Rolling Stone Gathers Pope Francis

Final thoughts on the Rolling Stone feature on Pope Francis…

The article attempts to show Francis’ break from the supposedly “conservative” Church of old, in the process remaking Pope Francis as the hero of the liberal left. It uses the scandals of Vatican finance and sexual abuse, coupled with old stories about Opus Dei and the Latin Mass, to fashion Pope Benedict XVI as a “conservative” conniver. In short, Francis is portrayed as the populist leader of a movement to “liberalize” the Catholic Church.

Certainly the article contains a great deal of untruth. Inconvenient facts, like Francis’ theological orthodoxy, are ignored. Rolling Stone draws arbitrary conclusions from selected illustrations drawn from the Pope’s life. Why would this pop cultural icon do this?

Easy. Sexual and social relativists wish to refashion Christianity such that they may claim Christ, and his vicar, as their supporters, for their social agenda is more appetizing to people if it complements, rather than competes with, the enduring Christianity history and tradition. In the language of C.S. Lewis, Screwtape has no interest in eradicating Christianity if he can sublimate it to his own purposes. This is a new twist on the traditional view of the Devil’s greatest trick—it isn’t convincing the world he doesn’t exist, but convincing the world that Jesus Christ is the champion of his causes.

Well-formed Catholics in the blogosphere are amply setting down the orthodoxy of Pope Francis. His work on economics, which has sparked media controversy, nevertheless is in keeping with Catholic social teaching since at least Leo XIII. His call for more widespread participation by laity, particularly women, was a matter close to Benedict XVI’s heart. His expressions of charity toward those afflicted with same-sex attraction are deep-seated in the Church’s teaching. For ill-formed Catholics, the media has set the Pope apart from his predecessors by focusing less on substance than misleading sound-bites.

The Rolling Stone piece seems to be successfully refashoning Francis’ public image in the popular culture, which is why it is paramount for the Church (which includes us!) to use the means of social communication to prevent secular media from further hijacking the truth, and to give witness to the truth. Catholic media is important, but a way must also be found to penetrate secular media if in the end the Church is to be successful in this. This highlights Vatican II’s call to holiness for us all—the exhortation to live charitably, joyfully, and boldly in discipleship of Jesus Christ, and commit to the new evangelization.

The promise of the Gospel is that authentic commitment to the truth—and a refusal to separate a commitment to social justice from a commitment to orthodoxy and piety—leads to conversion. What I try to do in these pages, among other things is to use the pop culture’s new-found fascination with the Holy Father for reiterating Vatican II’s call to holiness, which necessitates personal conversion to suffering souls. As the reader may have experienced, one who lives the Gospel, is, (or soon will be) vulnerable to far more than pop-culture persecution. But persecution is a part of the Christian mystery. Fear not. Our Lord has already overcome the pop culture.

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This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

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Neomodernism's Attack on Religious Life- (continued).

Who’s that on page 180 of that book? This is Sister Mary Benjamin, IHM. Sister Mary Benjamin got involved with us in the summer of ‘66, and became the victim of a lesbian seduction. An older nun in the group, “freeing herself to he more expressive of who she really was internally,” decided that she wanted to make love with Sister Mary Benjamin. Well, Sister Mary Benjamin engaged in this; and then she was stricken with guilt, and wondered, to quote from her book, “Was I doing something wrong, was I doing something terrible? I talked to a priest—” Unfortunately, we had talked to him first. “I talked to a priest,” she says, “who refused to pass judgment on my actions. He said it was up to me to decide if they were right or wrong. He opened a door, and I walked through the door, realizing I was on my own.” This is her liberation? How excited they were, to be delivering someone into God’s hands! Well, instead they delivered her into the hands of nondirective psychology. ...

Satan makes his way to us through the libido!

Let us take a great civilization historically devoid of pornography, and examine what happens once the door is opened a crack, for smoke to enter:

"The Spirit of Vatican II"

My advice to one confronted with doubt sown by those who make reference to “correct interpretations of Vatican II” is to reflect closely upon the words of John Paul II: With the Council, the Church first had an experience of faith, as she abandoned herself to God without reserve, as one who trusts and is certain of being loved. It is precisely this act of abandonment to God which stands out from an objective examination of the Acts. Anyone who wished to approach the Council without considering this interpretive key would be unable to penetrate its depths. Only from a faith perspective can we see the Council event as a gift whose still hidden wealth we must know how to mine . In short, it is this abandonment, this interpretive faith perspective that is woefully lacking in many who would offer to explain what the Council taught in “the spirit of Vatican II.” Watch here to see what abandonment looks like!

From "The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God"

….At the close of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI remarked that Christianity, the religion of God-Incarnate, had encountered the religion of man-made God. He was of the opinion that much of the Council was given over to demonstrating the compatibility of Enlightenment belief with Catholicism. Several years hence, on June 29, 1972, Paul delivered another assessment of the state of the Roman Catholic Church since the close of Vatican II. As Cardinal Silvio Oddi recalled it (in an article first published on March 17, 1990, in Il Sabato magazine in Rome) the Holy Father told a congregation: We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the...

Do Not Be Ashamed

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My Intended Audience

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Popes are not Presidents...

John Allen of the Globe has opined today that there are two key words that capture why many church officials believe it’s so important to avoid what they regard as false expectations of swift change to the church’s ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion and the other sacraments: Humanae Vitae, Paul VI's 1968 document reasserting the church’s traditional ban on birth control. It rocked the world, Allen writes, "in part because the reforming energies of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) had led people to suspect change was just around the corner, in part because the pope himself had created a commission to study the issue." The o utcome of the Pope’s evential reassertion of the ban “soured public opinion on Pope Paul, in some ways inflicting a blow from which his papacy never really recovered. ” On matters related to marriage and the family, the Church has always seen the fertility of the husband and wife as a gift from God and the end ( telos...

On Marriage

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