COMMENTS have been added to the original entry on the 12,000-word mega-interview with Pope Francis, an event of great significance. Here is an additional comment by a reader:

Catherine H. writes:

I am particularly taken aback by discovering how many of my husband’s and my friends and family, who generally agree with us on our “ultraconservative” stance in most other areas, see Pope Francis and this particular interview in a completely different light.  Whereas my husband and I immediately experienced dismay and horror upon reading Pope Francis’ words, friends and family we polled afterwards reported feeling “uplifted,” “encouraged,” and  even “excited.”  Among these are people who do not have a TV, who homeschool or approve others’ homeschooling, consider most Republicans too liberal to vote for, and attend the Traditional Mass.  Yet they are blind to the evil in the Holy Father’s words (and deeds).  My husband and I agreed upon the interview’s emergence in the media that, surely, this would be the wake-up call to the people we knew who insisted on Pope Francis’ orthodoxy.  This illusion was shattered upon talking to them.  I was shocked to hear their defense, which has been uniform across the five groups of people we spoke with (almost as though they compared notes beforehand and agreed on the standard line): Pope Francis is speaking in a way conservatives and liberals alike will find controversial in order to draw attention to the Church, to evangelize in a novel and inescapable way, with the new message of charity and mercy.  This is expected to surprise and charm the modern world into complete adherence to the Faith at best, and at worst, “make them think.”  When we challenge them on specific phrases the Holy Father used, (i.e. “open-ended,” the necessity of “doubt,” small-minded rules, shaken moral edifices, etc.) their eyes glaze over and they glide past these specifics to insist that the Holy Father’s overall intent was to evangelize, as though missionary zeal excuses all.  Strangest of all, these responses are entirely natural–the emotions they described upon reading the interview were spontaneous and immediate, not forced.  There seems to have no confusion, doubt, or hesitation–our friends and family did not have to teach themselves the best way to interpret His Holiness’ words.

I cannot explain this.

In contrast, His Eminence Cardinal Burke gave an interview a mere two weeks before Pope Francis which has reminded me of how he gained our devotion during his tenure in St. Louis.  Here is a choice quote: “We live in a culture with a false sense of dialogue — which has also crept into the Church — where we pretend to dialogue about open and egregious violations of the moral law.”

Exactly.

Laura writes:

You write:

My husband and I agreed upon the interview’s emergence in the media that, surely, this would be the wake-up call to the people we knew who insisted on Pope Francis’ orthodoxy.

Now you know that this insistence is a form of emotional blindness. These friends and relatives are not open-minded. People who can acknowledge one phase of the Revolution cannot necessarily acknowledge a further stage. This is human and understandable.

Laura adds:

As proof of the blindness of your friends and relatives, I offer the following nugget from the interview with Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J. This passage alone is a call for the salvific project of the revolutionary if ever there was one. Notice how Francis condemns the Church of the past (with the Church spelled, as it is throughout the text, with a lower case “c.”) Notice how he talks about science revising the Church’s basic understanding of the world and the need to discard some “ecclesiastical precepts,” among which we can reasonably infer he includes condemnation of homosexuality. And notice this whopper: “The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong.”

Let me repeat that: “The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong.” Someone who is determined to deny the anti-Catholicism in this statement, will say, “Well, we must always defend the Church with nuance and allow for different understandings,” without acknowledging that what Francis has said is that that it is categorically wrong to defend the Church without nuance and without deference to different understandings, which means that there is no monolith to defend.

If wild alarms did not sound in the minds of your acquaintances with these remarks, either they did not read Francis’s words or something is seriously wrong with their sensors. Here is the passage:

I ask Pope Francis about the enormous changes occurring in society and the way human beings are reinterpreting themselves. At this point he gets up and goes to get the breviary from his desk. It is in Latin, now worn from use. He opens to the Office of Readings for Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time and reads me a passage from the Commonitorium Primum of St. Vincent of Lerins: “Even the dogma of the Christian religion must follow these laws, consolidating over the years, developing over time, deepening with age.”

The pope comments: “St. Vincent of Lerins makes a comparison between the biological development of man and the transmission from one era to another of the deposit of faith, which grows and is strengthened with time. Here, human self-understanding changes with time and so also human consciousness deepens. Let us think of when slavery was accepted or the death penalty was allowed without any problem. So we grow in the understanding of the truth. Exegetes and theologians help the church to mature in her own judgment. Even the other sciences and their development help the church in its growth in understanding. There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but now they have lost value or meaning. The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong. 

“After all, in every age of history, humans try to understand and express themselves better. So human beings in time change the way they perceive themselves. It’s one thing for a man who expresses himself by carving the ‘Winged Victory of Samothrace,’ yet another for Caravaggio, Chagall and yet another still for Dalí. Even the forms for expressing truth can be multiform, and this is indeed necessary for the transmission of the Gospel in its timeless meaning.

“Humans are in search of themselves, and, of course, in this search they can also make mistakes. The church has experienced times of brilliance, like that of Thomas Aquinas. But the church has lived also times of decline in its ability to think. For example, we must not confuse the genius of Thomas Aquinas with the age of decadent Thomist commentaries. Unfortunately, I studied philosophy from textbooks that came from decadent or largely bankrupt Thomism. In thinking of the human being, therefore, the church should strive for genius and not for decadence.

“When does a formulation of thought cease to be valid? When it loses sight of the human or even when it is afraid of the human or deluded about itself. The deceived thought can be depicted as Ulysses encountering the song of the Siren, or as Tannhäuser in an orgy surrounded by satyrs and bacchantes, or as Parsifal, in the second act of Wagner’s opera, in the palace of Klingsor. The thinking of the church must recover genius and better understand how human beings understand themselves today, in order to develop and deepen the church’s teaching.” (A Big Heart Open to God, America Magazine.)

— Comments —

Claire Stevens writes:

I can’t help but make this comparison:

Pope Francis = Rob Bell

This leads me to conclude

The Vatican = Mars Hill

The Pope seems to be Emerging, and I am truly unsettled.

Zippy Catholic writes:

On the other hand Francis did just excommunicate a liberal heretic.

Laura writes:

Wonderful.

In the meantime, millions of people have read the Pope say that abortion and homosexuality are not such serious issues.

Paul T. writes:

While I have deep concerns about Pope Francis, I don’t think he’s saying here that the Church must defer to the ‘different understandings’ held by its enemies. He seems to be saying that with time, the Church’s understanding of itself and of the world undergoes change — which has to be true, or we could hardly tell the difference between a fourth-century and a fourteenth-century theologian. That he is referring to Catholic self-understanding seems clear overall: “Even the other sciences and their development help the church in its growth in understanding…The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong…in every age of history, humans try to understand and express themselves better. So human beings in time change the way they perceive themselves.” Taking the whole thing together, I see no basis for reading it as “The Church must abandon its key doctrines in favour of the views of those who hate it and wish to see it subverted or destroyed.” 

 Laura writes:

You write:

He seems to be saying that with time, the Church’s understanding of itself and of the world undergoes change…”

Exactly, that is what he is saying. But that is not what the Church believes. It believes that its understanding of itself may deepen with time, but it does not become different. Its mission was revealed and set in motion by historical events which will never change. A fourth-century theologian and a fourteenth-century theologian do not have different understandings of the Church though they may focus on different aspects of that Revelation, respond to different philosophical challenges to it and differ in the depth and breadth of their understanding. A fourth-century theologian, if he is true, is as relevant today as he was then. He does not become outdated.

The Pope stated:

Even the other sciences and their development help the church in its growth in understanding.

Its understanding of what? Of itself? Science does not help the Church in its growth in understanding of itself. Science may challenge and affirm its understanding of the world. However, even its understanding of the world would not be radically altered or made fundamentally different. Read in the context of our age of scientism, in which one of the major challenges to the Church’s teachings is the doctrine of evolution, his words are suggestive of compromise with that doctrine. I am quite sure that many are reading it that way. The very fact that we must wonder what he means and that it is open to these contrary suggestions is disturbing. Ambiguity, not only suggests a lack of conviction, but confuses.

Donald writes:

According to this article, Pope Francis has excommunicated a priest for his support of homosexuals and abortion rights. If true, I wonder if it has more to do with abortion than homosexuality. The article implies that the Pope was misunderstood: “Actually what the Pope was saying was that he wants the Church to talk more about what it’s for than what it’s against. But that doesn’t mean it won’t still be against those things that contradict its teachings and traditions.”

Laura writes:

But the Church, according to the Pope, should not be “obsessed” with these major evils in our world.

By the way, obsession suggests psychological illness. That is the way the word is used in our times. In the Pope’s understandings, those who single-mindedly battle these evils suffer from obsession.

Laura adds:

Let’s take another excerpt from this interview — there is so much in it and I haven’t gotten to the half of it. This passage is on the role of women in the Church (or I should say, the church.)

And what about the role of women in the church? The pope has made ​​reference to this issue on several occasions. He took up the matter during the return trip from Rio de Janeiro, claiming that the church still lacks a profound theology of women. I ask: “What should be the role of women in the church? How do we make their role more visible today?”

We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church.He answers: “I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of ‘female machismo,’ because a woman has a different make-up than a man. [Notice that he is “wary” of machismo, not adamantly opposed to it. This is a very wishy-washy rejection of one of the major cultural forces of our time. Notice also his reference to a “solution.” He believes there must be a “solution” for women that is not found in the Church’s teachings.] But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo. Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed. [Women are not asking “deep questions.” They are answering them. And their answers involve a totalistic rejection of male authority and an understanding of history that frames it all as evil. That includes the Church.] The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. The woman is essential for the church. [Given that we live in a non-stop, “women-are-wonderful” world, is it necessary to say this? Anyone with common sense knows that women are essential to the Church. Why doesn’t he speak of men separately? Why does he say nothing positive about men as men, given their authority is under attack? Because he is a man of this world.] Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. [He is comparing two different entities.] I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity. We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. [Really? We must investigate it further? I thought Christ and the Old Testament had settled the most important issue of all long ago. Women are the spiritual equals of men. What more needs to be “investigated?] We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. [Translation: There has never been a “profound theology” of women in the Church. So much for the Incarnation and the Blessed Sacrament. They’re not profound enough for women.] Only by making this step will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church. [He suggests that there is something wrong with the “function” of women in the Church.]  The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. [That’s not what the Church has always taught.] The challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised for various areas of the church.” [Here’s the bottom line. More women must be in positions of Church authority even though women predominate in the liturgy in many parishes. In other words, more power for the lay establishment just so we can elevate women who confuse power with spiritual progress.]

All in all, these words are an effort to compromise with feminism. That effort is misguided. Feminism cannot be appeased by anything less than the domination and subjugation of men, something that is impossible to achieve but that the feminist will ever attempt to achieve, wrecking all of society in the process.

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