” found in America. They also accused former Trump adviser Steve Bannon of supporting “apocalyptic geopolitics” and railed against “xenophobic” voters for engaging in a fear-driven “holy war” motivated by a “nostalgic dream of a theocratic type of state.” Both Figueroa, a Presbyterian pastor, and Spadaro, editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, are close personal friends of the Pope. The hyperbolic article sent shockwaves throughout the Christian community in the United States, which has been fighting secularism and the culture of death for decades. Persons from multiple denominations rejected the essay’s characterizations. Reverend Johnnie Moore, an Evangelical adviser to President Trump, sent a letter to Rome asking for a meeting with the Pope in order to clarify any misunderstandings. . .: Papal Adviser Has no Regrets Over Accusing Catholic Trump Supporters of ‘Hate’