First, it is reported that the Pope said pastors should not be “putting our noses into the moral life of other people.”
Permit me to state my utter bewilderment at such a notion. As a priest, and especially as a confessor and spiritual director this is my duty!
It is true that I am not to unnecessarily pry into the private lives of parishioners. But surely there is a requirement that as a confessor and a pastor I have some sense of the moral life of those to whom I minister.
this is the part I agree with:
Consider a medical analogy. Suppose a patient comes to a doctor with breathing difficulties and chest pains. Surely the doctor will inquire as to the person’s lifestyle. Does he smoke? Did he ever smoke? What sort of food is being consumed? Does he exercise? What is his weight and what are his vital signs? Is a doctor putting his nose into the private life of the patient, or is he seeking necessary information?
Of course the answer is clear, and he must have the info both to diagnose and set forth a proper medical plan of action.
It is no less the case with a priest who is exercising spiritual care. He has the duty to know and assist the faithful in their moral life. Thus if a baptism form indicates cohabitation, or single motherhood, he has a duty to teach. If, in confession, he finds evidence of sinful drives, or moral irregularities he must address them and set forth a pastoral plan for a soul in need. If a couple comes to him cohabiting, he must discuss this with them, explain why it is wrong and should stop and set forth the truth that alone sets us free. To fail to do so is not kindness, it is malpractice! This is not “putting our nose into the moral life of others;” it is engaging in a moral and pastoral conversation with souls in need...
and as the good Father notes, the Vatican tried to clean up his rash remarks:
The “official transcript” of the Vatican wisely removed these remarks, but still, they were widely reported and have given fodder both to critics of priests who seek to faithfully preach the moral vison of the faith and also, at the opposite spectrum, of the Pope.
this is from a paper associated with Opus Dei, so expect frothing at the mouth from the liberals.
And now the Pope wants us to apologize to gays.
the liberals at the National Catholic reporter, one of the centers for PC nuns evolving to a higher power and various heretical theologians are ecstatic, of course (
link about the article at FR since I will not link to them)
The Catholic church and other Christian communities must apologize to gay people and to many groups they have let down or offended throughout history, Pope Francis has said.
In a press conference Sunday on the flight back to Rome after his weekend trip to Armenia, the pontiff said bluntly: "The church must say it's sorry for not having comported itself well many times, many times."
The first thing that came to my mind when I heard this was: Well the church should apologize--- as soon as the gay mafia in the bishop's offices apologize for covering up for the priests who were homosexual and schtupping pubescent altar boys.
Father Andrew Greeley (who before his death was ocnsidered in the liberal part of the church) back in his biography in the late1980's wrote that the problem was that when Vatican II came, the powers that were in charge decided to admit homosexuals who were celibate. Unfortunately some were not. A few fell into sin, and repented. And a few were sexual predators. Alas, too many in the bureaucracy felt sympathy for their fellow homosexual collegue and arranged "Treatment" or cover up, essentially leaving the wolves to destroy the sheep.
If you check my earlier rants, you know I lived in Altoona when this stuff was going on, so it's not hearsay.
"I believe that the church not only must say it's sorry ... to this person that is gay that it has offended," said the pope. "But it must say it's sorry to the poor, also, to mistreated women, to children forced to work."
So, to use Msgr Pope's example, if I have a druggie or smoker or someone abusing his wife, ad I ask him about it, and then I counsel him to stop doing this, I should say I'm sorry?
Nope. Its my job to tell the truth, especially if their behavior is hurting them or their family.
as for "Mistreated women"? probably this means the single women left destitute and without help in the days before welfare, who had a baby and the nuns took her in, found her work, and pressured her to let her baby have a decent home (since until welfare, it meant the child would be left with baby sitters or worse while mom worked 8 to ten hours a day for a pittance).
as for "the poor" and "children forced to work": uh, does the Vatican own sweat shops in Bangladesh?
"When I say the church: Christians," Francis clarified. "The church is healthy. We are the sinners."
True. We are all sinners.
But the church is not healthy. Notice all those "sects" mushrooming in South America because you guys pushed "liberation theology" instead of Jesus?
And now, you are busy kissing the ass of the PC press and NWO with your pushing of divorce and the homoseuxal agenda Yes, I know you "officially" say the opposite, but then you open your big fat mouth and voila, headlines to the contrary. Spreading confusion among the laity.
The pope was responding to a question about remarks German Cardinal Reinhard Marx made last week that the Catholic church should apologize to the gay community for marginalizing them.
yeah. the bishop who is behind the
Gaia ecology agenda of the church. The one thinks the German church should be a model for the rest of the church
LINK despite the fact hardly anyone still goes to church there.
and the
one who is pushing divorce at the family synod until a couple of feisty bishops stood up and refused to go along with his agenda.
"I will repeat the same thing I said on the first trip," Francis said today, referencing the press conference he held on a return flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2013. "I will also repeat what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: that [gay people] should not be discriminated against, that they have to be respected, pastorally accompanied."
legal non discrimination? Sounds wonderful. No problem.
But what about behavior.
Did the cops shut down gay bars in the bad old days because they were "discriminating" or because gay bars and bath houses encouraged lots of sex in the back rooms, often associated with drug use. The places were raided because they were encouraging vice and disease . To read the papers now, you'd think they were as placid as church suppers or tea parties with little old ladies.
Stop spreading lies. I had to give the HIV training in my National Guard unit back in the 1980's and we had to learn all the facts, which weren't very pretty. And things are probably worse now.
But now PC reigns, so it is being presented as discrimination. Ignore the reality of what goes on in those places.
Even when it comes to jobs, in the past, teachers and pastors etc. were supposed to be role models: now we are supposed to wink at those openly living in sin?
It is to the point that an "openly gay" football player was called a hero, but Tebow was ostracized.
What's wrong with this picture?
---------------------
When the pope makes spontaneous remarks, he is not speaking ex cathedra, so he can't change dogma that way, of course. But the MSM is pushing this to confuse people.
and in case you didn't notice: The people have had enough and are saying NO. Trump and Brexit are only warning signs that some people are not going along with these newfangled experts.
The end result will be schism.
Does the Pope expect common people to stay silent when over and over again he arrogantly disses them as wrong and ignores the 2000 year old laws of the church (not to mention what Jesus Christ said about divorce and about what to do with someone who mistreats a child)?
--------------
sorry, this is personal to me.
when I lived in Altoona, it was an open secret that a lot of priests went cruising in Pittsburgh gay bars... it took 25 years for the press/DA to figure out the bishop of Altoona was covering things up... and now the guy who was bishop of Pittsburgh then is in charge of Washington DC, and those of us who knew him then are all waiting for that shit to hit the fan.
There is an internet now that lets Catholics know such things: We know we are not the only ones saying :WTF? Is the Pope Catholic?
Yes, I am judgmental. This pope is tearing the church apart, and every good Catholic knows it.
Right and wrong do not change with the season, and when living together without marriage, or the "gay lifestyle" is made out to be the same as a pious marriage where people try to follow God's will, then someone has to say" WTF".
Yes, many lesbians are faithful. Many gays are faithful to spouses (alas most have "open marriages) and a few are even celibate. Some try to be celibate but fall now and then, and repent. So in those cases you welcome back the sinner, 70 times 7 times.
But the Pope is acting as if the habitual sinner should be seen as okay.
Nope. Not true.
Remove the guilt of sin from them, and they will see God's mercy, repent, and change their lives.
Yes, some will, but alas too many have personality disorders that will mean they see they are getting away with it, so why change?
we docs treat all types, and do not or should not discriminate, but pretending a druggie or alcoholic or someone who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day, or a diabetic who won't diet, or a gay with dozens of partners as if they were an innocent bystander who caught disease from a passing wind instead of a person whose behavior contributed to their disease, is nonsense.
We still treat them, with compassion, but don't tell us to pretend not to know the truth of our patients.
and what about the victims of these sins?
the pope's problem is not that he is merciful: It is because in a quest to be seen as merciful, he forgets that sexual sin affects many others.
Abortion, STD's, partner abuse, promiscuity. People are no longer sluts or promiscuous. They have "polyandry" and who am I to judge? My birth control didn't work, or I was too lazy to use it, so if I abort the kid, who am I to judge? Yes, I have HIV but I saw him in the bar, and we went to it...oh I meant to tell him of the risk but forgot. Who am I to judge? Marijuana/cocaine is no worse than alcohol, so don't judge me for getting high. Poppers? Ringing? Fisting? S&M? Who am I to judge?
Indeed, a society that forbids us from saying the truth doesn't just leead to an increase in that behavior. It leads to a society where right and wrong are no longer recognized, where the evil men rule and the good are afraid to object.
and the America that once revered God's laws is now so bad that
Caracalla would blush.
I'm old enough to remember when the Catholic bishops stood in the way of X rated movies, abortion and even divorce.
Now, if they dare correct someone, the press shouts pedophilia and laughs. And why was there pdophilia in the priesthood? I'm old enough to remember the psychiatric fad that said it was good for the kids so we shouldn't report them to the cops. And the bishops went along with world's experts, to be seen as a nice guy.
Forgive the sinner, get him psychiatric treatment, and bring him back and let him work again.
Who worried about the kids then?
if the bishops lost all credibility, it was because they failed to be shepherds.
And now, alas, we have a Pope who wants to be seen as a nice guy. What could go wrong?
No wonder Our Lady of Fatima said to pray for priests.
sigh.
Yet for laypeople, the dissolution of family by the sexual revolution has led to so many problems that even sociologists are dismayed.
Sex before marriage? No problem. Many lovers? no problem.
yes it's not everyone (the most recent survey of HS ids in the US show 40 percent are not sexually active). But the entire society is pushing sin as normal now, and "who am I to judge"?
Once the prohibitions against divorce were lifted, divorce became an epidemic and now kids won't marry because that piece of paper is useless: they know, because too often their parents divorced (or nowadays never married).
Nor was it just sexual taboos destroyed in the 1960's: Drugs, instead of being shocking and something not done, became a way to show you were "hip".
Take away "negative feedback" and you get more behavior.
And to make things worse, in this, for years the MSM has been pushing 'positive feedback" for these behaviors.
And now the Pope is proposing we remove the idea of sin from their behaviors too?
That is not mercy: That is being an enabler of bad behavior.
"The matter is a person that has that condition [and] that has good will because they search for God," said the pontiff.
"Who are we to judge them?" he asked, reframing his famous phrase from 2013 into the plural. "We must accompany well -- what the Catechism says. The Catechism is clear."
accompany them into hell? Or to nudge them into repentence?
Francis also said that the culture in which he grew up in Argentina many years ago was a "closed Catholic culture," giving the example of how it was looked down upon to even enter the home of a couple who had been married civilly after one of the partners had previously divorced.
"The culture has changed -- and thank God!" the pope exclaimed. "Christians; we must say we are sorry many times; not only on this."
yes, and now we see children brought up without fathers, children abused by mom's latest boyfriend, dads being divorced because mom is bored and "no longer in love", and of course, in the USA, a million kids being brought up by grandmoms or relatives because mom can't care for them.
Usually she is on drugs, but as I noted: The two things are linked: the taboo on growing up. The idea that personal pleasure comes first. The idea that you have the right to such behavior.
so the world is in need of reform, and we get "who am I to judge" instead of guidance.
Where is the "go and sin no more"? Where is the recognition that rules are there to protect people, not to punish them, and that destroying rules is not the way to protect the most vulnerable.
Yes, the good Shepherd rescued the lamb who strayed, but one doubts he did this while the wolves were attacking the rest of the herd...
and instead we get "who am I to judge".
In contrast, when China was in chaos of wars, corruption and societal breakdown, Confucius stressed the need for personal ethical behavior and stressed first one needed the reform of the family.
Maybe we need a good agnostic Confucian scholar as the next pope, instead of a clueless Jesuit...
------------------
a lot of this rage comes from the situation in our house.
Here, we used to have Kuya "fall in love" every few years, then his wife would chase the guy away, kuya would feel guilty, then he'd go back to church and repent.
Now he is "happy" because God loves him. MERCY! "Who am I to judge"!
see, it works!
The problem is that now there no shame in his behavior (after all, God loves him the way he is!)
So when he spends oodles of (my husband's) money on his boyfriends and parties, I am a mean old lady because I dare to judge.
And when his wife objected to his boyfriend being romanced in our business compound, well, he moved upstairs for privacy, built a wall to keep us out, and for good measure forced his wife and child to move into my house out of their apartment upstairs. Not to mention he won't pay their expenses (clothes or school fees) until they "obey" him as the head of the family. It's in the bible they must obey him.
Who am I to judge?
Well, I have social security and he so far hasn't been able to harm them much. (I am accused of "breaking his family apart, but never mind).
But his plan is to throw all of us out of the house when he probates the will of my husband next month, (and I am taking him to court on this). Even if he wins, I have my Social security and pension, so we can live elsewhere, albeit frugally.
So what am I judging? His inborn tendency to sin? Or his sins? His sexual sins, his wasting of my late husband's hard earned savings on his sins, or the fact that he plans on punishing those of us who won't approve of his behavior?
Who am I to judge? Sorry, Pope Bubba, I refuse to be a coenabler of this.
Yes, the MSM and the NWO types and the PC bishops of Europe will love you, but those of us who are victims object.
------------
one problem: if there is a schism, the Cardinal of Manila is just as bad.
Wonder where is the nearest SSPX church?
Labels: rant
PHILIPPINE BISHOPS BLOGS
