{"id":8924,"date":"2016-09-11T07:14:18","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T11:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/?p=8924"},"modified":"2016-09-11T08:41:35","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T12:41:35","slug":"what-is-the-francis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/?p=8924","title":{"rendered":"What is the Francis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faithful English pastor Fr. Ray Blake was identified in the blogosphere as a target of some pressure since he was silent for an extended period on his very sophisticated website.\u00a0 Fr. Blake is often critical, in a brilliant yet indirect and qualified way, of some of the faithless initiatives of FrancisChurch.\u00a0 When Father returned after his hiatus to condemn mafia-like tactics<\/a> in the Church, a reader noted that it is likely the Pope was behind them to an extent.\u00a0 To this Father responded that ‘nothing Francis has said’ would indicate that, then he blasted the commenter for libelous talk.<\/p>\n

Message:\u00a0 I’ll do the judgment making, the discerning, and the risk-taking.\u00a0 You just do the listening, layman.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of thing that happens in Mafia-like wards too.\u00a0 Father’s readers understand this.\u00a0 They know that he now has lied and compromised his principles in order to protect himself.\u00a0 After all it’s true, he is the one who has taken the risk and is receiving the pressure, not the readers.\u00a0 They are under no threats or correction from anyone in this situation, while it is likely he is.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the fault stands.\u00a0 A faithful resistance cannot be built upon half-measures, arrogance, lies, and capitulation.\u00a0 It simply won’t work.<\/p>\n

And this isn’t unique.\u00a0 All of our heroes seem to lay down when the Francis-boom lands.\u00a0 (That must be what the nuBenedict means when he says Francis is a good governor<\/a>?)\u00a0 We have similar problems in the faithful U.S. media too.\u00a0 We scuttle out like mice or little puppies to do our damage, then run hiding when the man comes around.\u00a0 It’s really a money issue.\u00a0 However, the money behind FrancisChurch hurts a lot worse than a rolled-up newspaper.<\/p>\n

I’m hearing lately that we need to stifle these bubbling doubts about Francis actually being the pope.\u00a0 Ann Barnhardt maintains that he is an anti-pope since he resigned under an erronious dual-pope understanding.\u00a0 Benedict felt that he would continue as sort of a contemplative co-pope, therefore his abdication is invalid.\u00a0 Louie Verrecchio and Antonio Socci both make the same case without coming to final conclusions.\u00a0 There is also the issue of pressure, something which would naturally be hard to clearly prove.\u00a0 Finally, there’s that St. Gallen group: the existence of an illegal and organized movement of cardinals to install Francis prior to and outside the conclave.<\/p>\n

All of these considerations have merit.\u00a0 As Cardinal Brandmuller has reminded<\/a>, the situation is unprecedented and rife with problems.\u00a0 I do not think it helps to carelessly toss these questions off as disobedient, uncatholic, or hysterical.\u00a0 It’s worse to pretend they don’t matter at all and that we should just get past them.\u00a0 As with Fr. Blake’s readers, the faithful understand when they’re being corralled and of course, though we are sheep in the Lord’s flock, we are still nonetheless men.<\/p>\n

‘Sure, ‘maybe’ Francis is a heretic but that’s happened before, and it’s not for us to say.’\u00a0<\/em> We get this message often too.\u00a0 How many ‘maybes’ must we suffer through?\u00a0 Hundreds of years ago a pope was deposed for the heresy of permitting a nation to select it’s own bishops.\u00a0 That’s good, but what we have here today is about 186 times worse.\u00a0 At what point may we make a conclusion of our own about the situation?\u00a0 Should we wait until gay sex is a sacrament, or continue to pray and be docile?<\/p>\n

My position on the abdication has always been the same.\u00a0 Benedict appears to have left under pressure but it’s a difficult thing to prove.\u00a0 The most powerful indicators are the fact that a worldly prince and a heretic was selected to follow him, and that he appears to be under some type of confinement and control today.\u00a0 Francis is the kind of man who would follow a putsch, and this nuBenedict we keep seeing via third party does not sound anything like himself.\u00a0 Instead he seems poorly scripted, muddled, and much more like Tucho Fernandez than Ratzinger.<\/p>\n

“Your friendship is the air that I breathe and in which I live?”\u00a0 Wasn’t it something like that the Emeritus said to the Francis on his 65th anniversary?<\/p>\n

Whether Benedict was forced out or his abdication invalidated for any other reason, a fact I believe is not unlikely, it’s not the most important thing when it comes to the papacy today.\u00a0 The main issue is that Francis has clearly demonstrated his heresy, and as faithful laymen it is our responsibility to call for his abdication.\u00a0 He is not able to defend the faith, priesthood, or Sacraments, or to canonize saints, or do any of the things absolutely necessary to preserve the Church.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter whether he’s pope or not.\u00a0 He should not be<\/strong> pope.\u00a0 He has shown us he is, in fact, incapable of it.<\/p>\n

While we continue to resist the faithless wreckage of FrancisChurch, I put the onus on those who know for certain that Francis is pope to prove it.\u00a0 I don’t advocate calling Francis an anti-pope, but I don’t see any reason to pretend that it couldn’t be the case.<\/p>\n

As a compromise, it might be better for Francis to do what Benedict did: retreat to pray for humanity as a contemplative papal element, where he can give gushing interviews and bask in the friendship of an actual Catholic pope.<\/p>\n

Wait. I guess that would be ridiculous.<\/p>\n

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Faithful English pastor Fr. Ray Blake was identified in the blogosphere as a target of some pressure since he was silent for an extended period on his very sophisticated website.\u00a0 Fr. Blake is often critical, in a brilliant yet indirect and qualified way, of some of the faithless initiatives of FrancisChurch.\u00a0 When Father returned after …<\/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":[747,985,26,81,19],"class_list":["post-8924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abdication","tag-anti-pope","tag-catholic","tag-pope-benedict","tag-pope-francis"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924","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=8924"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8961,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8924\/revisions\/8961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}