Anytime anyone experiences a life and death moment, even popes, things in one’s life and journey are recalibrated and not just short term goals and decisions, but also life choices and directions.
For a pontiff experiencing a life and death situation due to cancer or some other “maybe” terminal condition, it might mean distancing himself from His Holiness’ immediate predecessor’s more controversial decisions and penchant for creating polarization in the Church, division rather than unity, creating broken bridges rather than pontiffs.
Am I the only one who found it odd that Pope Leo chose not to close his much touted meeting on Amoris Laetitia and instead chose to have lung surgery that more than likely could have taken place the day after His Holiness celebrated the closing Mass outdoors in St. Peter’s Square? And His Holiness chose not to issue his own musings on that meeting until later, after His Holiness had studied all of the incessant talking and listening that goes on “ad nauseam” in today’s Vatican and Church.
And now, just today, October 23, we learn that Pope Leo will not close the controversial Interfaith Meeting in Assisi. The reason? He can’t fly due to His Holiness’ lung surgery. But, but, but, it’s only a two hour car ride to Assisi from Rome or, better yet, why not use the train station that is inside the Vatican Complex, and quite lovely, I’ve seen it, and take the train to Assisi? How cool would that be?
Maybe, like Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Leo wants to distance His Holiness from this meeting.
And then, almost like the Amoris Laetitia “footnote” the document, not dogmatic, but more pastoral, that was issued by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith yesterday, speaks of allowing the full tradition of the Church’s liturgical heritage to shine forth as a part of dealing with the crisis of faith that new cultural realities have created. (Let’s not forget how interpreting Vatican II in discontinuity with everything that preceded Vatican II was the “camel’s nose in the tent” that opened the Church to all the nonsense that has happened since Vatican II and then shifting the blame to culture and secularism!).
As I read that, it means allowing what Summorum Pontificum made explicit—that’s my interpretation of that “Laetitia Amoris-like footnote” in yesterday’s document and certainly the only interpretation of it!
Am I reading all these tea leafs wrong??? Or am I clairvoyant—and does that make me a pagan and do I need an exorcism?
3 comments:
When did Pope Benedict XVI distance himself from Assisi?
In regard to Assisi: As Pope, he had reversed the stance that he had taken in 1986 A.D.
2002 A.D. Assisi. Then-Cardinal had praised, as well as participated in, said interreligious gathering.
2011 A.D. The Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels.
Pope Benedict XVI permitted Wande Abimbola, a Nigerian who represented the Yoruba religion, to chant a prayer/hymn to the strange god Olokun.
The SSPX insisted that Pope Benedict XVI had permitted an objective act of blasphemy .
AI Overview:
"Yes, during the October 27, 2011, interreligious summit in Assisi, a representative of traditional African religion chanted a prayer invoking a native deity in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI."
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Olokun is "a deity in the Yoruba pantheon associated with the sea and wealth."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Pope Benedict XVI:
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI AT THE MEETING FOR PEACE IN ASSISI
Assisi, Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels. 27 October 2011.
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2011/october/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20111027_assisi.html
Excerpt:
"Twenty-five years have passed since Blessed Pope John Paul II first invited representatives of the world’s religions to Assisi to pray for peace.
'In 1989, three years after Assisi, the wall came down, without bloodshed.
"At that time the great threat to world peace came from the division of the earth into two mutually opposed blocs.
"A conspicuous symbol of this division was the Berlin Wall which traced the border between two worlds right through the heart of the city.
"In 1989, three years after Assisi, the wall came down, without bloodshed...we may in some way link all this to our prayer for peace."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Love the train. A bit sooty, I expect, and probably bad for carbon emissions, but it nevertheless brings back many happy memories of the British Rail of my youth, as well as “A Day Out with Thomas” with our then three-year old little boy in 2001 (three cheers for Thomas and three boos for Devious Diesel -:))
Mark J.
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