Yes! The canonisations have been completed!! What superb examples to the least of the Faithful these modern post-Conciliar Roman Pontiffs are, every single man-jack of them!!! Thank goodness we no longer have to bother with the Piuses, the Leos, the Benedicts, and all that unholy crowd with their Rigid Magisterium! However can they have dared to be pre-Conciliar? There can, surely, be few greater failings in a pope than that being pre-Conciliar.
I do, however, foresee two problems about the inevitable, exspectatissima, canonisation of PF.
(1) A number of (apparently) theologically competent people have moved the dread H-word [Heresy] rather close to PF. Tricky. This will, surely, have to be neutralised.
The obstacle could be dealt with by instantly (equipollently?) canonising Pope Honorius I (reigned 625-638). This would mean that, whatever future generations decide about PF's orthodoxy or lack of it, there will still be a precedent for canonising him. Perhaps it might even occur to Cardinal Sarah to give the two of them a joint feast day and a combined invocation in the Litaniae Sanctorum. Sancti Honori et Francisce, Orate pro nobis could ring out henceforth at every Ordination in the Catholic Church
(2) There seems to be no general consensus about what, during the Argie Military Dictatorship, PF did or did not do to help and to save threatened people, or, contrariwise, to delate them. But he does not seem to have delivered great thundering public condemnations against the murderous tyrants (as he fearlessly does qua pope when he daily denounces his 'clericalist' brother clergy).
However, one of the arguments deployed to block the canonisation of Pope Pacelli is that, although he crammed thousands of Roman Jews into Vatican properties and encouraged others to do the same sort of thing, he never explicitly and specifically denounced the unspeakably ghastly Nazi holocaust of European Jewry.
Pius XII is not one of my heroes; but if he also were to be instantly canonised, this would finally clear the way for PF also to be raised to the altars, whatever differing historians may in the future conclude about his complicity (or otherwise) in the crimes of the Military Dictatorship.
Gotta get everything in place, y'know. Santo subito, if not sooner!!! You never know ... er ...
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Who am I to come to the defence of Pope Pius XII, of holy memory, but surely Father there is a place for prudence? If he had blasted away from his pulpit and railed against Hitler et al would not further millions have died? I'm not even suggesting Pius XII should be canonized - I don't know about that, but must we put him at the same level with canonized Popes we know exercised 'prudence' instead of calling out evil? John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II come to mind. Hitler had his victories in spite of Pius XII not because of him. I'm not sure about the other three. Can we say that direct evil flourished because of their brand of prudence?
A very useful piece, Father. Thank you. After all, what are precedents for if not to be useful? When a precedent is needed and a suitable one is lacking, surely it is prudent to create one. How else can we make progress?
There is also the glaring inconsistency of poor John Paul I who needs to be "done" to complete the set, so that the principle that all post-conciliar popes be auto-canonized is maintained. Santo Subito Papa Joannes Paulus Unus!
Get ready for: 1. Jorgee canonizes himself before he dies; 2. Jorge canonizes St. Billy Boy & St. Hillary Clinton of the Coven before they die - they have, you know, a part [ 1/1024th ] of the ideal of sacramental matrimony and a part [ 1/2048 th ] of the ideal of members of the one, true church. 3. And of course, St. Algore, St. B Hussein Obama, St. Nancy Pelosi, and St. Maxine Waters
Not to worry: future pope can give us St. Ron Reagan
Guy Mcclung, TExas
One thing I have come to admire about Pope Pius XII is his lack of clarity in papal pronouncements. He seems to have been very conscious of 'neoultramontanism'/'hyperuberpapalism' so that it was made difficult to extract an infallible statement.
As President of the USA, General Eisenhower displayed a similar talent.
Dear Father. Prof Rychalk has done well in setting right all the wrongs charged against Pope Pius XII
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/06/goldhagen-v-pius-xii
But what is rarely, if ever, asked is did he do more to help the Jews suffering in Germany than he did to help the Christians suffering in Russia?
When it comes to the sufferings of others, why do we care more about what Pacelli did or did not do about the woes suffered by Jews in Germany than we care about what Pacelli refused to do about the worse woes suffered by Christians in Russia?
Mart Ball Martinez observed: The Second World War had hardly begun when Pacelli, now Pius XII, was writing atrocity propaganda against Germany for Jesuit- run Vatican Radio. By 1940 he was absorbing and exposing revelations by a double agent of the coming Blitzkrieg.
Obviously this strong political bias, inculcated from childhood, made it impossible for Pope Pius XII to fulfill the role of neutral, compassionate Holy Father to each and every Catholic.
While the faithful remained unaware of these political initiatives, news of his peremptory repression of the crusade
of volunteers ready to fight atheistic Russia must have swept across the youth of continental Europe as a violent shock. The granting of hundreds of thousands of false baptismal certificates to deceive immigration officers in British Palestine was a degradation of the sacred, while the pleas of 65 million Roman Catholics of Eastern Europe to raise the papal voice in an effort to save them from the oncoming Soviet hoards, met with adamant refusal... “until Germany totally reverses its policy toward the Jews.”
His priority: Jews, not Catholics.
Father Hunwicke, you are learned and intelligent, and you can tell satire from clear and honest words. Please remember that you have been gifted by God with great intelligence, and that there are people who do not understand your subtle satires.
Therefore, please let me be honest, and not satirical, for the random reader who might think that you just said that the Church should feel obligated, in the coming decades, to canonize a man who flatters abortionists and regularly insults, with nasty invective, his prayerful brethren:
(let me put this another way --- If someone is reading this, and thinks that it has been said here that the Catholic Church of the near future would be speaking heart to heart to the poor among us by telling them that we should piously expect poor Bergoglio to be declared a saint soon after he dies --- no, no, no (Jesus said let your yes be yes and let your no be no))
(and, as much as I want poor Bergoglio to repent of his evil actions and go immediately to Heaven on the day he dies, hopefully long in the future, and hopefully after the day I have died (we are almost of the same generation, but he is healthier, and I want those of my generation to live as long as it takes to repent) --- as much as I would love to see his public repentance, which would be easy for him, and which would make so many people happy ----- I have seen enough of the world to know that such an event is not likely, without great prayer by good and suffering souls --- )
well, if someone is reading this and is concerned that, years from now, this man will be speciously canonized, despite his clearly unrepented flattery of murderous abortionists and despite his clearly unrepented and oft repeated insulting language to his prayerful brethren ---
well, let my yes be yes and let my no be no:
Unless poor Pope Francis repents, publicly, of his unrepentant flattery of murderous abortionists and his clearly and oft repeated insulting language to many of his prayerful brethren ---
He will never be canonized by a legitimate future Pontiff. So, let's keep praying for the poor man.
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