UK Guardian: Pro-Lifers Hate FrancisMercy

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Feeling the FrancisMercy

Feeling the New Mercy

At the UK Guardian Anthea Butler provides a great example of the whole point behind the new abortion FrancisMercy.

Pope Francis’s pastoral letter for the Year of Mercy, indicating that priests may absolve those who procure abortions, does nothing to change Catholic church policy with regards to how abortion is viewed. Current canonical law states that abortion is a grave sin, resulting in “automatic” excommunication.

It also doesn’t change very much when it comes to the mechanics of sin and forgiveness in the Catholic Church. Current teachings state that bishops could give priests the right to forgive a woman for having an an abortion if she was truly penitent; for this year, priests do not specifically have to ask a bishop for the right to absolve anyone seeking forgiveness for assisting an abortion or having one. (And Pope John Paul II gave priests the same term-limited right in the year 2000.)

What the Pope did was make a deft statement on the eve of his first visit to Cuba and the United States – a very Jesuitical move from the Jesuit pontiff. It presents to the public and press a more forgiving, more open church, which needs all the good PR feelings it can muster.

So far, so good.

In a letter outlining the preparations for the Year of Mercy beginning on 8 December 2015, the pope stated he is “conceding to all priests for the Jubilee year the discretion to absolve the sin of abortion to those who have procured it”.

While the edict is not a change in canon law, it does give a pathway to forgiveness for what the church terms “a grave sin”. Once a person is absolved, then they are back in “good standing’ with the Catholic church, and are able to partake of the sacrament of the Eucharist and be accepted into heaven.

Not so sure about this ‘new pathway’ she’s talking about, but it’s great to hear a big secular paper actually explain Confession, Holy Communion, and forgiveness in our Faith.

But wait:

The move to offer absolution to women who had abortions is likely to rankle conservatives who have found themselves embattled with this pope, who hews closely to Catholic church teachings but still makes comments like “who am I to judge” with regards to homosexuality and calls upon Church leaders to get active on climate change.

The letter particularly puts the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops once again in the interesting position of having to support the pope, even though many of them are staunch anti-abortion advocates who may not have wished to extend – or even forbidden the extension of – forgiveness to those women who have sought it regarding abortions. Many of those bishops have been eager to fight the culture wars surrounding abortion rights in the United States; this announcement reduces their bluster substantively.

They were doing so well, weren’t they?  They were talking about the Church and not making things up.  Pro-life faithful bishops don’t want forgiveness for abortions!  Now we have to silence the culture war?

Just when we thought maybe the secular left would start to understand Christ’s mercy, we find out they only get FrancisMercy.  FrancisMercy is only for liberals.

 

 

 

 

 

More Pap From the People’s Pope

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poor guy

Jesus’s Favorite Kind of Guy?

Does Pope Francis make a fetish out of some academic, ideological notion of ‘the people?’

The capacity to recognize ourselves as sinners opens us to the astonishment at the encounter with Jesus: that was the message of Pope Francis Thursday morning during Mass for the feast of Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church.

Pope Francis’ homily focused on the day’s Gospel reading which tells the story of the miraculous catch of fish. After working throughout the night without catching anything, Peter, trusting in Jesus, cast his nets into the sea. The Holy Father used this story to speak about faith as an encounter with the Lord. First of all, he said, it pleases me to consider the fact that Jesus spent the greater part of His time in the street, with the people; then, later in evening, He went away by Himself to pray – but He encountered the people, He sought the people.”

I have never gotten this message from the Gospel myself.  From what I’ve read, Jesus was just as likely to be at a beautiful wedding, with the doctors in the Temple, or at the home of an important person as among the sick and lame in the street.  How did he ‘recline at table’ if he was huddling in the road all the time?

Sinners are everywhere and Jesus is a King.  He wasn’t a stranger to power and responsibility.  He could relate to it.  He was of course a leader Himself.  I don’t believe Pope Francis or his contemporaries in the hierarchy when they try to paste this ‘preferential option for the poor’ onto Christ.

Wealth is a great temptation, but Jesus didn’t avoid the wealthy, and if they were hardened and proud, he didn’t reject them either.  He scolded the Pharisees because it was for their own good, not because he loved them less.

Christ prefers the repentant faithful.  That’s who he prefers.  He’s not a Communist.

 

 

 

Don’t Let the FrancisMercy Fool You, Faithful Catholic

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Sneaky, guilty, and up to no good

Sneaky, guilty, and up to no good?

In his passionate, battling manner Mundabor has an excellent point about the double-edge sword of FrancisMercy laid upon the planet on September 1st.

He doesn’t trust it.

As Mahound made clear, the outreach to those guilty of the sin of abortion is not really an outreach at all, but like all FrancisMercy it’s just a trick, a PR stunt designed to make Francis popular with the 999 out of 1,000 people who don’t understand Catholic teaching on Confession.

Almost everyone in the West thinks that Catholicism is backward and unforgiving, but most of all they think it’s changeable, because everything in their minds has been morphing their entire lives.  Most people think what they are given to think by the powers that be, yes?  Humanity and common sense creep in, but get quickly swept away in the hurricane of media and sin.  So they see Francis, the television tells them it’s a new Church now, and it makes perfect sense.

The powers that be know they actually can make a new Church.  They just did it in the 1960’s.  It’s eternal character didn’t change, but that doesn’t mean it’s not entirely different today.  The world got the Pope it wanted, he suppressed the Mass and the catechetics, relaxed the Church governance and voila’, a wrecked world.  The faithful Church in Quebec was crushed practically in a matter of months.  Today they just received the first shipment of death kits from their government.  Mission accomplished.

So now every unrepentant sinner is celebrating because the media told them to celebrate and because that rotten Church, which has been the source of their grief despite the fact that they never darken its doors, is now forgiving them.  Thank you Francis, the Pope of New Mercy.

In reality that effort wasn’t for anyone except Obama and UN.  It consolidates the FrancisBase, those herd of swine in the country of the Gerasens who, when filled with demons, run right off a cliff.  It wasn’t for the Church or the people. It was for the purposes of the media-backed FrancisProp machine.

Some say the jubilee mercy letter brilliantly places Confession in a good light with a huge chunk of the apostate world, but that doesn’t matter because it won’t help.  Those people don’t care.  They’re not going to run down to Confession now, learn the Faith, or practice it.  And as the Mahound said:

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.

It’s all just politics.

So what about the SSPX?  It’s a coincidence that the very same issue recently raised by Madison Bp. Morlino and touted by Fr. Z, that of ‘jurisdiction for Confessions,’ should come up as FrancisMercy just when it was being used as a cudgel.  Since the FrancisEra was imposed, Michael Voris, former leader of the faithful obedient Catholic stalwarts, and his friend Fr. Paul Nicholson, have been ranting against the ‘evil group of disobedient SSPX traditionalists’ and dividing Pope Benedict’s beloved movement.  Mundabor sees this latest FrancisMercy as an opening to more of the same.  According to him, it’s all about the Synod and neutralizing the opposition.

I do not trust this. I do not trust the time, I do not trust the motives, and most importantly I do not trust the person. I fear Francis even when he bears gifts, because a scheming and heretical pope cannot have in mind anything good for Catholicism.

A liberal is a liberal is a liberal.  You can’t be part liberal.  It just makes you liberal.  Just the same you can’t be part heretic.  There is nothing good or Catholic about liberalism. There are only faithful and unfaithful.  You have to accept the whole package, not hem and haw over interpretations, social justice and sustainability, and play rhetorical Parcheesi.  Everybody knows you’re a dishonest fraud and a cheat; a traitor to the cause.

The faithful Catholic establishment loves to remind us of Pope Paul VI and his chaos, how in the end he pulled through with Humanae Vitae.   Wow.  He did something Catholic.  The man suppressed the Mass of the Apostles, quite possibly one of the most destructive things anyone has ever done.  He gave us the notorious Cardinal Bernardin and the nasty bishops conferences.  He handed his tiara to the UN because he didn’t want to look fancy or powerful.  Nice.

I don’t think God appreciated those changes.  Those castaways meant something to Him.  But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just look around you, or are you unfamiliar with the appearance of death?  This world is a lot more like Venus today than Earth.  Do you know how hot it must be walking around Venus right now?  Have you heard of the boiled frog?

Francis is not both liberal and Catholic.  That’s impossible.  Doctrine is practice is application, and I’m not talking about recycling.  The entire planet knows for which team the Pope plays.  The only ones who don’t are we faithful foolish few.  We are the ducks for the big dinner.

I do not trust the time and the motives, because it seems to me that Francis is opening the war on the sacraments with a manoeuvre aimed at disorienting his enemy. He is “merciful” to the SSPX: how will the conservative Catholics, then, be angry at him when he is “merciful” to adulterers? I smell a huge German rat here, and whilst many German bishops will feign mock opposition or even mock indignation, I am pretty sure they all know where this is going to end, and will play the game for all they’re worth. Adultery is well worth an SSPX confession, and they will now shout even louder that once Francis is “merciful” to the “schismatic” SSPX ( I know, I know… slander and false accusations never get old) how can he refuse “mercy” to the oh so acutely suffering concubines and perverts?

But most importantly, I do not trust the person. Not for one second will I think that Francis has suddenly become an orthodox Catholic. Please understand that Francis is not pursuing a less heretical agenda today than he was yesterday. He will not start today to like the rosary-counting Catholics he so much despises. The Evil Clown that went to bed yesterday evening is the same that woke up this morning. Of course he is throwing a bone to the conservative crowd before he serves the sacrilegious entree to his heretical followers, or at least tries to let them have as much of the dish as he can.

“Throwing a bone to the conservative crowd before he serves the sacrilegious entree.”  Mundabor is right.  That sounds like just what we should expect from our papal Obama-fan.