HOLY FATHER, YOU ARE NOT LISTENING! AND NOT LISTENING, YOU MIX APPLES AND ORANGES IN A FEEBLE ATTEMPT AT APOLOGETICS CONCERNING F******S*******!

The sad case of mixing apples and oranges and misrepresenting the actual concerns of orthodox, sane, post-Vatican II, flexible clergy and laity, to include cardinals and other bishops and whole continents.

As reported by Lifesite News:

Asked about the controversial document, Pope Francis replied: “I do not bless a ‘homosexual marriage,’ I bless two people who love each other and I also ask them to pray for me.”

“No one is shocked if I give a blessing to an entrepreneur who maybe exploits people, and that is a very serious sin,” he said. “Whereas they are scandalized if I give it to a homosexual… This is hypocrisy! The heart of the document is welcome.”

Prior to these lines – as revealed in more extensive comments from the interview released by Vatican News – Francis stated, “Always in confessions, when these situations arrive, homosexual people, remarried people, I always pray and bless. The blessing should not be denied to anyone. Everyone, everyone, everyone.”

“Be careful,” he continued. “I’m talking about people: those who are capable of receiving Baptism. The most serious sins are those that disguise thmselves with a more ‘angelic’ appearance.”

Francis’ answer to Credere also appears to misrepresent both Fiducia Supplicans and the opposition which it has received. In the preview of his answers provided to the press, the Pope presents a scenario of blessing an individual on his own, whilst Fiducia Supplicans expressly speaks about the blessing of “couples.”

His complaint has already been swiftly criticized by clergy and lay commentators as being a “straw man” argument, for he was defending a form of blessing – of an individual on his own – which no one was opposing. 

 My orthodox, sane, flexible and post-Vatican II comments: I don’t want to complain too much about Pope Francis’ age, but what he is saying off-the-cuff about F******S********* isn’t really helping his defense, but rather, shows slight of hand and mixing apples and oranges. Like President Biden, age may be wreaking havoc on the pope’s cognitive skills and we should give him a pass.

What the pope said yesterday in yet another head-scratching incoherent interview, this time at low altitude, completely misrepresents the concern that sane, orthodox, flexible faithful Catholics have aboutF****** S********. 

Here are those concerns:

1. We don’t need the Vatican micromanaging or making into a doctrine the private or personal blessings a priest might give to sinners just as long as he isn’t blessing the sin. I can remember when a certain cardinal either from New York or Boston, can’t remember where, but it was the northeast, blessed rockets or missals heading to Viet Nam. That should have been condemned by the NCCB as well as the Vatican given the prestige that a Cardinal brought to blessing weapons of mass destruction. Blessing sin is the same thing as the sin could lead a person into the fires of hell and the Church is suppose to rescue people in a lifestyle opposed to God and the Church. 

2. Blessing couples living in public sin is the problem, couples who ask for a blessing which clearly is for their relationship, both platonic and sexual. For them it goes together and isn’t separated into love and sex, these are combined to equal the relationship. If FS had only stated that individuals in the relationship can be blessed, we would not have a pope defending the indefensible and making a fool of himself in the process. 

3. The greatest concern though is that either the Pope or Cardinal Fernandez are gaslighting orthodox and sane, post Vatican II flexible Catholics, who accept Vatican II and its liturgies and look forward to the liturgies being made better by a recovery of good things thrown out by Pope Paul VI. Most sane, orthodox post-Vatican II Catholics see the camel’s nose in the tent leading to a new anthropology of the Sacraments of the Church and the pope and Fernandez will justify it as a development in doctrine. This will lead to the sacramentalizing of same sex relationships, convalidating these and sacramentalizing adulterous relationships where a previous sacramental bond still exists. That’s crossing the Tiber to the Anglican Communion and submitting to their disorders. 

4. We don’t need the Pope micromanaging our local bishops even to the point of telling them what can and can’t be in parish bulletins. Bishops should know what their job description is and then carry it out. For example several years ago when Archbishop Hartmayer was the Bishop of Savannah, at a Clergy Conference he warned his priests not to “convalidated” illicit marriages where the presumption of the Church is that a Sacramental marriage to another person still exists. He threatened to suspend any priest who presided over a liturgical validation of an illicit adulterous relationship. Good for him for showing some masculine muscles in this regard. He didn’t need any pope to tell him how to run his diocese, he knew how in this regard. 

So, can we ask Pope Francis to listen to us and respond to what I highlighted above? Is a listening Church even possible under this papacy?