Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 2:00pm

Hate From the Vatican

Catholic writer, and a biographer of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel has often been accused of looking at the internal affairs of the Church through rose colored glasses.  If so, I guess he has misplaced those spectacles:

 

I recently spent almost five weeks in Rome, during which I found an anti-American atmosphere worse than anything I’d experienced in 30 years of work in and around the Vatican. A false picture of the Church’s life in the United States, in which wealthy Catholics in league with extreme right-wing bishops have hijacked the Church and are leading an embittered resistance to the present pontificate, has been successfully sold. And in another offense against collegiality, this grossly distorted depiction of American Catholicism has not been effectively challenged or corrected by American bishops enjoying Roman favor these days.

Honest disagreements — about, say, Amoris Laetitia and its implications for doctrine and pastoral practice — are one thing. A systematic distortion of reality, which tramples on the presumption of an opponent’s good will that should guide any internal Catholic debate, is quite another. Those involved in this anti-American-bishops calumny might also reflect on its disturbing genealogy. For one of those who injected this toxin into the Roman bloodstream was a serial sexual predator specializing in the abuse of seminarians under his authority — Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington.

Mainstream media reporting on the bishops’ recent Baltimore meeting generally got it right: the U.S. bishops tried to do the right thing and got bushwhacked by Rome, which Just Doesn’t Get It on sexual abuse and episcopal malfeasance. But the story cannot be allowed to end there. Nor can the Church afford to “wait until after February.”

Go here to read the rest.  Among the hates of the current gang at the Vatican are conservatives, Americans and orthodox Catholics.  Little mystery why Pope Francis chooses to work his will in America through bad jokes like Cardinals Cupich and Tobin.  This all of course has bupkis to do with Catholicism and everything to do with the pettiness of Pope Francis, who is ever intent on imposing his distorted views of the world on stubborn reality.

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, November 24, AD 2018 7:23am

I’m hoping the next Pope clears out every priest and religious currently employed in the Vatican, as well as any layman drawing a salary who doesn’t have a specific skill. There is just nothing good to be said about this horrid pontificate. If the staff of the Vatican consisted of the Swiss Guards, miscellaneous hourly employees (all laymen who commute to work), some crew supervisors and some accountants, we’d be better off.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Saturday, November 24, AD 2018 8:02am

when one considers that the American bishops that Bergoglio has listened to are Wuerl, McCarrick and O’Malley, it is no wonder. Not that Bergoglio needed any help hating the “yanquis” in the first place. A central tenet of Peronism is hating the US (and in most other Latin American countries – yet so many of those people want to come here – and then support the same kind of government they left behind!) Maradiaga is a disgusting fellow who has lost more then half his flock and should be locked up….but receives medical treatment in the hated US.

Yet, Bergoglio does whatever the German bishops want him to do. What a phony.

ken
ken
Saturday, November 24, AD 2018 9:13am

Pope Bozo’s lack of knowledge about the US became glaringly evident for me when reading Vigano’s first letter. His view of Archbishop Chaput as some sort of ultra-conservative Republican is ridiculous.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Saturday, November 24, AD 2018 10:14am

“Little mystery why Pope Francis chooses to work his will in America through bad jokes like Cardinals Cupich and Tobin.” DM

Example;

https://spiritdaily.org/blog/news/pope-taps-cardinal-cupich-to-help-organize-sex-abuse-summit

A sick joke Mr. McClarey.
It’s time the Lavender Mafia is banned from all things Catholic! How?
Undercover sting operations for one. It could take years but it is worth it. Get the practicing homosexuals Out of Holy Catholic Church.
A new form of coming out!
The laity must lead and act if we expect a clean house, otherwise this saga will continue.

To Pope Francis.
Don’t put a wolf in to guard the sheep. It just makes you look guilty of conspiring to aid perpetrators.

-rant over-

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, November 24, AD 2018 11:08am

*boggles at the idea of America’s bishops being right-wing*

Howard
Howard
Saturday, November 24, AD 2018 3:13pm

It depends with whom they are being compared.

Howard
Howard
Saturday, November 24, AD 2018 4:31pm

Weigel is sometimes right, but no more often than you or I might be. He seems to have parleyed writing the biography of JPII into some sort of imaginary authority of his own. Notably, he felt free to “correct” both (then) Pope John Paul II and (then) Pope Benedict XVI that the Catechism taught that the President of the United States, Constitution be damned, is the ultimate decider of whether or not the requirements for a just war have been met, and he may not be criticized for his judgement by any mortal man, if indeed even by God. (As you probably have guessed, I found his assertions — they were hardly arguments — unpersuasive. “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.” — but in a democracy, EVERYONE has a responsibility for the common good, not just the president or regular contributors to the Denver Catholic.)

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Sunday, November 25, AD 2018 8:50am

“Just war”…..written by St. Thomas Aquinas in an age where there was no Al Qaeda or ISIS – stateless international terrorist organizations. St. Thomas Aquinas was a brilliant man, but he was not responsible for the safety and security of an entire nation against international terrorist organizations. If I were President, the “just war” theory would not be my first choice in defending the country I was responsible for. This is not a blanket endorsement of endless “nation-building” wars. If that offends people, so be it.

Mary De Voe
Sunday, November 25, AD 2018 12:27pm

All just war must be based on the innate human right to self-defense on an individual level and on a national level. The intent must be personal safety and preservation of the truth for oneself and for all people.
St. Thomas Aquinas was a theologian, not a philosopher. Aquinas believed as did Aristotle that women were broken men. This is partly true. A developing child in the womb will form the opposite sex organs if his have been destroyed by disease.
Aquinas also believed as did all people in his time that human life began at “quickening” when the child begins to move. Our Lady of Lourdes said: “I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION”. Our Lady informed mankind that man was conceived in legal and moral innocence. That original sin is visited on man but may be avoided and conquered.
Aquinas also believed that a whole child was contained in the sperm and that the child was placed in the mother’s womb to be gestated.
Scientific DNA and ultrasounds have given man proof of the humanity of the newly begotten sovereign person at conception. Unfortunately, this scientific knowledge has led man to abuse fertilization and procreation.
The newly begotten sovereign person has legal and moral innocence that is the standard of Justice for the state and the nation. The newly begotten sovereign person has an innate human right to self-defense and a valid claim to the just was theory.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Sunday, November 25, AD 2018 10:28pm

Pope Francis has been hard on people who think very much about what it all means– I am glad G. W. is going the scrum. It is good for all of us to speak openly and try to help each other.

scrum (skrŭm) n. 1. Sports a. A play in Rugby in which the two sets of forwards mass together around the ball and, with their heads down, struggle to gain possession of the …

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 5:40am

Surely the “Ecumenism of hate,” identified by La Civiltà Cattolica between some members of the American hirearchy and certain evangelicals – who could fairly be described as the lumpenproletariat at prayer – justifies some of the distaste felt by Rome?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 8:19am

who could fairly be described as the lumpenproletariat at prayer

The term ‘lumpenproletariat’ does not mean what you fancy it means. Evangelical congregations are populated with people from every stratum; the evangelical family I know best consists of a retired draftsman and his wife, a retired office manager; both sons are in regular attendance; one is an architect and the other an accountant. If I’d actually asked myself the question of how for sheer stupidity you were going to top your reference to UKIP as ‘a fascist party’, this remark might be one.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 8:23am

“Ecumenism of hate,”

You’re contending that a Jesuit organ uses the framing of the worst sort of sectarian Democrat in this country? Evangelicals and Catholics co-operate on a short menu of issues, the most salient of them being re-establishing proper legal prohibition on abortion. The second issue is avoiding coercion by the legal profession and the higher education apparat, both of whom are happy cat’s paws of the gay lobby. It’s not surprising anymore the Society of Jesus doesn’t care for that.

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 10:02am

Howard, are you characterizing the disagreement with the USCCB’s “presumption against war” and defense of traditional just war theory, or his disagreement with Archbishop Martino’s claim no just war is possible? Or his rational argument that Iraq was just and the president framed it thus?
The Pope loving peace and speaking out against war on a world day of peace?

Catholic leaders NOT handing homicidal maniacs an excuse to frame the West fighting back as a holy war?

Or where journalists kept trying to draft the Pope’s religious authority, first through him and then through then-Cardinal Ratzinger, and were repeatedly told that it was an informed personal view and flatly told “he did not impose this position as doctrine of the Church but as the appeal of a conscience enlightened by faith”?

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 10:13am

The term ‘lumpenproletariat’ does not mean what you fancy it means

*double-checks that it’s basically Marxist class theory version of race-traitor*

Looks like it means “not insane” or, worse, “how dare those guys not be Marxist like my theory requires.” (Knew there was a reason I associated it with “kulaks and wreckers.”)

In which case MPS has a point, if meant basically “there are a lot of folks with Marxist assumptions in the Vatican.”

Probably not helped by the US being flatly insane in the old school class theory game– basically everybody is both working-class and/or tradesmen and gentry, except for some poor twits who don’t see value in work.

Howard
Howard
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 10:51am

I am referring, Foxfier, to exactly what I said.

Penguins Fan, I see you have as little idea about the world St. Thomas lived in as you do about the world you live in yourself. It is a form of pride to think that the problems of today are SO MUCH WORSE than ever before — after all, would God predestine such a special, special light as you to shine in any but the most profound darkness? Get over yourself, or join a church that expects the Rapture at any moment and suspects that Obama still might be the Antichrist.

Basic principles, like the requirement that a war be waged by a legitimate authority for the public (not private) good, do not go away; nor does the need for there to be a reasonable prospect of success (hint: if you can’t define it, you can’t achieve it); nor do the others.

You want to redefine the morality of war. Others want to redefine the morality of sex. Well, there are “churches” that will redefine whatever you like.

Bob Kurland, Ph.D.
Admin
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 1:54pm

MPS comment “lumpenproletariat” and the responses started the math part of me thinking. Imagine, if you will, lots of circles to be used in Venn diagrams. So, here are the attributes of the circles: “intellectual,” “intelligent,” “wealthy,” “comfortable,” “poor,” “professional–doctors, lawyers,” “business types,” “laborers,””from wealthy parents,” “from comfortable parents,” “from poor parents,” “catholic,””American,” “European”……. Now you can, for example have the “intellectual” circle intersecting “intelligent;” but there will certainly be an intersection with “not intelligent”…and similarly for all the other circles. So where does “American” and “Catholic” intersect all these others? presumably on all. So, to characteriize American Catholics by any single attribute is not really justified.
And please forgive this flight of fancy…. an old guy meandering off on a cold, rainy afternoon.

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 3:45pm

I am referring, Foxfier, to exactly what I said.

You gave your characterization of what a man said and made an accusation, a rather serious one, to dismiss him– does this mean that you are abandoning that accusation in the face of people not being willing to take your word on it and consider the guy a Bad Man?

Even in the face of the words of two different popes, and the accused, not aligning with your judgement?

I was able to find those by trying to find what you might be talking out, and largely using the Cardinal Ratzinger Fanclub page as a launch point, in less than half an hour.

Right now, it looks like the unpersuasive assertions that fall far short of arguments are from a rather different direction.

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 3:55pm

Now you can, for example have the “intellectual” circle intersecting “intelligent;” but there will certainly be an intersection with “not intelligent”…and similarly for all the other circles. So where does “American” and “Catholic” intersect all these others? presumably on all.

*chuckles* For a moment there I thought I was going to be witness to a quite uncharacteristic and brutal insult playing on the site’s name.

Bob Kurland, Ph.D.
Admin
Monday, November 26, AD 2018 7:54pm

Foxfier, an insult was certainly not intended for anyone, even for those calling themselves “intellectuals.” I was trying to say that even though it’s easy to use a catch phrase to characterize a group (and, by the way, I don’t think that was MPS’s intent–he was trying to paraphrase the Vatican bureaucracy’s attitude), we shouldn’t do it. Not even for Democrats and Leftists!

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