POPE FRANCIS SNUBS WASHINGTON’S WILTON CARDINAL GREGORY

FROM CRUX: (my astute comments embedded in red within the text.)

Speaking of the American context specifically, recently three of your fellow American cardinals and synod delegates had a meeting with Pope Francis to discuss challenges in the American Church. Many were surprised that you weren’t also part of that meeting. Is there a reason you didn’t participate?

I didn’t get the invitation. I didn’t get the invitation. I have no idea. I don’t know if they asked for the meeting or that the Holy Father asked them. I simply don’t know.

In a press conference Cardinal [Joseph] Tobin said he had requested the meeting with the pope…

I have no idea.

If you had been there, what do you think are some challenges that were important to discuss?

I would think the health of our ecclesial community would be one. Are we a healthy Church? That is, are we a healthy Church that’s rooted in the truth and living in the faith as best we can, practicing charity? And are we a Church that has something to say to the rest of the world? Why become a Catholic? (This is an astute comment and may be the reason the other three cardinals and the pope didn’t want him there as they don’t want to listen this kind of reasoning which is orthodox. Synodal Catholicism is infected with worldly concerns and talking, chattering, talking and incessantly talking about this, that and the other. It is neurotic talking. Did I say it is obsessed with talking?)

How do you think synodality can help in responding to these challenges?

It gets us talking to each other. One of the things that I am most impressed with, both last year’s gathering, this year’s gathering, is the fact that it’s an environment in which people can honestly speak to one another, hear one another, and not condemn one another. It’s a delightful opportunity to have someone raise an issue of significance that challenges me, to listen, to attempt to understand what’s prompting that opinion and maybe even to learn. A conversation that you enter into where you already have the answer is not a conversation. (And this is what Catholicism is reduced to under synodalism. It is all about, talking, talking, talking. Where are the perennial truths? Where is the call to perfection as St. Teresa of Avila demanded? Where is the call to repentance and individual reform, especially in the areas of ethics, addictions, self absorption and sexuality, most needed today? Where is any of that. No, neurotic and power hungry Catholics zwant power, decision making and their sinful lifestyles confirmed. They want nothing to do with sin, repentance and the call to holiness and a moral way of life. What a disaster for the Catholic Church, what Cardinal Pell stated, the last 13 years have been a catastrophe!)