Curial Address - Pope Wants More Chaos!

Sandro Magister has some very interesting news from Rome. On the morning of Friday December 13, the fiftieth anniversary of the first Mass of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Pope said Mass in the Vatican chapel of Santa Marta with all the cardinals currently residing in Rome. Magister explains that this was the idea of Cardinal Angelo Sodano, in his capacity as dean of the college of cardinals.

Apparently Francis had initially rejected the idea but Sodano had not given up, and thanks to a second effort by college sub-dean Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, he was finally able to convince the Pope to hold the Mass. Apparently Sodano mentioned the Pope's resistance in his letter of invitation to the cardinals.

Sodano was widely considered to be one of the most corrupt elements in the Roman curia. He was THE McCarrick enabler hidden in plain sight. Apart from enabling McCarrick Sodano enabled and promoted every low life from Marcinkus and Maciel to the present crop of filth.

Magister states that the Mass took place in absolute silence on both sides. The pope did not deliver a homily and did not say a single word either before or after the liturgy. Even Sodano was unable to read the address of good wishes he had prepared, in the name of the entire college of cardinals and after the Mass Francis quickly greeted the cardinals one by one and left.

In the afternoon, both “L’Osservatore Romano” and “Vatican News” published the message of good wishes from Cardinal Sodano. But without covering the news or providing a single image of the Mass celebrated with the pope.

This was because they had received a direct order from the pontiff: no news and no photos.

Magister notes that the cardinals who had come to Santa Marta were very much struck by the pope's coldness towards them which appeared to be completely without motive or reason.

Now, in the speech he gives every year to the Vatican curia before Christmas, Pope Francis has previously come out swinging at his audience.

Last year he went after the the Judases “who hide behind good intentions to stab their brothers and sow weeds.”

Two years ago he had pilloried the “trusted traitors” who “let themselves be corrupted by ambition or vainglory and, when they are gently removed, falsely declare themselves martyrs of the system, of the ‘uninformed pope,’ of the ‘old guard,’ … instead of reciting the ‘mea culpa’.”

This year was no different. The Pope's Christmas present to the curia is criticism and abuse, Some highlights:

NOT LIKE "THE LEOPARD"

We find ourselves living at a time when change is no longer linear, but epochal. […] Often we approach change as if were a matter of simply putting on new clothes, but remaining exactly as we were before. I think of the enigmatic expression found in a famous Italian novel: “If we want everything to stay the same, then everything has to change” ("The Leopard" by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa).

NEW PROCESSES, NEW PARADIGMS

We need to initiate processes and not just occupy spaces: […] We must not focus on occupying the spaces where power is exercised, but rather on starting long-run historical processes. […] We need other “maps,” other paradigms, which can help us reposition our ways of thinking and our attitudes. Brothers and sisters, Christendom no longer exists!

INCORPORATING COMMUNICATION

The Dicastery for Communication has been entrusted with the responsibility of unifying in a new institution the nine bodies that, in various ways and with different tasks, had previously dealt with communications. These were the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, the Holy See Press Office, the Vatican Press, the Vatican Publishing House, L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Centre, the Vatican Internet Service and the Photographic Service. […] All this entails not only a change of culture but also an institutional and personal conversion, in order to pass from operating in self-contained units – which in the best cases had a certain degree of coordination – to working in synergy, in an intrinsically interconnected way.

RIGIDITY, SYNONYM FOR HATRED AND IMBALANCE

There is always the temptation to fall back on the past (also by employing new formulations), because it is more reassuring, familiar, and, to be sure, less conflictual. […] Here, there is a need to be wary of the temptation to rigidity. A rigidity born of the fear of change, which ends up erecting fences and obstacles on the terrain of the common good, turning it into a minefield of incomprehension and hatred. Let us always remember that behind every form of rigidity lies some kind of imbalance. Rigidity and imbalance feed one another in a vicious circle.

CHURCH BEHIND BY TWO HUNDRED YEARS

Cardinal Martini, in his last interview, a few days before his death, said something that should make us think: “The Church is two hundred years behind the times. Why is she not shaken up? Are we afraid? Fear, instead of courage?”

Pope Francis stated in his address that Evangelii Gaudium "even today continues to be the most important pastoral document since the Council [Vatican II]". This appears to be a Freudian slip however

This appears to have been a Freudian slip from Pope Francis, the text states Evangelii nuntiandi “even today conitues to be the most important pastoral document since the Council”, but in the video the Pope clearly says Evangelii Gaudium https://t.co/uGhedEHW3T pic.twitter.com/JFeLF1lxOM

— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) December 21, 2019

This speech has been widely interpreted as Francis stepping up a gear in his agenda of change for the Church. Pope Francis has mentioned rigid priests a couple of times. Yet he is allowing the SSPX ordain Bishops next year. What is his direction? SSPX are pretty rigid, yet Pope Francis seems fine supporting them. He constantly speaks out of both sides of his mouth!

#PopeFrancis steps up the pace of reforms with Christmas address to the Roman Curia

Quotes Cardinal Martini who said the Church is 200 years behind the times and St John Henry Newman: “to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often” https://t.co/NKGXr4kGpk

— Christopher Lamb (@ctrlamb) December 21, 2019

The trouble is, because he is so ambiguous and at odds with Catholic teaching, no one is very sure what sort of change he wants to implement. The result? Implement whatever you like, as long as it's not what the Church has taught for 2,000 years!!

A good example would be his words on Friday to students at a Roman high School:

On Friday, Pope Francis visited a High School in Rome and told the students: “To be consistent in your faith you cannot say to Jewish or Muslim kids ‘come and be converted’. This coherence will make you mature. We are not in the time of the crusades” https://t.co/U8e26CXKay

— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) December 21, 2019

How on earth are we supposed to interpret this???? The Pope is certainly appears to believe that Christians should try to convince people of the evils of climate change and the benefits of immigration but he seems dead against us trying to convince people of the truth of Christianity. This seems at fundamental odds with his office to me!

Certainly some high ranking clergy seem totally at at loss with the Pope's direction and are increasingly losing their fear of speaking out directly:

+Viganò: “From the most exalted throne, the Supreme Pontiff proceeds to dismantle the See of Peter, using & abusing its supreme authority, not to confess but to deny; not to confirm but to mislead; not to unite but to divide; not to build but to demolish” https://t.co/TpA4Vtk9ON

— Edward Pentin (@EdwardPentin) December 20, 2019

Probably +Viganò’s strongest words since his testimony, but is he being too harsh or just accurate? Is he a kind of Savonarola of our time, hitting on truths other bishops are too afraid to say, or is he way out of line?

— Edward Pentin (@EdwardPentin) December 20, 2019

The Martini quote along with the Pope's misuse of St John Henry Cardinal Newman's line often quoted by progressives "to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often" are probably the most revealing element of the Pope's speech and also the most frustrating. Frustrating because it is a regular thing with this pope to quote something out of context (even Jesus!). Here he picks up a regularly misused Newman quote which, when read in context, reveals far more important truths about his journey from Anglicanism to Catholicism and his acceptance of the Catholic teaching regarding the way deeper truths of revealed doctrine become clearer over time and with careful and informed study. The quote in full reads thus:

"It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become wore vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often."
From An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter One, Section I.7

Far from being an advocate of change, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman was on a journey to the source of revealed truth and the keeper of the deposit of faith. In his Sermon 5. Love of Relations and Friends he wrote:

The Saints of God continue in one way, while the fashions of the world change; and a faithful indestructible friendship may thus be a test of the parties, so loving each other, having the love of God seated deep in their hearts. Not an infallible test certainly; for they may have dispositions remarkably the same, or some engrossing object of this world, literary or other; they may be removed from the temptation to change, or they may have a natural sobriety of temper, which remains contented wherever it finds itself. However, under certain circumstances, it is a lively token of the {60} presence of divine grace in them; and it is always a sort of symbol of it, for there is at first sight something of the nature of virtue in the very notion of constancy, dislike of change being not only the characteristic of a virtuous mind, but in some sense a virtue itself.

Anyone who has studied a bit of Newman instantly recognises the pope's misuse of his words and that deeply offends me. It is a misappropriation in order to try to lend weight to an agenda and a spurious intellectual direction, which the Saint would be horrified with. How dare he!

I'll end with the words of GK Chesterton who said

"the Church does not exist to change with the world; she exists to change the world."