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Monday, January 15, 2018

IT DOES SEEM THAT POPE FRANCIS IS A POLARIZING FIGURE GENERALLY IN SOUTH AMERICA AND SPECIFICALLY IN HIS NATIVE ARGENTINA NOT TO MENTION THE JESUITS AND THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH

A newly-begun journey, an 

already-written script, and the “unexpected”

The chaos of the Latin American scenarios alone is
enough to make the framework - that reads
Bergoglio’s international projections with the same
formulas used in the reading of Karol Wojtyla’s
pontificate - appear misleading. The icon of “
Superstar Pope “ is now used by those who want to
polarize attention on Francis, by separating him from
the Church, to then rattle off his “failures”.
It wouldn’t take much, however to get rid of this
pre-established “script”
Pope Francis about to board his flight to Chile

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Pubblicato il 15/01/2018
Ultima modifica il 15/01/2018 alle ore 19:09
VATICAN CITY
On the eve of Pope Francis’ journey to Chile and Peru, tensions, discontents and even violent acts unleash on the umpteenth apostolic visit of the Bishop of Rome to his home continent. As the media is warming up its engines to present the Latin American trip as a kind of “gripping test” of Bergoglio’s pontificate.  

Burning parishes in the name of alleged indigenous causes, and a beat-down Church after years of sexual abuse perpetrated by religious, priests, and high-profile exponents from the local clergy are awaiting the Pope in Chile. While in Peru, a Society of Apostolic Life of Peruvian origin, which in the past had enjoyed good ties within the Vatican, was just put under the administration of an external commissioner by the Holy See, following some serious accusations of sexual abuses involving their leadership.  

Furthermore, Francis’ next landings in Chile and Peru have stirred up controversy in his own country of origin. On the Argentinean social media, there are those posting a flurry of resentful comments on the “traitor Pope”, who, almost five years after his pontifical election, has avoided returning to his homeland despite having visited almost all the great countries of South America. And while tens of thousands of compatriots travel to Santiago to see Bergoglio, the Argentine bishops implicitly confirm the excessive conflict surrounding their illustrious compatriot, by spreading a letter in which they remind that: “No one spoke or can speak on behalf of the Pope” and that” his contribution to the reality of our country must be found in his abundant teaching and his attitudes as pastor, not in tendentious and partial interpretations that only widen the division between Argentineans”.  

The Bishop’s message reveals also that in Argentina, around the figure of the Pope unloads the clutter of political and social tensions of a troubled country, with the coming-back of clashes in public squares and the burning of motorways: a country worn out by power conflicts, the disappearance of the middle classes and the absence of a proper ruling classes. Yet it seems this “malaise” is a “systemic” crisis common to a good part of Latin America: from Venezuela to Brazil, from Honduras to Colombia. Fragmentation and economic stagnation characterize the final phase of Latin America’s “going left” phase, which began 15 years ago and started to be in crisis during the years of the Argentinian papacy.  

The short memory of the pro- 1989  
Argentinian discontents and Chilean polemics - including those on the economic costs of the papal visit - alone are enough to suggest how inappropriate and misleading it is to apply to Pope Bergoglio’s international apostolic journeys, the same interpretative formulas used for Karol Wojtyla’s pontificate, the “globe-trotter Pope”. The same Latin-American turmoil, coinciding with the years of the Argentinian Pope, seems unmatchable to the exceptional sequence of “successes” that many in the West attributed to the Polish Pope’s geopolitical flair in the 1980s and 1990s. Several news articles, continues to put the fall of the Berlin Wall in Saint John Paul II’s name. The 1989 epic is still alive through slogans such as: “God has won in the East”, sung by western neo-con theologians who at that time, greeted what was a worldly passage in the history of the world powers, as if it were the dawn of a new era for faith and for the Church. In those years, even official ecclesial documents paid homage to the 1989 saga, the year in which we saw the beginning of a providential turning point in the history of humanity, with the impending universal triumph of democracy, freedom and the unquenchable thirst for God that atheist regimes had tried in vain to suffocate.  

Then it was the time of the massacres among “Christian” People in former Yugoslavia, of the east-European migrants fleeing hunger and wars and flowing into the West, and of an unstoppable de-Christianization process growing in the lives of peoples, both in the East and West, under the rhetoric of spiritual rebirth.  

In the last years of his pontificate, Saint John Paul II got himself even more detached from those who attributed hints of geopolitical palingenesis to his pontificate: “After 1989”, we read for example in the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente of 1994, “there arose new dangers and threats. In the countries of the former Eastern bloc, after the fall of Communism, there appeared the serious threat of exaggerated nationalism, as is evident from events in the Balkans and other neighboring areas”. Words that are even more prophetic today, faced with the political leaders of Eastern Europe who try to reduce Christian references to an “identity ideology” in order to justify their anti-immigrant policies.  

Something unforeseen is our only hope  
The reading codes imposed by liberal and neo-conservative circles are now pressing and besieging the current pontificate. What remains of Wojtyla’s years, is that lazy habit of the media and clerical circuit to confer to papal visits miraculous effects for the countries and local Churches involved. “So many people hope that during the two/three days of the papal visit there will be a radical change in the Chilean Church and in the country. And this is naive at the very least” Chilean Jesuit Fernando Montes, former Rector of the University Alberto Hurtado and fellow student of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, told Vatican Insider.  

The newly begun papal journey is bound to lay itself open to those who, after having built the icon of the “Superstar Pope”, are getting ready to whip the inadequacies shown by the Pope in fulfilling the agenda shaped for him by liberal and neo-con media and socialist circuits. The implicit and implicit comparison to the “splendor” of the Wojtyla-era can also be useful to this purpose.  

The global information centres have already set up their agenda on two/three themes – at the top of the list, clerical sexual abuse, followed by some hints to the “viri probati” issue- topics on which they intend to measure the papal journey to Chile and Peru, leaving room to fill with perplexity and open-questions concerning the “failed promises”, along with the pending deluge of Bergoglio’s first five years of pontificate.  

The Latin-American trip offers itself to those who aim at increasing even more the polarizing attention on the Pope - separating him from the rest of the Church, and from the journey of the people of God - to then reproach him with real or alleged failures in the chaos of the Latin-American scenarios, now that even the undeniable “successes” of the Vatican’s diplomatic work - such as the contribution to the thaw between Cuba and USA - appear to be questioned by the changing flow of events and leadership. The media conformism’ conditioning aims at increasing - first - the pressure on the sexual abuse scandals, to play with the cliché of a Church intimidated and put at the corner, jammed by performance anxiety, in sum of a church that “can’t manage” to get rid of evil by standardizing self-control and self-regulation measures, as any good company that is able to enforce its “code of ethics” internal rules, does.  

The script seems to have already been written, with the apparatus ready to relaunch the declarations of “zero tolerance” policies. But often - as Eugenio Montale wrote - when you leave for a journey, after having it carefully prepared for a long time, “something unexpected is the only hope”. 

7 comments:

Mark Thomas said...

Is His Holiness Pope Francis as polarizing (supposedly) as Pope Blessed Paul VI?

He was attacked by left-wingers and right-wingers.

Pope Saint John Paul II was attacked by left-wingers and right-wingers.

Pope Benedict XVI was despised by left-wingers...and plenty of right-wingers have denounced Pope Benedict XVI as the suit-and-tie wearing Vatican II "modernist" peritus who never really changed his ways.

To return to Pope Saint John Paul II, here is what Archbishop Lefebvre, the leading right-winger of his (Archbishop Lefebvre's) time said about Pope Saint John Paul II:

http://archives.sspx.org/archbishop_lefebvre/1986_declaration_against_assisi_archbishop_lefebvre-bishop_de_castro_mayer.htm

"Adopting the liberal religion of Protestantism and of the Revolution, the naturalistic principles of J.J. Rousseau, the atheistic liberties of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the principle of human dignity no longer having any relation with truth and moral dignity, the Roman authorities turn their backs on their predecessors and break with the Catholic Church, and they put themselves at the service of the destroyers of Christianity and of the universal Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

"The present acts of John Paul II and the national episcopates illustrates, year by year, this radical change in the conception of the Faith, the Church, the priesthood, the world, and salvation by grace.

"The high point of this rupture with the previous Magisterium of the Church took place at Assisi, after the visit to the synagogue. The public sin against the one, true God, against the Incarnate Word, and His Church, makes us shudder with horror.

"John Paul II encourages the false religions to pray to their false gods — an immeasurable, unprecedented scandal."
=======================================================================

Again, were not Popes Blessed Paul VI, Saint John Paul II, and Benedict XVI just as "polarizing" as Pope Francis?

Pax.

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas said...

We need to add Pope Saint John XXIII to the list of Popes who polarized (supposedly) the Church. To this day, plenty of right-wingers insist that Pope Saint John XXIII was a heretic/communist.

To return to Pope Benedict XVI.

He was cast as a right-wing, "Rottweiler"...he turned the Church back in time...etc.

Within and without the Church, the left-wing despised Pope Benedict XVI. He was accused repeatedly of having aided priests who had abused children sexually. Even many so-called "moderate" Catholics believed that Pope Benedict XVI had covered for child abusers. Plenty of right-wingers insist that he is a modernist. They also denounced him for his having resigned as Pope.

Throughout my lifetime, one Pope after an other has "polarized" Catholics.

Translation: The reality is that the overwhelming amount of Catholics love the Pope..each Pope. The overwhelming amount of Catholics are not concerned with the special interests that concern right-wing and left-wing factions within the Church.

It is the right-wing and left-wing factions...fanatics...within the Church who stir up trouble...who attack Popes...special interest groups who attack the Pope whenever they perceive that he doesn't march in lockstep with them.

In general, the left-wing reacts negatively whenever a Pope promotes Holy Tradition...the TLM, Latin, Gregorian chant, indulgences...denounces the Culture of Death (abortion, artificial birth control, homosexual "marriage," etc..."pre-Vatican II," "old Church" Catholicism.

In general, the right-wing reacts negatively whenever a Pope promotes Catholic Social Teaching.

When we move past left-wing and right-wing fanatics, we find that the overwhelming amount of Catholics hold their Pope in high regard.

Pax.

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas said...

Pope Francis' successor will also be accused of "polarizing" the Church. If Cardinal Burke were elected Pope, left-wingers would bash him daily.

There are also plenty of right-wing traditionalists who insist that he is just a "conservative"...a "Vatican II, Novus Ordo" "sellout" who is not radical (as a right-winger) enough to suit their tastes.

There simply isn't a Pope who would satisfy the Church's special interest groups.

Pax.

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas said...

Each person on earth "polarizes" certain folks. Everybody is a "polarizing" figure.

John Wayne "polarized" people. This comedian, that actor...this or that talk show host..."polarizes" people.

Each pastor "polarizes" certain members of his congregation. Each Cardinal and bishop "polarizes" this or that faction within the Church.

Bishop Fellay and the SSPX "polarize" left-wingers and right-wingers. Many left-wingers despise the SSPX as the Society is attached to the TLM.

Plenty of right-wingers have denounced Bishop Fellay and the SSPX as having bowed to "modernist Rome." The SSPX Resistance despises Bishop Fellay and the SSPX. Incredibly, certain right-wingers insist that the SSPX is "liberal".

In some way, each person on earth is a "polarizing" figure. Mother Teresa was/is a polarizing figure.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is a polarizing figure...a big-time polarizing figure.

Pax.

Mark Thomas

Rood Screen said...

We're supposed to notice him carrying his own briefcase up the steps to the aeroplane. This indicates that he is better than his predecessors, who relied upon assistants to help them with such tasks.

rcg said...

I think we still don’t quite understand the man. Not that that inscrutability excuses the confusion he has encouraged. Recall that he does not himself offer communion to politicians. I think this is pretty savvy on his part and may explain why he has avoided returning to Argentina: to avoid being exploited by opportunists. Yet the symbolism of living in the simple quarters and meeting with the people at the fringes comes across as disingenuous if he cannot also be firm with those he holds as friends. Certainly, the office of Pope is not for protecting and rewarding friends without regard for their actions. That is certainly pharisaical. I do not think he is like that but rather knows that he does not have the strength to stand up against friends and countrymen, so hides in a sort of manufactured humility so that they might not ask him for too much.

TJM said...

Rood Screen, Santita is engaging in the typical lib sport of "virtue signalling." Isn't he just swell?