Pope Francis accused victims of calumny and performed a wedding ceremony in the most banal and illicit way which appeared to be a self-serving stunt at best and a way to deflect press attention away from Pope Francis' angry outburst towards sex abuse victims.
The trivialization of the liturgy actually preceded the pilgrimage with a 1960's type Folk Mass in St. Peter's last Sunday.
In addition, the controversies surrounding the footnote on the possibility of some adulterers having a way to "licitly" receive Holy Communion while remaining in a public, adulterous relationship, without living as "brother and sister" has opened the door to the complete collapse of Catholic Moral Theology and Doctrine on sexuality in general. The pope, in an ecumenical way, has chosen to follow the path of liberal Protestantism in this regard. And of course liberal Protestantism is on the verge of collapse too because of its liberal leanings on all things.
The Holy Father's fortunes changed in Peru and his pilgrimage ended on a more positive note. Although His Holiness' spoke about secular government's corruption, the Holy Father should also point fingers towards the corruption His Holiness is fomenting in not answering the concerns of the Dubia Cardinals in an orthodox way. This creates anger among the cardinals and the bishops in union with him.
Over a million were expected for Pope Francis' closing Mass in Chile but only 50,000 showed up in the photo above.
Peru's pilgrimage was triumphal for the most part with His Holiness' final Mass having nearly 1.3 million attending.
Here's a good secular media's wrap-up:
Droves fill pope’s final Mass in restive Latin America trip
BY NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press
LIMA, PERU
More than 1 million people turned out Sunday for Pope Francis’ final Mass in Peru, giving him a warm and heartfelt farewell that contrasted sharply with the outcry he caused in neighboring Chile by accusing sex abuse victims of slandering a bishop.
Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who publicly rebuked the pope on Saturday for those remarks, joined the pontiff and dozens of fellow bishops on a tented altar at a Lima airfield to celebrate the Mass. The crowd of 1.3 million people reported by the Vatican was the largest of Francis’ weeklong, two-nation visit.
Francis tried to move beyond the scandal Sunday, joking with cloistered nuns that they were taking advantage of his visit to finally get out and get a breath of fresh air. And he denounced a corruption scandal in Latin America that has even implicated his Peruvian host, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who recently survived an impeachment vote by lawmakers.
In his homily Francis referred to the “grave sin of corruption,” that kills the hope of people, urging Peruvians to have hope and show tenderness and compassion.
Thousands lined the streets as his black papal Fiat made its way to the airport, where a children’s choir sang in farewell as Francis boarded a plane to head back to Rome.
Earlier in the day, he said the bribery scandal centered on Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht was “just a small anecdote” of the corruption and graft that have thrown much of Latin American politics into crisis.
“If we fall into the hands of people who only understand the language of corruption, we’re toast,” the pope said in unscripted remarks.
Francis was greeted by cheering crowds at nearly every stop of his Peru trip, but the cloud of sex abuse scandal trailed him.
“Francis, here there IS proof,” read a banner hanging from a Lima building along his motorcade route Sunday.
The message was a reference both to Peru’s own abuse scandal and to Francis’ Jan. 18 comments in Iquique, Chile, that there was not “one shred of proof” to allegations that a protege of that country’s most notorious pedophile priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, knew of Karadima’s abuse and did nothing to stop it.
Karadima’s victims have accused the bishop, Juan Barros, of witnessing the abuse and of complicity in covering it up. Barros has denied the accusations, and Francis backed him by saying the victims’ claims were “all calumny.”
Francis’ remarks that he would only believe victims with “proof” were problematic because they were already deemed so credible by the Vatican that it sentenced Karadima to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” in 2011 based on their testimony. A Chilean judge also found the victims to be credible, saying that while she had to drop charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crimes wasn’t lacking.
The pope’s comments sparked such an outcry that both O’Malley, Francis’ own top adviser on abuse, and the Chilean government made the highly rare decision to publicly rebuke him – an extraordinary correction of a pontiff from both church and state. The criticisms were all the more remarkable given that they came on the Argentina-born pontiff’s home turf in Latin America.
O’Malley said Saturday that Francis’ remarks were “a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse,” and that such expressions of disbelief made abuse survivors feel abandoned and left in “discredited exile.”
Chilean government spokeswoman Paula Narvaez said there was an “ethical imperative to respect victims of sexual abuse, believe them and support them.”
The issue also had resonance in Peru. Last week the Vatican took over a Peru-based Roman Catholic lay movement, Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, more than six years after first learning of sexual, physical and psychological abuse committed by its founder.
An independent investigation commissioned by the movement found that founder Luis Figari sodomized his recruits, forced them to fondle him and one another, liked to watch them “experience pain, discomfort and fear” and humiliated them in front of others. Figari’s victims have criticized the Vatican for its years of inaction and for eventually sanctioning him with what they consider a “golden exile” – retirement in Italy at a retreat house, albeit separated from the community he founded.
The banner hanging from the building along Francis’ motorcade route referred to evidence against Figari and featured a photo of him. Peruvian prosecutors recently announced they wanted to arrest him.
But for the most part, Peruvians welcomed him with open arms and flooded in huge droves to his final Mass. In contrast, Francis’ send-off from Chile drew only 50,000 people, a fraction of the number expected.
“He is a symbol to us as Catholics,” said Cindy Sanchez, a 24-year-old administrative assistant attending the Mass. “Listening to him gives us encouragement.”
During his seven-day trip in Chile and Peru, Francis personally apologized to survivors of priests who sexually abused them, traveled deep into the Amazon to meet with indigenous leaders, decried the scourge of violence against women in Latin America and urged the Chilean government and radical factions of the Mapuche indigenous group to peacefully resolve one of the region’s longest-running disputes.
But the pope also attracted unprecedented rejection: At least a dozen churches across Chile were set aflame, and riot police shot tear gas at and arrested protesters in the capital, Santiago.
5 comments:
Hey, ya'll....listen...do you hear that...it is Martin Luther and John Calvin laughing and whooping it up in the foyer...LOL!
Gene may have a point that Martin Luther’s three walls are still wobbly. Do the laity exhibit hypocrisy demanding sexual liberty, tolerance, and forgivness that they would not grant the clergy? Or do they instictivly see the flaw in that approach when they are asked to forgive something that injured them personally? I feel pretty confident now in my hypothesis that Pope Francis has a week personality that he hides in the Vatican Motel 6 and behind a quick temper. I don’t think this was lost on his electors and may have been their hope all along. The poor guy is as much a victim as anyone.
Gene, do not forget what John Nolan wrote recently about how important and helpful it is to have an historical perspective.
Over 2,000 years the Church was had popes who were very competent leaders, holy men and even saints. The Church has also had many popes who were just average, ruthless, European politicians more than they were religous and spiritual leaders. And we had history lecturers who told us (in 10th century or 15th century or both?) that there were popes and cardinals who were more like Chicago gangsters than anything else; as in killing opponents, taking Church money to make rich their extended families and having young mistresses and enough illegitimate children to fill an orphanage and so on.....
Was it Belloc or Chesterton who often said and wrote something like the Church must be a divine institution as no other organization could have lasted a year after being led by such scoundrels!!. ie: the sort of scoundrels who have led the Church as popes and cardinals at different times over 20 centuries!
Who knows? Perhaps the next 100 to 200 years could see the Church being led by a new pope as great as Gregory VII or Innocent III?
KPK.
One does not need to go back to the 10th or 15th century.
Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli (1806 to 1876) was the last of the "lay Cardinals".
He was a deacon. Never ordained a priest. Antonelli was Papal secretary of state for almost 3 decades, 1848 to 1876.
He was a significant player in Italian and European politics and diplomacy and for a time he was even embroiled in the diplomacy of the American civil war.
Antonelli probably was never directly involved in the killing of anyone but he clearly took Church money to make his family wealthy and fathered many children with different women.
The Church has survived much worse than the Francis papacy.
"An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight."
Hilaire Belloc, Catholic writer and historian. 1870 - 1953.
By the way, Belloc also wrote: "The grace of God is courtesy."
Is that sound theologically?
God as polite and respectful; God as all knowing, all loving and all powerful and also by His nature very generous?
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