As Catholics we believe that at the moment of our death we experience our particular judgement. We pray for Pope Francis as he undergoes this experience at the Throne of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Given Pope Francis’ state in life and that much was given to him as pope, we can be sure that the particular judgement will be thorough. However, and in the spirit of hope, Pope Francis will have a perfect Lawyer, Advocate, the Crucified and Risen Lord! What could go wrong?
Retired Archbishop Charles Chaput has penned a kind of obituary of Pope Francis, which seems unkind, but is within the realm of what Pope Francis might experience at his particular judgement.
Some will say it is too soon for this kind of critique, but in eternity it has already happened and our prayerful hope is that Pope Francis, even if purgatory is needed, will experience the Divine Mercy of Jesus and eternal life in heaven. (My opinion, and it is only that, is that one’s particular judgement that leads to heaven is a form of purgatory that everyone experiences.)
This is copied from First Things:
The Church After Francis
I have personal memories of Pope Francis that I greatly value: a friendly and generous working relationship at the 1997 Synod on America when we were both newly appointed archbishops; his personal welcome and warmth at Rome’s 2014 Humanum conference; and the extraordinary success of his 2015 visit to Philadelphia for the Eighth World Meeting of Families. He devoted himself to serving the Church and her people in ways that he felt the times demanded. As a brother in the faith, and a successor of Peter, he deserves our ongoing prayers for his eternal life in the presence of the God he loved.
Having said that, an interregnum between papacies is a time for candor. The lack of it, given today’s challenges, is too expensive. In many ways, whatever its strengths, the Francis pontificate was inadequate to the real issues facing the Church. He had no direct involvement in the Second Vatican Council and seemed to resent the legacy of his immediate predecessors who did; men who worked and suffered to incarnate the council’s teachings faithfully into Catholic life. His personality tended toward the temperamental and autocratic. He resisted even loyal criticism. He had a pattern of ambiguity and loose words that sowed confusion and conflict. In the face of deep cultural fractures on matters of sexual behavior and identity, he condemned gender ideology but seemed to downplay a compelling Christian “theology of the body.” He was impatient with canon law and proper procedure. His signature project, synodality, was heavy on process and deficient in clarity. Despite an inspiring outreach to society’s margins, his papacy lacked a confident, dynamic evangelical zeal. The intellectual excellence to sustain a salvific (and not merely ethical) Christian witness in a skeptical modern world was likewise absent.
What the Church needs going forward is a leader who can marry personal simplicity with a passion for converting the world to Jesus Christ, a leader who has a heart of courage and a keen intellect to match it. Anything less won’t work.
9 comments:
It is not my place to judge, and the Archbishop would know better than I that which he noted.
The Archbishop does indicate an urgency in the coming weeks to select carefully and wisely for the good of Christ's Church. While the Church will never fail, the right successor, one who has a salvific vision, will ensure the health of the institution to be passed along as a spiritual inheritance.
Archbishop Chaput was a victim of the late Pope's faux mercy and his statement is fairly measured, unlike Archbishop Vigano who has done himself no favors today with his statement on Francis' passing. Francis extended mercy to perverts and apostates but none for traditional believers, especially those who have a love of the pre-Conciliar liturgy. That is how I will remember his papacy. If he had just left Summorum Pontificum alone, the Church would be in a better place today.
I thought Chaput's comments overly kind for a man who surrounded himself with muchly weak perverts whom he protected in exchange for loyalty, opening shut doors on heterodoxy, and him a gossip hound, petty and vengeful to enemies real and enemies imagined, a reign of fear in the Vatican and among orthodox bishops, suppressing the only growing part of the Church through fear of disloyaty to his liberal agenda, a fear not without cause. He was a South American dictator, talking power to the people while exercising ruthless monarchial rule, a scheming Machiavellian Peronist.
Bob we will probably be bombarded with “holy, holies” now!
"Having said that, an interregnum between papacies is a time for candor."
Oh, Archbishop, what makes an interregnum a time for candor? Why do you feel the need to underpin your comments.
And why say, "What the Church needs going forward is a leader who can marry personal simplicity with a passion for converting the world to Jesus Christ, a leader who has a heart of courage and a keen intellect to match it" when you could, with the candor you seemingly want to protect your ecclesiastical rear end, just say, "Pope Francis was a dummy"?
K, well you touched on one truth today. Pope Francis was the least intellectually gifted of any Pope in my lifetime and I go back to Pius XII. But the same could be said of a priest who engages in sophistry to vote for the Party of Intrinsic Evil, formerly the Democratic Party.
I'm shocked Cupich said such things. Why not say any of this when he was alive? Seems cowardly to say such things now.
It was the retired Archbishop of Philadelphia, Chaput, who wrote it not Cardinal Cupich of Chicago.
I agree. In the main, bishops and priests kept their mouths shut this entire papacy, where even the most diplomatic of suggestions or corrections brought down the headman's axe, and since Francis went to his just reward, are only mouthing measured lauds and muted critiques, and too PC cowardly to speak the truth. What faithful shepherds we have.
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