I doubt whether the Omnia opera of PF will be a sell-out for generations to come, but his Christmas addresses to the Curia do deserve immortality. They don't all come up quite to the classical perfection of the address in which he explained to the Curia the 19 sins of which they were collectively guilty ... but this year's masterpiece in which his critics are likened to the late Judas Iscariot comes pretty close.
Deserves to be savoured in full. Don't miss it. A collector's item.
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Seeing as the current Sovereign Pontiff's Magisterium is...ahem...absolute. Do our Most Holy Father's words concerning human justice and millstones, in the paragraph where he speaks of abusers, imply tacit approval of capital punishment in at least some circumstances? (Or should I be reproved for that most grievous of sins eisegesis?)
I can only hope that pray that there are enough in sacerdotal orders, whether Cardinals or those who have their ear in some way, who have endured the other side of Bergoglian Mercy, this abusive manner of his, that the next Pope will be an utterly different man, an actual man of Mercy, not a schemer or bully. 'The Pope Francis Little Book of Insults' has an ever growing body of source material.
He really does think he is the ecclesiastical equivalent of Jesus Christ and, thus, his enemies are Pharisees and Judas.
One wonders how often the following passage is thought about in Rome - and in every Diocese on Earth -
Ezek 34: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. ” ‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD : As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, O shepherds, hear the word of the LORD :This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock
These words also apply closely, mutatis mutandis, to the Pastors of Parishes, the Parish Priests. Kyrie eleison! I say with fear and trembling.
Let it be added that dear Pope Francis and the bishops and priests of the Roman Rite, who use the Liturgia horarum, read Augustine's commentary on this text every year.
I fear, Father, that you are increasingly allowing your distaste for certain aspects of this pontiff's style and ecclesiology to become a slide into cynicism about all that he says. PF has admitted that he has made mistakes, and has apologised for his failures. In his handling of Chilean matters, in his role as Provincial early in his career , and on other things between.
Although in this address he does not explicitly include himself, there is no reason to believe he thinks he is exempt. And no evidence that he believes the neo-ultramontane rubbish (heresy) promulgated by others. {Pio Nono did not believe Ward and Manning either, but failed to stop it.}
Whatever we may think if his liturgical style, PF takes Mass seriously as an encounter with God, and papal liturgies frequently include the Confiteor.
Father Hunwicke, I did not realize that you are 78 years old!
You are almost old enough to be one of my older brothers!
God bless you for your witness in these Herodian days of our poor Papacy, in these harsh days
Now I am as inclined as any liberal or modernist to wish for the best outcome for everybody,
and I think of good old Bernanos slyly penciling in the name of J. Iscariot for the intentions of a mass, for which he paid some real money
and I think to myself...
Poor young Jorge Bergoglio could never have wanted to be the first Pope in 2000 years to remind so many of the good-hearted faithful of his day of a second Herod, this time not the young Jewish aristocrat who tried his "best" to be a good "leader" of his religious flock... but a Christian version of Herod, with so much less of an excuse for his wrongdoing....
well, when I think of the abortionists who have garnered so much praise from the poor man from the Argentinian middle class,
or when I think of the saintly pro-life clerics (and the naive lay people in the pro-life movement) who have been so often insulted and, yes, persecuted by our poor modern Herod from the Argentinian middle class...
I say this without anger ....
... back in the day, when people used to say, we should not pray for Judas ....
I disagreed with them, but could not really answer them, not having thought about it much.
After so many years with this poor man who is such a friend to the Herods of the world occupying an office that I do not believe he, in his modernist heart, respects....
and knowing that he, like me is an old man, and we will both likely face our creator soon ...
I can say this in his defense..
Herod was a young man once too, with hopes and dreams of being a good leader.
Judas, as he died, had to have remembered, at least for a moment, all those powerful scenes from his past where he - unlike me or you, by the way - where he spent time with our Lord and Creator, as a friend to our Lord and Creator, after having "left his family, given up all" to follow Jesus .... like a good soldier, or even more, like Saint Francis, like someone who befriends Poverty .... to follow Jesus, at whose names we all bow our heads ... think about that for a second when you criticize poor Judas ....
and if nothing else comes out of this papacy, the heresy that some espouse, the unBiblical and unkind heresy that "we know what the fate of Judas is sealed and that without a doubt he was condemned", can no longer be sustained ... because after these Herodian years in Rome, who can think that such a heresy can be sustained, when even a Pope abandons the pure innocents ....
well, at least it (the heresy that, contrary to the clear words of the Bible, we can condemn Judas as an unrepentant sinner unto eternity) cannot be sustained as easily as it used to be for those who care
for those who care about the victims of our poor Roman friend's advocacy of abortionists and his criticisms of pro-lifers who do not agree with him on less important issues than the issue that poor Karol Wojtyla, who is, and let us pray for him too ( I am not so sure that our current hierarchy could have been completely right about his sanctity, seeing what the results of his actions were --- and temerarious or no, such an opinion is founded in love, love for a poor soul who may need our prayers, even though Rome may have tried to block those prayers from getting to heaven) - anyway, Pope John Paul II certainly got this right ---- there is no more important issue that the protection of the children who have a right to be born, and of their mothers who have a right not to be misled into killing their babies, and their fathers who will never be the same after their children are sucked out of the womb, untimely, and killed . Our poor and pitiful Bishop of Rome appears not to have learned that lesson, and we need to pray for him.
King Herod had his reasons, too, and was no doubt surrounded by people who gave him useless flattery and bad advice.
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