HAVE TRADITIONAL BLOGGERS AND MEDIA GONE OFF THE RAILS IN CRITICIZING POPE FRANCIS? YES, SOME, NOT ALL, BUT YES!

Ever since Pope Francis was elected, in fact the very night of it, traditional bloggers went hysterical over his election. By that I mean liturgical blogs. 

It has not let up. And some media, like EWTN, but some others too,  have gone off the rails in being negative about Pope Francis. 

Two Cardinals, one from the USA and another from India, have condemned such negative and divisive attitudes about Pope Francis. Cardinal O’Malley went so far as to admit that there are bishops in the USCCB who are oppose to Pope Francis, that there is polarization. 

I have often written on my blog that traditionalists have shot themselves in the foot in their negativity toward the reigning pope. This pope doesn’t like criticism and has shown traditionalists that he thinks they are crazy and in need of therapy for their obsession with dogma and liturgy and a Catholicism of the past.

I agree with the Holy Father, just as we don’t worship dogma or liturgy, we don’t worship ecclesiology, Vatican II or synodality. WE WORSHIP GOD THE FATHER THROUGH JESUS CHRSIT BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Catholicism can have penchant for idol worship if gone unchecked. Traditionalists can worship a “form of Catholicism” rather than the true God. 

However, with that said, while playing the blame game about the polarization in the Church today, should we only blame traditionalists and traditional bloggers and media? What share does the present pope have in creating the polarization and division prevalent in the Church today? 

I have written it before and write it again, if Pope Francis had only tried to be in continuity with Popes John Paul and Benedict in style and substance while moving the Church to be more “pastoral” and engaged with the world, I think we and the Holy Father would be in a better spot today.

If only Pope Francis had continued to trajectory of liturgical renewal of Pope Benedict, especially kneeling for Holy Communion and exquisite beauty in chants, liturgical vesture, and the traditional ethos of the Catholic Liturgy that once was on parr with the ethos of the liturgies of the east, would we not be in a better spot today?

And in terms of the two forms of the one Latin Rite, couldn’t Pope Francis have been more conciliatory and accompanied these renewal groups to keep them on the one rail of Catholicism? Could the Holy Father have asked bishops to allow the EF communities to thrive and grow by accompanying them and keeping them engaged with the full communion of the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ and to respect the well celebrated Post Vatican II Masses even as it faces the people, they stand for Holy Communion, receive in the hand and have eclectic chants and music but still strive to celebrate this form of the Mass as Vatican II intended, not its spirit?

And would it not have been more pastoral for the Holy Father to call out the National Catholic Reporter and the schism it has promoted in the Church since the 1960’s to include a liberality in sexuality that encouraged untold numbers of clergy and religious to experiment with sex both natural and unnatural and thus are complicit in the sex abuse scandal of the modern age and then patting themselves in a self serving way for being the first to report on it although they enabled perverted minds to think what they were doing was acceptable? 

I have never heard the NCR to repent of its schismatic ways, criticisms of Paul VI, John Paul II or Benedict, much of it quite disgusting.