Briefly blinded to the Truth
It’s only September 2nd and the Obama network of dictators, the UN, their Vatican, its hierarchy, and the entire media machine are all hyping FrancisVisit ahead of the Paris Summit. Right out of the box they hit us with a bewildering cocktail of assaults of course under the banner of ‘mercy.’ With his left he disarmed his faithful critics. With his right Pope Francis made the entire faithless world think he just forgave abortions.
Though extremely clever, the Francis brand is better with its right than its left because it’s only taken a day for us to bounce back. Mahound’s Paradise chimed in.
One of the headlines yesterday was that in honor of the upcoming Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis has granted to every priest the authority to absolve the sin of abortion, at least for the Jubilee year. The implicit subtext is that priests did not have this authority before. The relevant text is reprinted at the end of this post.
While this declaration has been hailed in many quarters as a sort of stunning development–an example of the Pope’s new Church of Mercy in action, its actual effect in terms of the practical ability to obtain absolution for abortion is . . . wait for it . . . almost zero.
Why do I say that?
Because priests could do it anyway.
Or to put it differently, as with many things surrounding this Pope, the reality is different from the hype.
The word ‘hype’ is so apt for this Propagandist-Pope.
The writer goes on to describe the many, many ways that the restrictions on Confession and absolution for abortion are legally lifted already. In reality there are no limits upon the Mercy of God for the repentant. Of course, most people do not know that. They think the Church is all about hating people.
Here the reader may stop and ask, isn’t this all just so complicated? Shouldn’t the Pope be commended for making it simple and transparent (during the Jubilee Year only, we should add, then we go back to the regular rules)? The answer to this is that while the rules might be somewhat complicated–it’s taken me 1,000+ words to explain them–the reality or the practice is not. If one has been a party to abortion, “easy” absolution has always been available, or, more accurately, has been available at least since 1983 and in many cases earlier.
The truth of the matter of course is that the real impediment is not some 24 hour waiting period that would apply in only a small minority of cases anyway, but the state of mind of the potential penitent–not desiring to obtain absolution from a priest, or being afraid of it, ignorant as to its importance or whatever.
The Pope’s announcement was, to put it simply, a PR move.
This is the cold hard truth about FrancisMercy. It’s PR. ‘Mercy for the peripheries’ to put it another way. It’s supposed to reel in the lost, but it will only serve to do two things:
- Confirm them in their sins.
- Make Pope Francis look like the Messiah again so he can be harnessed by the Left.
He is a ‘transformational figure,’ remember, meaningful to much more than just ‘catholics.’
But those who are wise as serpents in these matters might look on it in another way: It’s a PR move to stress the goodness and mercy not of God, but of this Pope, and to implicitly condemn the “old” or “traditional” Church (in other words the eternal Catholic Church) of being, well, mean.
(I should note that the sub-headline to many stories on the Pope’s announcement plays exactly into that–“traditionalists” were “dismayed” at the Pope offering an “easy out” to such a grave sin. Given the stress by traditionalists on confession, that’s almost a complete inversion of the truth.)
If the Pope were truly interested in saving those who were prisoners of mortal sin, he would call all non-Catholics to convert (you need to be a Catholic, obviously, to receive the sacrament of absolution) instead of implying that it doesn’t matter and condemning those who think it does–“proselytism is solemn nonsense…the most important thing is to journey together towards the good.”
If the Pope were truly interested in reminding his flock of the necessity of confession, he would ask all Catholics to go and go regularly, and require that his bishops and priests make it more readily available. Announce it from the pulpit often, allot more time to it, put the confession booths back and stop storing hymnals in them.
If the Pope were truly interested in offering absolution to those who were a party to abortion, he would implore them to see a priest today, not wait until the start of his own Jubilee Year on December 8.
That is the last word on the subject of yesterday.