Mongolian Madness

Pope Francis is just back from a most extraordinary visit to Mongolia a country with just 1,450 Catholics and where the Catholic Church has only had a sanctioned presence since 1992, after Mongolia shrugged off its Soviet-allied communist government and enshrined religious freedom in its constitution.

I scratched my head. Was this some extravagant embodiment of Bergoglio's "going out to the peripheries" rhetoric or some geopolitical wrangling, given the proximity of both China and Russia to Mongolia?

But things were about to get crazier - much, much crazier, as Robert Royal summed up in his recent article in The Catholic Thing:

"In the past week or so, the pope has: praised “that great imperial Russia” for its noble culture and humanity (a remark later admitted to be “badly phrased”); lauded Genghis Khan’s blood-soaked empire for its religious tolerance and “pax mongolica” (40 million killed, give or take); encouraged Chinese Christians to be good citizens of a nation whose “culture” he greatly admires and whose government is, he says, “very respectful” towards the Church (other views abound); shied away from saying anything more about Nicaragua where the Ortegas are basically outlawing Catholicism and a bishop has been sentenced to 26 years in jail; and denounced worried Catholics, especially American Catholics, for their criticism of—well—many things, but especially “politicizing” the upcoming Synod on Synodality, and embracing rigid and empty “ideologies” instead of following the living doctrine of the Faith."

The extraordinary insensitivity and naïvety of these remarks leave one cold. The Church, struggling for relevance in an increasingly secular world, has a leader who's comprehension doesn't run to a proper reading of Wikipedia.

Interesting that Royal chooses an image of the Emperor's New Clothes to illustrate his article, the same analogy used by Fr Altman in his video earlier.

On the plane on the way back, Pope Francis renewed his attacks on American Catholics, vomiting a kind of incoherent word salad:

"Always, when one wants to detach from the path of communion in the Church, what always pulls it apart is ideology. And they accuse the Church of this or that, but they never make an accusation of what is true: (it is made up of) sinners. They never speak of sin. . . .They defend a “doctrine”, a doctrine like distilled water that has no taste and is not true Catholic doctrine, that is, in the Creed. And that very often scandalizes. How scandalous is the idea that God became flesh, that God became Man, that Our Lady kept her virginity? This scandalizes."

With the best will in the world, who can say what he is on about here? Is he seriously suggesting traditional Catholics don’t invoke the Creed, Incarnation, Blessed Virgin, a Church of sinners, or...what?

Bumbling, baffling and frankly boring. Constantly attacking the faithful he is supposed to feed and guide. All his talk of accompaniment and dialogue exposed as the hollowest rhetoric, he doesn't mean it or believe it, he just uses it to facilitate an open forum for anti-Catholic ideas to be smuggled into the Church. To give a space for abusers and criminals to operate with impunity.

As Phil Lawler puts it in Catholic Culture:

"Anyone who loves the Catholic Church must be concerned about a Pontiff who manages to offend so many different groups of people in the course of one week by a series of ill-considered statements."

The problems with the Franciscan papacy go much deeper than just awkward or offensive statements. For ten years now Pope Francis has been causing terrible confusion regarding faith and morals amongst Christians - not just Catholics: Marcus Walker is a very highly respected Anglican:

Pope Francis recruits more and more ideological and progressive Churchmen to high office, men who aren't worried about speaking out against Church teaching.

There have long been rumours about the climate of fear in the Vatican. And now he is directly & openly targeting faithful clergy while openly promoting men who are at odds with the Church, as WPI makes clear in its reports:

So much for accompaniment, walking together, parresia and all that rubbish, if you ever believed it. It is one way, Bergoglio's way, and he will stand no opposition.

As Damian Thompson puts it, he is a man driven by what he hates not what he wants to create. But one more part of the puzzle is that some of the anger directed at the USA may be financially driven. There are cuts being pushed through to a  lot of Vatican funding. The USA are historically huge contributors to Rome and the Pope has made them very personal enemies. With funding from the USA drying up, Pope Francis has cut a deal with China, but is the China strategy paying off? I doubt it (in any regard) and perhaps this is adding to the pain the Pope feels and is aiming at America at the moment?

Anyway I will leave you with this excellent analysis from Damian Thompson: