Culture wars? We haz that

Two articles that say the Pope is weakening the church and sowing confusion, so just ignore those polls that find him "popular".

LINK: NYTimes

Summary:his repeated attacks painting raditional Catholics as bad and rigid has not led to more people joining the church, and his weakening of dogma has only caused confusion...

and no, he has not cleaned up the Vatican finances either.

When he was elected, Francis promised a cleanup of the Vatican’s corrupt finances. Three years on, he has started to retreat in the face of opposition, giving up an outside audit and taking powers away from his handpicked point man.

not mentioned in the article: The child abuse problem is not being addressed.... more here....


and then there is this:

from Catholic world Report:

it is the unease and bewilderment of Catholics who know or suspect that accomodation, compromise, and sentimentality disguised as "pastoral" kindness are not good for the Church or the world.

and he adds:

Thus, references to "sin" are avoided. But when it comes to the environment and global warming, which Francis has strong emotions about, there appears to be plenty of black and white, and almost no grey at all.

yup. I am a sinner: I use an airconditioner and sometimes even a car.

"Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality," warned Benedict XVI, "Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way." Mercy is not something that can be redefined in an arbitrary way, however good or appealing the sentiment involved.

There is a difference between mercy, and being a patsy... or a co-enabler...

In other words Catholics who want to remain Christian and faithful are like battered wives or the families of alcoholics who are told they were the real problem, while the one sinning is told hey, you are forgiven, so interprets this as a wink he can sin over again and get away with it.

What is going on is that Francis would like to make the Catholic church "Episcopal church lite" and go along with the elites of the world, but too many faithful bishops are stopping him. So instead he doesn't change things, appoints bishops who will go along with his changes, and hints to bishops who agree with him to change things locally and sows confusion among the lay people.

how bad is it? Well, even the usually lax US Catholic bishops are pushing back against Francis' priorities... although they still don't have enough guts to make political statements or punish open sinners by denying them communion...Hey, they don't want the NYTimes to call them evil.. for supporting the "religious right" in the culture wars....and the culture of death is busily morphing from abortion to killing grandmom (and deformed babies)....

Nothing new here: St Athanasius, stopped a similar popular "reform" movement pushed by the government in the good old days.


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