WHERE IN I DISAGREE WITH ROBERT ROYAL ALTHOUGH NOT ENTIRELY…

Robert Royal has a commentary at the Catholic Thing which you can read in full HERE.

Here is a portion of what he writes, with my comments embedded in red:

“First, we saw the spectacle last week of Fr. James Martin putting a pre-emptive spin on the pope’s views about LGBTs and the Church. He reported that he “heard” Leo tell him to continue his ministry along the lines that Pope Francis had already encouraged. (I dislike that bishops and priests instrumentalize or demonize the pope on what he might have or not have said in a private audience. The Holy Father, thanks be to God, is meeting with a variety of people to listen and perhaps offer advice. He has thus far risen above critiquing those who gossip about their meetings with His Holiness and that shows the majesty of the office His Holiness holds and appreciates.)

As an American, Pope Leo must be aware that this sort of thing has been a bone of contention for decades, not only during the Bergoglio Papacy. In 1976, the Detroit Call to Action (Robert Prevost was 21) was already agitating for: married and women priests, Communion for the divorced without an annulment, changes in teaching about homosexuality,  lay participation in Church governance. As a French poet once put it, “Everything changes but the avant-garde.”

Almost a half century later, except for: confused pronouncements by Francis (nervously, in a footnote) about Communion for remarrieds and others in “irregular situations”; the vague “welcoming” and “outreach” to LGBTs without any open change in teaching; the never-ending saga of “deaconesses,” which has gone nowhere; and the multi-year muddle that is synodality, how much has changed? The dike is cracked in places and could easily collapse, but so far has held. (Pope Leo went to a very liberal theological coalition in Chicago for his major seminary theology, although he received his formation as an Augustinian by living at an Augustinian House of Formation. So he knows quite well about the silly season of the Church in the 1970’s and well into the 1980’s.)

Pope Leo didn’t meet personally over the weekend with the bizarre LGBT Jubilee contingent parading around Rome and claiming some kind of acceptance by the Church. It’s impossible to believe he wasn’t asked. (Yes, this gesture speaks volumes. I do not like “ministries” to “groups” of people, as groups. As a sinner, I would like to be lumped together as a sinner, of course with my own proclivities, but not just those. If I were struggling with uncharitable acts by word and deed, I would not want to join a group of us to be encouraged that we, as a group, are loved by God. I know that already in the general Catholic Church and her parishes which require every Catholic to attend Mass each and every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation and to follow the precepts of the Church. Why do I need a special group of particular sinners who are uncharitable? It makes no sense to me, unless someone wants to regularize uncharitable words and actions and make those acceptable!)

Fr. Martin, who has been a master of his own steady campaign of attrition – aided and abetted by the mainstream media who magnify the slightest signs of Church weakness into liberal victories – preemptively offered the excuse that Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar are piled high on Leo’s plate. But surely a pope can take a brief meeting with a group he supports, if he wants to.

But Leo also didn’t do two other things, small things in their way, but needful:

• He needed to announce that any “welcoming” of LGBTs must take place under the undivided moral tradition that comes down to us from Moses to Jesus, St. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Alphonsus Liguori, Newman, JPII, Benedict, and many others. (I have to protest this statement: Pope Leo has made clear that the teachings of the Church apply to every sinner. But he hasn’t nor should he have to single out any particular sinners, and certainly not by the ideological groups to which they belong. We are all sinners and Pope Leo speaks to us all about what the Church demands and His Holiness’ homily for the canonization of two great young saints is a powerful reminder of that and calling for a holy life without denigrating any particular kind of sinner.)
• And he needed to take steps – the official Jubilee calendar actually went back and forth on this – so that the LGBT event, clearly engineered by the usual suspects inside the Vatican, never happened.

There are no other events for groups celebrating sins – pickpockets or adulterers. Why this one, unless Leo, by his silence, intends to align himself with those seeking a moral revolution in the Church? (I think this is a good point, but no matter how it got on the calendar, once it was there it would have caused more problems and division to eliminate it just as the FSSPX pilgrimage was on the calendar. It was taken down only after the event had finished. To do so before the event took place would have caused more problems that it would have solved!)

Whether he meant to or not, that’s the situation he’s now put himself in.

These are large failures, and we know that great popes like John Paul and Benedict also struggled to tame heterodox forces in the Church. In this case, Leo could have easily blocked them by the small tactics he prefers. Because the stakes are large: nothing less than standing up to the anti-Christian forces in our world, protecting Rome – and all of us.” (I Protest! These are not huge failures and Pope Leo is his own pope, not Francis, not Benedict and not JPII! He’ll do things his way and we’ll have to wait several years from now to evaluate his papacy. From my point of view, His Holiness is off to a wonderful start clarifying so much of the confusion of the past 12 years and doing so in simple ways and small gestures without chastising any particular sinner or groups of sinners. He hasn’t called out backwardists, forwardists, or anyone in between. Nor has he chastised traditionalists, conservatives, liberals, heterodox or orthodox Catholic sinners. He hasn’t used hurtful names against those he might not like, like those who have children as though they are rabbits or calling those who are same-sex attracted fagots. Thanks be to God, His Holiness has maintained the traditional majesty of the papacy and we are hearing from him only in official ways, not through interviews or embarrassing off-the -cuff statements and that were very frequently in the previous papacy.)