Pope Francis Portrays Himself as a Reformer
Nov 15, 2014 19:08:36 GMT -5
Post by Berean on Nov 15, 2014 19:08:36 GMT -5
Pope Francis Portrays Himself as a Reformer
by Richard Bennett
Across the world, many people are beginning to agree that Francis is a curiously unusual Pope. Some writers have pinpointed the peculiarity. To quote from the Episcopal Cafe Website,
Pope Francis has launched nothing short of a revolution in the Catholic Church.... ‘Will he make it?’ or ‘Will he pull it off?’ ...everyone, it seems, knows that Francis is trying to engineer “a Catholic glasnost.”1 ...In the late 1980s, Soviet Union Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev elevated glasnost into policy. Linked to “perestroika” or restructuring, Gorbachev used that double-blade to curb embedded corruption in the Kremlin and communist party. Francis’ lifestyle—from lodging in spare Casa Santa Marta quarters to spurning limousines—has rippled out. Cardinals are shedding titles and crimson-laced vestments. Work patterns in Vatican institutions, from the change-resistant Curia to the troubled Vatican Bank, have radically altered.2
The Teflon and the Extraordinary Pope
Then there are metaphors used about Francis and descriptions of his actions that were never before used referring to a Pope. To quote the Opinion Inquirer Website,
Francis as a ‘Teflon pope.’ Nothing bad sticks. ‘Francis is giving rise to a ‘new culture of accountability.’ That means somebody actually gets fired. He accepted the resignation of two Vatican Bank officials. And he did not shield Msgr. Nunzio Scarano of the Vatican Bank from a $30-million laundering charge. Francis seeks to enhance the role of the layman—not just in ceremonial ways, but in the nuts and bolts of reforming and governing the Church. And he is repositioning the Church in the political center, after a lengthy period where it drifted to the right.3
Moreover, the Political Dog 101 Website, under the headline “Pope Francis as a Progressive Versus the Vatican,” stated the following,
In a blog post titled ‘This Extraordinary Pope,’ Andrew Sullivan, an outspoken homosexual Catholic, expressed the sentiments of many like-minded Church members: ‘What’s so striking to me is not what he said, but how he said it: the gentleness, the humor, the transparency. I find myself with tears in my eyes as I watch him. I’ve lived a long time to hear a pope speak like that,’ Sullivan wrote. ‘Everything he is saying and doing is an obvious, implicit rejection of what came before.’
Pope Francis “Who am I to judge?” and the first pope to speak “off the cuff”
On July 29, 2013, Pope Francis spoke to reporters on his flight back from Brazil. He was asked if there was a ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican? He allowed the issue to come up and tackled it with his own question, which has become well known, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”4 Pope Francis is very much aware that according to Catholic dogma,
The Supreme Pontiff, in virtue of his office, possesses infallible teaching authority when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful...he proclaims with a definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held as such.5
That said, he skillfully managed the whole issue of sodomy, and the secondary question of whether there is a gay lobby within the Curia, by addressing it informally rather than from the Chair of St. Peter, all the while knowing that the power of the papal position is being brought to bear through his evasive answer. Thus, he has protected the sodomite lobby inside the Catholic Church without ruling on it from his official position. As a result, Pope Francis set wheels in motion within the Vatican that will make it difficult for the Cardinals of the Vatican Curia to stop.
0x08 graphic
The Popular Pope Francis
Then on August 28, 2013, at 4 p.m., Pope Francis spoke to the youth from the Italian Diocese of Piacenza. The Catholic News Website, Zenit, made an unusual statement concerning Francis’ improvised talk, “Pope Francis addressed the youth in an off the cuff discourse.”6 He began his talk in this way,
Thank you for this visit! The bishop said that I made a great gesture in coming here. But I did it out of selfishness. Do you know why? Because I like being with you! So this is a selfishness. I wanted to tell you this, to tell you: courage, go forward, make noise. Where there is youth, there should be noise. Then, we’ll adjust things, but the dreams of a young person always make noise. Go forward! In life there will always be people with proposals to curb, to block your way. Please, go against the current. Be courageous, courageous: go against the current. And that there will be someone who says: ‘No, but this... I drink a bit of alcohol, take some drugs and I’m getting ahead.’ No! Go against the current of this civilization that is doing so much harm. Do you understand this? To go against the current; and this means to make noise, to go forward, but with the values of beauty, of goodness and of truth. This is what I wanted to tell you. I want to wish you all well, a good work, joy in the heart: joyful youth!7
A Clear Exposé of the Character of Francis
This “off the cuff” address of Francis gives insight into his own philosophy. Within the Vatican, he is seen as being courageous and as going against the current. Francis is the man who apparently is initiating a revolution in the Catholic Church; at least he is making some noise about it by disturbing superficial bits of the status quo here and there. Pope Francis has chosen the title “Bishop of Rome” in the Vatican’s annual directory,” instead of the large number of the formal titles normally given to the Pope by the Vatican. Then on Holy Thursday, Pope Francis washed the feet of two women in juvenile detention, one of which was a Muslim. With this action, Francis broke the Vatican tradition that restricts the ritual to men. In the words of the AP Website,
No pope has ever washed the feet of a woman before, and Francis’ gesture sparked a debate among some conservatives and liturgical purists, who lamented he had set a ‘questionable example.’ Liberals welcomed the move as a sign of greater inclusiveness in the church.8
All Show and No Substance
Do all these revolutionary deeds mean that Pope Francis may be a Martin Luther or a John Calvin in the making? He is anything but! What he has written regarding questions of Vatican doctrine is totally in conformity with traditional Roman dogma. An example of this is the new encyclical letter that he has published entitled, “The Light of Faith.” The language of the encyclical letter is not like the comments and talks that Francis constantly gives. Rather, the long sixty-paragraph document has the stilted Vatican expressions found in previous Pontiffs’ encyclical letters. Thus, Francis continues to present to his audience two persona, as it were. There is the flamboyant revolutionary from the New World who seemingly pits himself in opposition to the Old World Vatican: an outsider confidently shaking up corrupt insider alliances; a modern man from South America, confidently breaking the antiquated formalities and traditions, tossing them aside by speaking casually and moving informally among the ordinary people. All this shrewd acting is targeted toward the naive and the youth, in particular, in a manner presumably calculated to charm them into a malleable personality cult. What is the goal? Behind all this appealing drama, his first encyclical (his words that truly count) shows him to be the subservient-compliant-traditional servant of the Vatican Curia. With this in mind, we biblically analyze his encyclical.
Francis’ Source and Foundation of ‘truth’ is Apostolic Tradition
Francis is forthright in presenting his perspective on how truth is known. He states, “It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.”9 This same dogma is taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
...the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, ‘does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.10
The Church of Rome goes so far as to state,
Still, the Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’. Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, ‘not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living.’11
Only men devoid of the Holy Spirit could have published such a distorted view of Holy Scripture. The Bible alone, God’s Written Word, shows the brightness of the truth, holiness, majesty, and authority of God, given to it by its Author, the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture has the stamp of God’s excellence upon it, distinguishing it from all other writings. This is evidenced by the many fulfilled prophecies in the Bible, written hundreds of years before the actual events, many pointing to Jesus Christ. Fulfilled prophecy is God’s way of authenticating the Bible as the one and uniquely inspired book. Divine inspiration is revelation given in written word, “All scripture [graphe] is given by inspiration of God....”12 “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son...”13 Thus Francis’ statement,
It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.14
is an attempt to take control of the Bible so that the Church of Rome can give predominance to its traditions.
Long article - continued at link.
by Richard Bennett
Across the world, many people are beginning to agree that Francis is a curiously unusual Pope. Some writers have pinpointed the peculiarity. To quote from the Episcopal Cafe Website,
Pope Francis has launched nothing short of a revolution in the Catholic Church.... ‘Will he make it?’ or ‘Will he pull it off?’ ...everyone, it seems, knows that Francis is trying to engineer “a Catholic glasnost.”1 ...In the late 1980s, Soviet Union Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev elevated glasnost into policy. Linked to “perestroika” or restructuring, Gorbachev used that double-blade to curb embedded corruption in the Kremlin and communist party. Francis’ lifestyle—from lodging in spare Casa Santa Marta quarters to spurning limousines—has rippled out. Cardinals are shedding titles and crimson-laced vestments. Work patterns in Vatican institutions, from the change-resistant Curia to the troubled Vatican Bank, have radically altered.2
The Teflon and the Extraordinary Pope
Then there are metaphors used about Francis and descriptions of his actions that were never before used referring to a Pope. To quote the Opinion Inquirer Website,
Francis as a ‘Teflon pope.’ Nothing bad sticks. ‘Francis is giving rise to a ‘new culture of accountability.’ That means somebody actually gets fired. He accepted the resignation of two Vatican Bank officials. And he did not shield Msgr. Nunzio Scarano of the Vatican Bank from a $30-million laundering charge. Francis seeks to enhance the role of the layman—not just in ceremonial ways, but in the nuts and bolts of reforming and governing the Church. And he is repositioning the Church in the political center, after a lengthy period where it drifted to the right.3
Moreover, the Political Dog 101 Website, under the headline “Pope Francis as a Progressive Versus the Vatican,” stated the following,
In a blog post titled ‘This Extraordinary Pope,’ Andrew Sullivan, an outspoken homosexual Catholic, expressed the sentiments of many like-minded Church members: ‘What’s so striking to me is not what he said, but how he said it: the gentleness, the humor, the transparency. I find myself with tears in my eyes as I watch him. I’ve lived a long time to hear a pope speak like that,’ Sullivan wrote. ‘Everything he is saying and doing is an obvious, implicit rejection of what came before.’
Pope Francis “Who am I to judge?” and the first pope to speak “off the cuff”
On July 29, 2013, Pope Francis spoke to reporters on his flight back from Brazil. He was asked if there was a ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican? He allowed the issue to come up and tackled it with his own question, which has become well known, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”4 Pope Francis is very much aware that according to Catholic dogma,
The Supreme Pontiff, in virtue of his office, possesses infallible teaching authority when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful...he proclaims with a definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held as such.5
That said, he skillfully managed the whole issue of sodomy, and the secondary question of whether there is a gay lobby within the Curia, by addressing it informally rather than from the Chair of St. Peter, all the while knowing that the power of the papal position is being brought to bear through his evasive answer. Thus, he has protected the sodomite lobby inside the Catholic Church without ruling on it from his official position. As a result, Pope Francis set wheels in motion within the Vatican that will make it difficult for the Cardinals of the Vatican Curia to stop.
0x08 graphic
The Popular Pope Francis
Then on August 28, 2013, at 4 p.m., Pope Francis spoke to the youth from the Italian Diocese of Piacenza. The Catholic News Website, Zenit, made an unusual statement concerning Francis’ improvised talk, “Pope Francis addressed the youth in an off the cuff discourse.”6 He began his talk in this way,
Thank you for this visit! The bishop said that I made a great gesture in coming here. But I did it out of selfishness. Do you know why? Because I like being with you! So this is a selfishness. I wanted to tell you this, to tell you: courage, go forward, make noise. Where there is youth, there should be noise. Then, we’ll adjust things, but the dreams of a young person always make noise. Go forward! In life there will always be people with proposals to curb, to block your way. Please, go against the current. Be courageous, courageous: go against the current. And that there will be someone who says: ‘No, but this... I drink a bit of alcohol, take some drugs and I’m getting ahead.’ No! Go against the current of this civilization that is doing so much harm. Do you understand this? To go against the current; and this means to make noise, to go forward, but with the values of beauty, of goodness and of truth. This is what I wanted to tell you. I want to wish you all well, a good work, joy in the heart: joyful youth!7
A Clear Exposé of the Character of Francis
This “off the cuff” address of Francis gives insight into his own philosophy. Within the Vatican, he is seen as being courageous and as going against the current. Francis is the man who apparently is initiating a revolution in the Catholic Church; at least he is making some noise about it by disturbing superficial bits of the status quo here and there. Pope Francis has chosen the title “Bishop of Rome” in the Vatican’s annual directory,” instead of the large number of the formal titles normally given to the Pope by the Vatican. Then on Holy Thursday, Pope Francis washed the feet of two women in juvenile detention, one of which was a Muslim. With this action, Francis broke the Vatican tradition that restricts the ritual to men. In the words of the AP Website,
No pope has ever washed the feet of a woman before, and Francis’ gesture sparked a debate among some conservatives and liturgical purists, who lamented he had set a ‘questionable example.’ Liberals welcomed the move as a sign of greater inclusiveness in the church.8
All Show and No Substance
Do all these revolutionary deeds mean that Pope Francis may be a Martin Luther or a John Calvin in the making? He is anything but! What he has written regarding questions of Vatican doctrine is totally in conformity with traditional Roman dogma. An example of this is the new encyclical letter that he has published entitled, “The Light of Faith.” The language of the encyclical letter is not like the comments and talks that Francis constantly gives. Rather, the long sixty-paragraph document has the stilted Vatican expressions found in previous Pontiffs’ encyclical letters. Thus, Francis continues to present to his audience two persona, as it were. There is the flamboyant revolutionary from the New World who seemingly pits himself in opposition to the Old World Vatican: an outsider confidently shaking up corrupt insider alliances; a modern man from South America, confidently breaking the antiquated formalities and traditions, tossing them aside by speaking casually and moving informally among the ordinary people. All this shrewd acting is targeted toward the naive and the youth, in particular, in a manner presumably calculated to charm them into a malleable personality cult. What is the goal? Behind all this appealing drama, his first encyclical (his words that truly count) shows him to be the subservient-compliant-traditional servant of the Vatican Curia. With this in mind, we biblically analyze his encyclical.
Francis’ Source and Foundation of ‘truth’ is Apostolic Tradition
Francis is forthright in presenting his perspective on how truth is known. He states, “It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.”9 This same dogma is taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
...the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, ‘does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.10
The Church of Rome goes so far as to state,
Still, the Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’. Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, ‘not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living.’11
Only men devoid of the Holy Spirit could have published such a distorted view of Holy Scripture. The Bible alone, God’s Written Word, shows the brightness of the truth, holiness, majesty, and authority of God, given to it by its Author, the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture has the stamp of God’s excellence upon it, distinguishing it from all other writings. This is evidenced by the many fulfilled prophecies in the Bible, written hundreds of years before the actual events, many pointing to Jesus Christ. Fulfilled prophecy is God’s way of authenticating the Bible as the one and uniquely inspired book. Divine inspiration is revelation given in written word, “All scripture [graphe] is given by inspiration of God....”12 “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son...”13 Thus Francis’ statement,
It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.14
is an attempt to take control of the Bible so that the Church of Rome can give predominance to its traditions.
Long article - continued at link.