{"id":125,"date":"2014-08-10T22:37:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T22:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/?p=125"},"modified":"2014-08-11T07:31:54","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T07:31:54","slug":"can-you-disagree-with-the-pope-sure-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"Take My Advice, Tony"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Take<\/a><\/p>\n

The prolific Fr. Longenecker has jumped to the defense of Pope Francis in the wake of the Boston Globe story about the relationship between the Pope and the late Protestant \u2018Bishop\u2019 Tony Palmer, who died in a motorcycle accident in England recently. According to the account, Mr. Palmer\u2019s family was Catholic while he remained Protestant.<\/p>\n

After years of working with the Cd. Bergoglio Palmer wanted to become Catholic too, but was urged to remain outside the Church by the Pope \u2018for the sake of the mission.\u2019 This is a discouraging but not \u2018out of the blue\u2019 story and Father’s response is distracting.<\/p>\n

My comments in red:<\/p>\n

Can you disagree with the Pope? Sure. Last week I posted about some traditionalist Catholics who do nothing\u00a0but\u00a0<\/em>correct the Pope. These extremists correct Pope Francis, Pope Benedict, Pope St John Paul II, Pope Paul VI and Pope St John XXIII. When I said they resemble the liberal cafeteria Catholics they so dislike I also pointed out that there is nothing wrong with questioning or challenging a pope\u2019s personal choices. Extremists? This borrows language from the enemies of the Church. Didn\u2019t he just say that correcting a Pope was ok \u2013 Sure, but?<\/span><\/p>\n

The underlying question is \u201cDo you have a basic trust in the Holy Spirit working through the Body of Christ the Church? Do you have a rock solid belief that the Pope is working for the best of the church and the promulgation of the Catholic faith? Can you listen to him and obey him as your shepherd and as the Vicar of Christ?\u201d Is this our Faith that everything every Pope says must be taken as the work of the Holy Spirit?<\/span><\/p>\n

If \u201cyes\u201d then criticisms of the pope\u2019s style, his personal choices, his taste and his decisions in pastoral matters are just talking points. It\u2019s like having a good marriage but you can\u2019t stand your wife\u2019s new hairstyle. It\u2019s like loving your husband but you wish he\u2019d give up bringing fish home and gutting them on the kitchen table. It\u2019s like loving your wife but cringing when her mother comes over. (Fr. Longenecker is a married priest. It\u2019s good to remember, and to appreciate the tremendous gift of celibate priests.)<\/span><\/p>\n

With this in mind, I read with consternation Austen Ivereigh\u2019s article <\/a>for\u00a0the Boston Globe which gives more detail about Pope Francis\u2019 relationship with freelance Anglican Bishop Tony Palmer. For those who don\u2019t remember, Palmer met the Pope when he was working in Argentina as a Protestant missionary. Tony Palmer, a South African, was married to an Italian Catholic, and the question of his converting to the Catholic church arose in his conversations with the then Archbishop Bergoglio.<\/p>\n

Palmer and Bergoglio had intense discussions about Christian separation, using the analogy of apartheid in South Africa. They found common ground in believing that institutional separation breeds fear and misunderstanding. Bergoglio, whom Palmer called \u201cFather Mario,\u201d acted as a spiritual father to the Protestant cleric, calming him (\u201che wanted to make me a reformer, not a rebel,\u201d Palmer told me) and encouraging him in his mission to Christian unity. A reformer, rather than rebel is good. Christian unity is good if that means unity with the Church.<\/span><\/p>\n

At one point, when Palmer was tired of living on the frontier and wanted to become Catholic, Bergoglio advised him against conversion for the sake of the mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to have bridge-builders\u201d, the cardinal told him. This is, on its face, not Catholic and not charity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Should the then Cardinal Bergoglio have advised Tony Palmer to convert to Catholicism? In fact, the more we learn about Tony Palmer, the more interesting the question becomes. He was very involved in joint Catholic-Charismatic renewal and evangelization ministries. \u00a0Wouldn\u2019t that ministry have been undermined if he became Catholic? Was Cardinal Bergoglio, in this instance, correct in advising him to stay put? This is where Father begins his rationalization.<\/span><\/p>\n

The doctrinaire would say, \u201cThe Catholic Church is the one, true Church. Everyone outside it is going to hell and therefore it was wrong to tell Tony Palmer not to convert!\u201d Unfortunately it\u2019s not always that easy. Sometimes it is better, for all sorts of reasons, for a person to stay where they are. That is a terrible thing to say. \u2018Doctrinaire\u2019 means cruel and unbending. Someone who follows the doctrines of the Church is neither. They are called saints.<\/span> Those of us who work with converts\u2013especially clergy converts\u2013(and I get about two or three emails a month from clergy thinking of converting) realize that for family, faith and financial reasons immediate\u00a0conversion is not always the answer. If a person is moving towards the Catholic faith we meet the person where they are and walk with them on that journey. It took me twenty years to finally take the step to become a Catholic. Maybe someone should have told Father to wait even longer? Still, the circumstances, background, and timing of this story could certainly be different than the Globe\u2019s account.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore one can\u2019t judge Cardinal Bergoglio\u2019s call with Tony Palmer. This is the essence of Fr. Longenecker\u2019s point. We don\u2019t know the actual situation, so we should not be rash.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However<\/em>, what about that bit about \u2018the sake of the mission?\u2019 It\u2019s the stated reason for the Pope\u2019s direction to Palmer. Is that a reason? Is there ever<\/em> a reason to refrain from union with the Church of Christ, with the saving Sacraments, and with Heaven? No. There\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

Father goes on to make a strong faithful defense of his conversion and those of countless others who have helped the Church with their love, but these facts are not really relevant to the troubling story that appeared in the Boston Globe this weekend about Pope Francis and his late friend, Tony Palmer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The prolific Fr. Longenecker has jumped to the defense of Pope Francis in the wake of the Boston Globe story about the relationship between the Pope and the late Protestant \u2018Bishop\u2019 Tony Palmer, who died in a motorcycle accident in England recently. According to the account, Mr. Palmer\u2019s family was Catholic while he remained Protestant. …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,22,19,20],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic-conversion","tag-fr-dwight-longenecker","tag-pope-francis","tag-tony-palmer"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}