Below I link a Crux article and interview with newly minted Cardinal Pierre the Papal Nuncio to the USA.
The good Cardinal is diplomatic. While there has been polarization in the Church since Vatican II (caused, by the way, by the polarizing “spirit of Vatican II” changes shoved down people’s throats in a pre-Vatican II authoritarian way) both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI did much to diffuse the polarization because of their clarity of teaching, opening the Church to the pre-Vatican II liturgies and being nice people whose rhetoric was calming not polarizing. They never resorted to verbal insults directed at one kind of Catholics.
Pope Francis, either intentionally or not, has opened up old wounds, especially as it concerns clarity of teaching, many issues once thought to be settled in terms of sexuality and Holy Orders, to include Holy Matrimony, and has poured gasoline on those whose old scars fires have been reopened. He insults people of an orthodox perspective.
Yes, there are radical traditional Catholics, who hate this pope. Hating anyone, even the pope, pure and simple is a mortal sin. But since Pope Francis wants to reopen what is a sin and isn’t and what mortal sinners can do while accompanied by the Church, I guess one could make a case for hating the pope. Maybe we need to listen to these haters and confirm their hate rather than make them feel excluded?
That’s where we are heading.
Nonetheless, that Cardinal Pierre felt the need to address the polarization in the USA indicates that he knows it is quite serious and depending on what Pope Francis approves as a result of the Synod on the Synodality, there may well be a worldwide schism, not only here but in Africa and other orthodox countries.
If the Pope leans towards orthodoxy as a result of the synod on synodality, the real problem for polarization will come from the heterodox—they will go into schism. If you want to see hate, go back to Pope Benedict’s papacy and how the heterodox reacted to him. They are the real polarizing and hateful clique in the Church. But I don’t think Benedict ever verbally insulted them.
It is a no win situation. If both the heterodox and orthodox are appeased, there will be a silent schism which has been going on since Vatican II now claiming about 90% of the worldwide Catholic population who no loner are practicing Catholics.
Rome we have a problem:
Pope’s envoy rejects claims of a ‘great divide’ between Francis and the US
ROME – Cardinal-designate Christophe Pierre, Pope Francis’s envoy to the United States and one of his new red hat recipients, has rejected perceptions of a “great divide” between the Argentine pontiff and the Church in the United States.
Speaking to Crux during a Sept. 29 press point in Rome, Pierre said he would not describe the situation between the pope and the US Church as “a great divide, it’s not a great divide. I think it’s more correct to say that we live in a society which is divided, we live in a society which is polarized.”
3 comments:
I saw the recent interview with HE. He came across as tone deaf and completely or willfully clueless about the real issues we are facing as a church. He has absolutely no idea what is going on in the USA. Either that or he is just another Francis apologist and as such is manifesting clericalism at it's height.
Tom Makin,
Like the Roche he is a company man not a successor to the apostles. The Left destroys institutions intentiinally
A rebel without a clue😉
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