JUST AS THERE WAS A SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL OF THE MEDIA, SO TOO THERE IS A POPE FRANCIS OF THE MEDIA; HINT: BOTH ARE FABRICATIONS OF THE MEDIA

But first, Pope Francis visits my alma mater (yes, as a graduate of the North American College's Sabbatical program in Rome, I'm now considered an alumnus--for fund raising purposes).  What a wonderful city to live and go to school. It was like heaven!


And you might want to read this by pressing this sentence:

Pope Francis, the Papacy of the media and the real Papacy

By Andrea Gagliarducci On 4 maggio 2015

 

Some money quotes to ponder:

 

(The re-emergence of 1970's thinking and ideology by those who had fallen into obscurity:)

 

  Since Pope Francis’ election, the expectations placed on this pontificate have increased with his every action or speech. This climate of expectation was fostered by those Cardinals who had campaigned in favor of his election with the complicity of the secular media. Everything in the Church was to be perceived as a breath of fresh air and revolution, as if the Church before Francis was merely a place of scandals and dysfunction. This reading obviously betrayed the facts, but it helped some people to move once again to center stage under the Pope’s shadow, such as Cardinals Oscar Andrés Rodriguez Maradiaga, Walter Kasper and Godfried Daneels. Their pastoral-theological viewpoint would have become extinct in a short time, by natural death, and their influence, already diminished greatly, had almost disappeared. These cardinals identified in Pope Francis the possibility of renewing their former influence, since the Pope was more interested in a pastoral approach to governing than in power struggles.

 

 (Media fabrications:)

 

 Benedict XVI was aware of this risk. On February 13, 2013, two days after he announced his resignation, he spoke to the clergy of Rome about a “Second Vatican Council of the media” and of the real Second Vatican Council. They were prophetic words. There followed a conclave of the media and the real conclave, a synod of the media and the real synod, a pontificate of the media and the real pontificate.

 

(The Real Pontificate:)

But there is a real pontificate that is never discussed. This real pontificate is well known by the “hidden Vatican,” which – in the face of talk about revolution – has faithfully and silently carried on its work, advancing the Vatican reforms that for some time had already been under way. This real pontificate demonstrates that Pope Francis defends the natural family and attacks gender ideology. The media pontificate broadcasts that Pope Francis has opened up to homosexuals, saying “Who am I to judge?” The real pontificate clarifies that, with this sentence, Pope Francis nailed the coffin shut on the issue: if gays live the life of the Church, he is no one to judge them; if they do not, he is still not going to judge them, but they are outside of the Church. Full stop. Any additional word would be superfluous.

In the real pontificate, Pope Francis appreciates the conservative Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna for his interventions at the Synod of Bishops; moreover, he does not dislike, but rather holds in great regard, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, perhaps the only one able to bridge theology and the South American spirit, thanks also to his knowledge of Liberation Theology and his friendship with Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez; Pope Francis also maintains good relations with his Master of Ceremonies, Msgr. Guido Marini, and he is not against Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, whom he had transferred to the Order of Malta from the Apostolic Signatura.

(Pope Francis begins to distance himself from those who reemerged from their 1970's obscurity:)

In the history of this pontificate, there is a moment in which the hidden Vatican, with its weight of reasoning and its reforms carried out in the spirit of continuity won over Pope Francis as he became more aware of the importance of the curial institution. At this moment, his usual consultants seem to have been sidelined. In anticipation of the encyclical on ecology, it is widely rumored that the Pope completely rejected one of Victor Fernandez’s drafts, although he is the Rector of the Catholic University of Argentina and one of the Pope’s principal ghostwriters. It is also rumored that “human ecology” – a legacy of Benedict XVI – now occupies more space in the drafts of the upcoming encyclical, and that this concept, if included, would balance some of the ecological positions coming from the 2007 Aparecida document, very much present in Pope Francis’ draft of the encyclical.
Nevertheless, by the time the hidden Vatican started winning over Pope Francis’ heart, certain situations inside the Vatican had already gone sour. As a consequence, the quiet revolution begun by Benedict XVI could only be carried forward within the new forms of the “parallel Curia,” and this adjustment has created the need for further discussion.

 

(The real enemies of Pope Francis fueling the pontificate of the media:)

 The establishment of a sort of parallel Curia and the continuous discussion about new structures has slowed down the process of an already ongoing reform. At the moment, multiplying discussions serves only the aims of the old men who have returned to power and are desirous to retain their influence. Not by chance Cardinal Maradiaga has spoken about the possibility of a third Synod on the Family, while the German bishops published a multilingual translation of their summary of the German faithful’s responses to the Synod’s questionnaire, probably hoping to be able still to dominate the discussion.

Today’s enemies of Pope Francis’ reform are therefore probably the same cardinals and bishops who initially backed the reform – those, that is, whose promotion of a media pontificate over the real pontificate has risked a wholesale misinterpretation of Pope Francis’ intentions.

My final comment: