From the moment he walked out on the balcony, the FrancisEffect has been an enormous barrage of airy hype, nothing like the solid reality of Christ and His universe.
NC Reporter’s Robert Mickens writes:
Pope Francis is no longer drawing the massive crowds that were so evident in the first two years of his pontificate.
Statistics suggest that many fewer Christian pilgrims are coming to Rome to pray at the tombs of the apostles — or those of the saintly and not-so-saintly dead popes — that are found in various churches, crypts and catacombs throughout the Eternal City.
But even more worrying is that these pilgrims, and all other types of tourists, are no longer flocking to St Peter’s in record numbers to see the reigning pope himself.
I don’t believe numbers have ever been good for Francis. Right-thinking people smelled a rat with Benedict fled. You have to live in your television to embrace FrancisChurch.
This has led some scribes to declare that the Holy Year of Mercy, which Francis opened last Dec. 8 and will bring to a close at the end of next November, is doomed to be a colossal flop.
No crowds, no party.
Catholics who have been resistant to the Jesuit pontiff’s “revolution of tenderness and mercy” must be smiling. They have been terrified that his intention is to use the Jubilee to unleash a tidal wave of God’s mercy and forgiveness, even to the point of allowing divorced and remarried members of the church to return to receiving the sacraments.
God forbid. This just will not do.
These peoples’ greatest nightmare is that this borderline heretic pope, who never even earned a doctorate in theology, might be tempted to conform the church’s doctrine to “the spirit of the world” and end up peddling “cheap grace.”
This is not an exaggeration.
Of course it isn’t. Only an effeminate harpie would be shocked to find otherwise.
There are even bishops — some of whom are in the College of Cardinals — who use these exact terms. But their greatest fear is that the doctrinally impoverished Francis could be duped to actually usher in — hold on your rosary beads! — the “Protestantization” of the Catholic church.
It is in incredible that fifty years after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), there are still Catholics who continue to look with such contempt at their brothers and sisters who belong to the Reform churches and communities. More horrifying is that not a small number of them are comfortably ensconced in the Vatican or employed in the Roman Curia.
But it does not matter.
Pope Francis’ “revolution” is well underway and gaining momentum. Even if many millions of pilgrims do not come to Rome during the Holy Year, this phenomenon cannot be slowed down.
With the world and all its money-power behind it the NewMercy isn’t going away, that’s true. But it will never be real and it will never replace the real Church.
Mickens’ visible hatred reveals the Satanic heart behind FrancisChurch.
In fact, the pope does not want huge crowds of people to come to Rome for the jubilee. He wants them to celebrate the yearlong event in their home dioceses, by being the first pope ever to encourage every diocesan cathedral around the world to have its own holy door. And not just the cathedrals, but also all significant shrines and even chapels in every prison.
Oh I see. Francis doesn’t want anyone in Rome. This is all supposed to happen at home and in prisons. Maybe I’ve walked through a MercyDoor already by accident. It’s funny I didn’t feel anything.
Perhaps the other old souls still stepping anywhere near a local Catholic parish didn’t notice their silly MercyDoors either. In their ‘bitter contempt’ they thought those were just doors, nothing magical, bewitching, or spellbinding.
I agree with most of this but let’s have a bit of secular realism. The number of tourists in Europe (including pilgrims to Rome) has been affected by the perceived threat of terrorist attacks.
Th numbers have been declining for well over a year.
I’ve read that they’ve been declining for about a year, as well, and that the visit to Philadelphia also didn’t sell out — not because the people were scared, as the mayor of that town claimed — but because people who are supposedly fired-up over this Pope have faith like pie crust — easily made, easily broken. Apparently, they can pay a lot of lip service about how much they like this pope, but it doesn’t go much deeper.
Oh, and Francis is NOT the Fust pope evah! to permit Holy Doors throughout the world during a Jubilee year — Pope John Paul II’s 2000 Jubilee also allowed Holy Doors throughout the world.