The headline reads (and it is from a post-Catholic):
Losing hope that Pope Francis will bring real change to the Church
The headline is from Irish Central and you can read the full story HERE. Ireland has its own crisis of post-Catholicism brought on by a culture that refuses to see the elephant in the room when it comes to sinful, criminal shenanigans and even lesser offenses. Irish Catholicism is built upon cronyism and keeping secrets. But I digress.This is what the liberal author has to say about poor Pope Francis:
“At least since the priesthood was first shaken by the sexual-abuse scandal two decades ago, and perhaps even before then, America's nuns have been the de facto leaders of the country's liberal Catholics, especially those more interested in social justice than in holding the Vatican's line on sexual politics,”
“Like Francis himself, these women have been reprimanded for failing to give sufficient attention to abortion, contraception, and gay marriage. Their choice to focus instead on the needs of the poor has been met with heavy-handed behavior both from Rome and from U.S. bishops.
“If the new pope were serious about shifting the Church's attention, one sign might be his treatment of these women... But a year and a half into his papacy, Pope Francis is looking an awful lot like his predecessors.”
4 comments:
The passages you show were pretty contrived to fit an agenda. The person writes in defense of the nuns while ignoring the Pope's efforts in exactly the same areas. Sounds like someone couldn't come up with something meaningful to write about in time for the deadline.
1) Nuns orders are dying on the vine.
2) 49,000 women - as incredible and hardworking as most of them are, are not going to 'save the poor' and they know it. Most of their agitation is for more federal, state, and local government 'aid' when it's proven that other than for 'red cross' style emergencies, aid actually is a disservice to the poor.
3) how many NGOs, orders, massive welfare bureaucracies helped the Colonies get off the ground and then helped the new USA become the powerhouse of freedom and wealth it became? Not many. No welfare at all existed on the federal level until 1930.
4) The future belongs to the fertile. Poverty begins at home precisely to the degree marriage is not honored. The single best thing a young woman can do to avoid poverty is to get and stay married to 1 man. So yes, all the social justice feel-goodery won't help matters if we lose the battle on the marriage and sexual revolution front.
5) Ultimately as disciples of Jesus not the spirit of the age, we ought to care about bringing people to a committed relationship with Jesus in the Church...that's decidedly NOT what is happening in these nun's social outreach. If we're not making disciples of the nations...then what good are we?
I think the other problem with the Irish Church is that they became de-spiritualized... life became not about holiness and heroism but finding comfort...the effect of cronyism is to ease into a comfortable routine, go through the motions without the personal heartfelt pangs of this romance which is Catholicism.
It is a romance, not an ideology or ethnic habit. At the root of it all we either worship God or we worship idols of other creatures.
We either see ourselves in a great dance with creatures in service of the creator...or we fool ourselves into thinking we are gods ourselves and can use creatures for our own designs and goods.
This is a temptation not just for Irish but for us all. But the ugly effect of 2-3 generations of a peace treaty with the world, flesh, and devil is the collapse of the faith as we see in Ireland.
especially those more interested in social justice than in holding the Vatican's line on sexual politics.
False dichotomy.
How exactly is it just to misrepresent by omission, or even lie, about the reality of the nature of the human person and human sexuality?
It is a romance, not an ideology or ethnic habit.
Good call, JusadBellum.
One chooses to be Catholic, and is invited to make that choice every day in every area of life. One isn't Catholic simply because Ma, Da, and their Ma and Da were Catholic, and that one is "born and raised Catholic" and comes from "a long line of Catholic families," or comes from "a Catholic culture" (as if one therefore "owns" being Catholic by some sort of default). One isn't Catholic just because one has "received all the Sacraments" and has had "twelve years of Catholic school," or whatever.
That much should be obvious: just on poor catechesis alone-- and (as I think Frank Sheed put it) graduating from Catholic school with "a pile of Catholicism" and not knowing how any of it fits together-- it's quite apparent that going to Mass on Sunday (or even ticking the right Catholic boxes, including going to Mass every Sunday) may be necessary, but it often isn't sufficient to enable a person to practice the faith with the holistic integrity that it should be practiced.
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