WE ARE SEEING A POLARIZATION IN THE CHURCH THAT COULD EASILY LEAD TO A SCHISM: THIS SITUATION BEGAN IN 2013 AND IS NOW ON STEROIDS: WHO IS THE BLAME FOR THIS SITUATION AND WHEN WILL THE PERSON TO BLAME TAKE SOME OF THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT?

 

Sean Michael Winters who writes about his opinions for the National Catholic Reporter, writes this in this morning’s on-line edition. It has a link to another article in a French Progressive Catholic journal, La Croix International,  written by another progressive, theologian Massimo Faggioli,  longing for the collapse of the Catholic Church as it was known on the eve of Pope Benedict’s abdication in order to rebuild a Church that is on a death walk similar to what is happening to The Anglican Communion and all liberal forms of Protestantism. 

Here is Sean Michael Winter’s commentary. Press La Croix International  for Massimo Faggioli’s commentary which is a must-read:

In La Croix International, Villanova University theology professor Massimo Faggioli analyzes both the recent Ross Douthat article about the Second Vatican Council and The New York Times' penchant for highlighting only conservative Catholic voices, most of whom do not know much about the Catholic Church or its teachings. The money quote: "I do not know if this is also happening to other Christian denominations and religious traditions, but it's clear that, if one does not know anything about Catholicism and happens upon these columns in the New York Times, they will find a very eccentric and idiosyncratic view of the Francis pontificate and the Church he leads as Bishop of Rome."

My comments: Theologian Faggioli laments that the “bible” of liberal America, The New York Times, delights in printing stories about the Catholic Church and the current pontificate which are negative to the different Church Pope Francis is trying to create. 

What Faggioli fails to acknowledge is that in all polarizations, there is a cause and effect. 

I would say we can place the cause of this rather unusual effect of severe polarization at the feet of Pope Francis and his advisors who have hijacked his papacy with the pope willing it to be:

1. Pope Francis portrayed himself as the anti-Benedict starting the very moment of his appearance on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica—this began the polarization immediately

2. After Pope Francis’ near death experience under anesthesia, His Holiness has realized that time is short for him and thus he recognizes that waiting for Benedict to die before he undoes that papacy altogether will thwart his desire for a different Church. Thus Pope Francis abrogates entirely Pope Benedict’s magisterial teachings and allowances for the liturgy of the Church and does so in an authoritarian way. Pope Francis completely disavows Pope Benedict’s request that Vatican II be viewed through the lens of continuity rather than rupture. All this while the emeritus pope is still living to see it happen. 

3. Pope Francis touts a listening Church but he has refused to meet with cardinals concerned about his ambiguous and idiosyncratic papacy. He has never met with the dubia cardinals nor responded to them privately or publicly but rather marginalized them.

4. Pope Francis’ idiosyncrasies includes his latest appointment to the Vatican’s Commission on Life. He names an atheist who is pro-choice and in a most vicious way. 

Pope Francis has done nothing to throw an olive branch to the young Catholics who were formed under the papacies of Pope St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Rather he is erasing these papacies and the millions of young Catholics who are John Paul II’s Catholics. Pope Francis has emboldened the old guard, those in their 60’s and older, most of whom are on life-support themselves but invigorated by the return of the Church to the divisiveness of the 1970’s, but now a divisiveness on steroids, not even experienced in the 1970’s.