In (limited) defense of Benedict, he did acknowledge, when he was elected, that he would only be a “caretaker” pope.
True, but highlight the word “emphasis.” Maybe not new (there was some Saint who hung out with animals. Saint Frank maybe), but certainly a new thing to prioritize in recent times. Not to say JPII et al. weren’t concerned.
Oh! Jose Mestre finally made it to Rome? Good for him.
(Jose Mestre is a Portuguese man and one of the most extreme sufferers of neurofibromatic growths to the face. He had surgery to remove the most debilitating growth a while back, so he could see again, but it slowly grows back. It is not contagious, though.
Aka Joseph “John” “Elephant Man” Merrick disease, maybe, according to some accounts.
And divorce, you left out divorce. But yeah, even the most radical of them will not claim that divorce causes cancer or SSM leads to earthquakes. They’re all also usually quite convinced that the Earth is kind of round (the actual official term literally means “Earth-shaped”), teach evolution…
Link, please?
I keep hearing people going on about how “conservative Catholics” hate the new pope’s guts, but I am yet to come across any articles, essays or what have you that deal with this supposed hatred and resistance in any real depth.
Not saying there is no such hatred or any such resistance, just that I haven’t seen any in-depth writing on the subject.
(I am well aware of the wonderful world of sedevacantism, but of course that whole thing pre-dates Francis’ reign, and isn’t specific to him anyway.)
That quote in your thread title. Where is it from?
Henry II, regarding Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Beckett.
Thank you!
There’s a new article up on Nytimes.com about how “Conservative U.S. Catholics Feel Left Out of the Pope’s Embrace.”
It’s not very, uh, meaty.
It mentions no major resistance whatsoever, organized or not. No demonstrations, no big-name theologians speaking out (let alone breaking with the Church entirely). Just a few scattered voices here and there. A blogger, a “hospice community educator,” a couple of lawmakers, some dudes on the internet. I remain unimpressed.
I kind of find this appalling. He’s doing a better job of selling a religion with some awful beliefs. Yuck.
Yeah, any blogs or papers or something? I occasionally read America. It’s a Jesuit publication, and they’re creaming themselves over him, so a counterpoint would be good.
I’m sorry, I don’t have a link. I read it a few weeks back, either in the Washington Post or one of the news sites online. It didn’t seem like something huge, just some uneasiness from more conservative types.
I just googled and here is the Washington Post article I think I read:
Washington Post: Conservative Catholics question Pope Francis’ approach
Another one from NBCNews.com:
Not everyone loves Pope Francis: Conservative Catholics voice concern over ‘revolutionary’ message
Thank you.
The WaPo piece cites exactly two critical voices: A certain “Robert Royal, president of the D.C. think tank Faith & Reason,” and one “Mary Ellen Barringer, a Silver Spring resident.”
It also links to two Catholic Stand articles - neither of which, as it turns out, is even a leeeeeeetle bit critical of the new pope, despite what their click-baity titles (“Pope Francis is killing me,” and “Why Pope Francis makes me uncomfortable”) might lead you to believe.
Verdict: Weaksauce.
The NBC article is definitely the best of the bunch so far, quoting a bunch of different people, though most of these are already so far outside the Catholic mainstream that their anti-papal stance almost certainly pre-dates Francis’ ascension (think Second Vatican Council).
Amongst them, we have Christopher Ferrara from The Remnant, a bi-monthly newspaper which (though you wouldn’t know it from the article) has been branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center; Stephen Heiner, “founder of TrueRestoration.org[,] a member of the sedevacantist movement, which argues there hasn’t been a true pope in Rome since Vatican II” and one John Vennari, a random conspiracy kook with a YouTube channel (but I repeat myself).
A fascinating set of characters, to be sure, but nothing major.
Ah, one of the articles mentions one page, the Remnant. Of the “miffed about Vatican II but only complaining about it” school. Apparently traditionalists don’t believe in modern webpage design.
They consider the post-Altavista Internet a grossly blasphemous modernist heresy, and therefore cling piously to the one true Geocities-look, “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
If Obama is still alive I doubt that the Pope is in any real danger.
In another win for Pope Francis, Sarah Palin is not a fan of his:
Personally, I think most of what Pope Francis says is in line with the message Christ - humility, servitude, and compassion. If Sarah Palin thinks that’s too liberal then so be it.