The fact that the New York Times even ran the following piece at all is surely an indicator that even they are seeing the Bergoglio
giga-balloon deflating. Matthew Schmitz is literary editor of FIRST THINGS... I do take issue with the tense of the title. JMB continues
to be pope, and things can theoretically change for the better in this papacy (though perhaps not in anyone's wildest dreams, least of all of
orthodox Catholics), but the tense should be present progressive, "Is Pope Francis failing?", by the standards of the media, that is,
which is that of 'the world'. But by the standards of the Church, as late as Vatican II, the pope is supposed to be "the perpetual and visible
source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful", who, in "preaching the Gospel of
God to all men...preserves the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles...and confirms his brethren in the faith",
he fails each of the criteria mentioned.
Has Pope Francis failed?
By MATTHEW SCHMITZ
SEPT. 28, 2016
When Pope Francis ascended to the chair of St. Peter in March 2013, the world looked on in wonder. Here at last was a pope in line with the times, a man who preferred spontaneous gestures to ritual forms. Francis paid his own hotel bill and eschewed the red shoes. Rather than move into the grand papal apartments, he settled in the cozy guesthouse for visitors to the Vatican. He also set a new non-dogmatic tone with statements like “Who am I to judge?”
[That is not non-dogmatic. It is worse than dogmatic - it is ideological, very contemporary and secular.]
Observers predicted that the new pope’s warmth, humility and charisma would prompt a “Francis effect” — bringing disaffected Catholics back to a church that would no longer seem so forbidding and cold. Three years into his papacy, the predictions continue. Last winter, Austen Ivereigh, the author of an excellent biography of Pope Francis, wrote that the pope’s softer stance on communion for the divorced and remarried “could trigger a return to parishes on a large scale.” In its early days, Francis’s Jesuit order labored to bring Protestants back into the fold of the church. Could Francis do the same for Catholics tired of headlines about child abuse and culture wars?
In a certain sense, things have changed. Perceptions of the papacy, or at least of the pope, have improved. Francis is far more popular than his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.
Sixty-three percent of American Catholics approve of him, while only 43 percent approved of Benedict at the height of his popularity, according to a 2015 New York Times and CBS News poll. [How can a 2015 poll be cited to show Benedict XVI's approval rating 'at the height of his popularity'? It is distressing when someone like Schmitz simply regurgitates data like this without examining it! At the height of his popularity in the USA, which was after his apostolic visit in 2008,a Pew survey gave him an 82% approval rating.]
Francis has also placed a great emphasis on reaching out to disaffected Catholics. [How exactly has he done that? Other than hoping to ride on his phenomenal popularity and its putatively positive - but so far unregistered, except perhaps negatively - 'Bergoglio effect', has he had any specific program at all to do that like the 'Catholics Come Home' initiative in the USA, which predated him???]
But are Catholics actually coming back? In the United States, at least, it hasn’t happened. New survey findings from Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate suggest that
there has been no Francis effect — at least, no positive one. In 2008, 23 percent of American Catholics attended Mass each week. Eight years later, weekly Mass attendance has held steady or marginally declined, at 22 percent.
Of course, the United States is only one part of a global church. But the researchers at Georgetown found that
certain types of religious observance are weaker now among young Catholics than they were under Benedict. In 2008, 50 percent of millennials reported receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday, and 46 percent said they made some sacrifice beyond abstaining from meat on Fridays. This year, only 41 percent reported receiving ashes and only 36 percent said they made an extra sacrifice, according to CARA.
In spite of Francis’s personal popularity, young people seem to be drifting away from the faith.
Why hasn’t the pope’s popularity reinvigorated the church? Perhaps it is too soon to judge. We probably won’t have a full measure of any Francis effect until the church is run by bishops appointed by Francis and priests who adopt his pastoral approach. This will take years or decades.
[My God!, and that is a serious cry to the Lord, not merely an expression, save your Church from the unimaginably disastrous cumulative Bergoglio effect by then - which would be a de facto replacement of the one true Church of Christ with the church of Bergoglio.]
Yet something more fundamental may stand in the way of a Francis effect. Francis is a Jesuit, and like many members of Catholic religious orders, he tends to view the institutional church, with its parishes and dioceses and settled ways, as an obstacle to reform.
- He describes parish priests as “little monsters” who “throw stones” at poor sinners.
- He has given curial officials a diagnosis of “spiritual Alzheimer’s.”
- He scolds pro-life activists for their “obsession” with abortion. - He has said that Catholics who place an emphasis on attending Mass, frequenting confession, and saying traditional prayers are “Pelagians” — people who believe, heretically, that they can be saved by their own works.
Such denunciations demoralize faithful Catholics without giving the disaffected any reason to return. Why join a church whose priests are little monsters and whose members like to throw stones? When the pope himself stresses internal spiritual states over ritual observance, there is little reason to line up for confession or wake up for Mass.
Even Francis's most ardent fans worry that his agenda is overdue. When he was elected, Francis promised a cleanup of the Vatican’s corrupt finances. Three years on, he has started to retreat in the face of opposition, giving up an outside audit and taking powers away from his handpicked point man.
Francis has also shied away from big changes on doctrinal matters. Instead of explicitly endorsing communion for the divorced and remarried couples, he has quietly urged them on with a wink and a nod.
Francis has built his popularity at the expense of the church he leads. Those who wish to see a stronger church may have to wait for a different kind of pope. Instead of trying to soften the church’s teaching, such a man would need to speak of the way hard disciplines can lead to freedom. [That was exactly the pope we had before this one!]
Confronting a hostile age with the strange claims of Catholic faith may not be popular, but over time it may prove more effective. Even Christ was met with the jeers of the crowd.
Carl Olson picks up from Schmitz:
'Francis has built his popularity
at the expense of the church he leads'
by Carl Olson
Editor
September 28, 2016
The September 28th edition of
The New York Times contains an op-ed by Matthew Schmitz, literary editor of
First Things, which poses the question "Has Pope Francis Failed?" — and then makes a succinct and pointed argument for a fairly resounding "Yes." Schmitz's focus is on the famous but increasingly hazy "Francis effect":
Observers predicted that the new pope’s warmth, humility and charisma would prompt a “Francis effect” — bringing disaffected Catholics back to a church that would no longer seem so forbidding and cold. Three years into his papacy, the predictions continue. Last winter, Austen Ivereigh, the author of an excellent biography of Pope Francis, wrote that the pope’s softer stance on communion for the divorced and remarried “could trigger a return to parishes on a large scale.” In its early days, Francis’ Jesuit order labored to bring Protestants back into the fold of the church. Could Francis do the same for Catholics tired of headlines about child abuse and culture wars?
Schmitz says that perceptions "of the papacy, or at least of the pope, have improved." Francis is, here in the U.S., more popular than his his predecessor: "Sixty-three percent of American Catholics approve of him, while only 43 percent approved of Benedict at the height of his popularity, according to a 2015 New York Times and CBS News poll. Francis has also placed a great emphasis on reaching out to disaffected Catholics."
But, Schmitz asks, "are Catholics actually coming back?" His negative answer to that question is based on the results of a recent survey from Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate suggesting "there has been no Francis effect — at least, no positive one. In 2008, 23 percent of American Catholics attended Mass each week. Eight years later, weekly Mass attendance has held steady or marginally declined, at 22 percent."
In addition, religious observance among younger Catholics has taken a notable turn for the worse:
In 2008, 50 percent of millennials reported receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday, and 46 percent said they made some sacrifice beyond abstaining from meat on Fridays. This year, only 41 percent reported receiving ashes and only 36 percent said they made an extra sacrifice, according to CARA. In spite of Francis’ personal popularity, young people seem to be drifting away from the faith.
We can also note that the attendance numbers for papal events in Rome have not been on the rise, with a precipitous drop from 2014 to 2015 in the number of people at general audiences, Angelus, and other events. Numbers, of course, only tell part of the story, and they are not, ultimately, the primary indicator of faithfulness, fidelity, and witness. But the second part of Schmitz's essay is not about numbers, but about the specific tone, approach, and vision of Francis for the Church:
Francis is a Jesuit, and like many members of Catholic religious orders, he tends to view the institutional church, with its parishes and dioceses and settled ways, as an obstacle to reform. He describes parish priests as “little monsters” who “throw stones” at poor sinners. He has given curial officials a diagnosis of “spiritual Alzheimer’s.” He scolds pro-life activists for their “obsession” with abortion. He has said that Catholics who place an emphasis on attending Mass, frequenting confession, and saying traditional prayers are “Pelagians” — people who believe, heretically, that they can be saved by their own works.
Schmitz can only touch on some of these matters in passing, but t
hose of us who have been following this papacy closely from the start know how the past three years have witnessed a steady stream of confusion, hyperbole, "ambiguities, inconsistencies, mixed messages, imprecisions, thinly veiled insults" — not to mention the odd use and misuse of language in the service of more confusion.
"Such denunciations," Schmitz insists, "demoralize faithful Catholics without giving the disaffected any reason to return." I agree. And
reading some of the comments left at Schmitz's op-ed only reinforces the overall impression that Francis is mostly liked and lauded by those who see his pontificate as the start of a revolution overthrowing the usual litany of criticisms tossed at the Church: it is too patriarchal, rigid, narrow-minded, moralistic, judgmental, bigoted, homophobic, Islamophobic, etc., etc.
Yes, there are Catholics who are upset and even angry at Francis, but the overwhelming response, in my experience, is simply, "What is he doing? And why?"
These are legitimate and good questions. As veteran Vatican journalist John Allen, Jr., mused in a recent Crux feature:
Towards the end of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’s document on the family, the pontiff writes that when priests have to make judgments in concrete cases such as pastoral care of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, they are to do so “according to the teaching of the Church and the guidelines of the bishop.” One wonders if he knew at the time just what a conflicting welter of responses that injunction would elicit.
As Allen correctly notes, since the Apostolic Exhortation was released this past spring, "various bishops and groups of bishops around the world have issued guidelines for its implementation, and surveying the landscape, it’s abundantly clear they’re not all saying the same thing."
Put simply: if Francis knew that confusion would result, then we have to wonder at his motives, especially in light of his scathing address at the end of the 2015 Synod. After all, the papacy is supposed to be a clear sign and source of unity, even if the matters addressed are sometimes complex and difficult. And if he didn't suspect that his 55,000 word document would elicit consternation and wildly differing interpretations, then we have to wonder about his foresightedness and prudence. [But it is all by Bergoglian design! What pope mindful of his task to promote and preserve unity in the Church would urge the faithful to 'Haga lio!', as he has done on many occasions? The answer is: A pope who continually makes a mess himself 1) by deliberately causing confusion about Church teaching and 2) by directly insulting Catholics who do not think and behave as he wants members of the church of Bergoglio should behave, while making nice with everyone else, including Islamist terrorists who he refuses to name as such.]
No Catholic should ever be surprised that there is discord and fighting within the Church, but
they should be bothered when a pope is so often at the middle of constant conflict, and when that conflict is so often originating in his own perplexing words and actions. Put another way, this is not like dissenting Catholics raging against John Paul II's
Veritatis Splendor, which was quite clear in its denunciation of flawed understandings of moral doctrine; rather, it is
the unease and bewilderment of Catholics who know or suspect that accomodation, compromise, and sentimentality disguised as "pastoral" kindness are not good for the Church or the world. As I wrote earlier this month:
... I am increasingly convinced that this papacy, for all of its strengths, weaknesses, and oddities, could well be known, down the road, as the Papacy of Sentimentality. It surely is not a papacy adhering to theological rigor or consistency.
It wasn't long ago that Francis made news for telling some Polish Jesuits that "in life not all is black on white or white on black. No! The shades of grey prevail in life." But he is quite selective (and, I think, sentimental) in that regard.
When it comes to marriage, sexuality, and family, there are apparently numerous shades of grey and very little that is clearly black and white. Thus, references to "sin" are avoided. But when it comes to the environment and global warming, which Francis has strong emotions about, there appears to be plenty of black and white, and almost no grey at all.
"Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality," warned Benedict XVI, "Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way." Mercy is not something that can be redefined in an arbitrary way, however good or appealing the sentiment involved.
Meanwhile, back to Schmitz, who concludes:
Francis has built his popularity at the expense of the church he leads. Those who wish to see a stronger church may have to wait for a different kind of pope. Instead of trying to soften the church’s teaching, such a man would need to speak of the way hard disciplines can lead to freedom. Confronting a hostile age with the strange claims of Catholic faith may not be popular, but over time it may prove more effective. Even Christ was met with the jeers of the crowd.
Those are strong words.
Is Francis trying to soften Church teaching? Personally, I see no way around that conclusion. After all, if Francis never meant to change or soften Church teaching, why the constant reliance on Cardinal Kasper and other Germans, the two Synods, the regular confusion, the jostling and posturing, the endless "gestures", the angry address at the conclusion of the 2015 Synod, the often tortured and purposeful ambiguity of chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, and so forth?
[I don't know how anyone can still doubt that Jorge Bergoglio wants his church to be the church of Nice and Easy! Catholic-lite, if you will, but that is to demean the adjective 'Catholic'. No, it's not Catholic-lite, but Bergoglio-lite and ever lightening, one fears.]
Did Saint John Paul II, in numerous addresses and major documents, not give the Church enough to ponder and unpack about the meaning of marriage, sexuality, family, the feminine genius, and so many related matters? Has human nature changed so much in the past decade? Has Church teaching become outdated or "out of touch" in a matter of a few years? [Yes, Bergoglio's synodal henchman, Cardinal Baldisseri, said exactly that of Familiaris consortio, a 1981 document. It seems clear that to JMB and his Bergoglians [as in 'Luther and his Lutherans' (i.e., ex-Catholics)], anything the Church taught and practised before March 13, 2013, is outdated and out of touch.]
It is unfortunate — indeed, deeply painful — to see the confusion, turmoil, and frustration so often generated by the Barque of Peter, which should instead be providing solace, comfort, shelter, and clarity amid the dark waves of an increasingly antagonistic and volatile world.
The 'Francis Effect' discussed
in the New York Times
by Kenneth Wolfe
Sept. 28, 2016
Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the papacy of Pope Francis is his unification of traditional Catholics and conservative Catholics.
What started as an uncivil war in March 2013 -- when traditional Catholic sources such as Rorate (which was intimately familiar with Cardinal Bergoglio's work in Argentina) predicted a massive shift to the left, only to be harshly criticized by many Catholic conservatives who blindly defended Bergoglio as one who would continue the incremental restoration of Pope Benedict XVI -- has grown to a point where both camps are now singing from the same Liber.
[But there are still quite a few 'normalists' (like Jeff Mirus) who had apparently finally opened their minds to this pope's insanities but who quickly revert to their faith in the rightness of Bergoglio despite having recognized the manifold faults of AL, which is simply - especially in its Chapter 8 - a compendium of the worst Bergoglian offenses against Catholic doctrine and practice.]
We have written of the 'Francis Effect' a few times, using data such as Pew Research Center's statistics on Mass attendance...Fast-forward to 2016.
Today's
New York Times (yes, that is correct) provides an update on the 'Francis Effect' by an editor of
First Things (yes, that is correct). Entitled "Has Pope Francis Failed?," the op-ed by Matthew Schmitz in today's print edition, also online, is worth a read.
For some reason, this poster - created at the time SP went into effect - was used to illustrate the Rorate caeli item. A general reminder, perhaps,
that one sure way to confirm, strengthen and inflame our faith is to go to Mass as often as we can, the traditional Mass, if possible, where we can do as Pope St. Pius X advised:
Don't pray at Holy Mass - pray the Holy Mass, the highest prayer that exists... You must pray with the priest the holy words said to him in the Name of Christ, and which Christ says through him. You have to associate your heart with the holy feelings that are contained in these words and in this manner, you ought to follow all that happens on the Altar. When acting in this way, you have prayed Holy Mass.
I must add Mundabor's commentary to the NYT Op-Ed piece. He questions Matthew Schmitz's Catholicism because of a number of statements and assumptions Schmitz makes - which are par for the course in today's journalism, even by Catholic journalists for whom their 'duty' to media always seems to override their Catholicism (whereas it is objective and journalistically mandatory to show both sides of any issue). But Mundabor has other worthwhile insights...
Even NYT writers start seeing
that Francis has failed
Sept. 29, 2016
[Great vignette! Short, sweet, says much!]
When was the last time you heard about the “Francis effect”? Yep, and you now know why: even the secular press knows it did not work.
The article is, as you would expect by a libtard publication like the NYT – the author works for “First Things”, though; more about this later – entirely centered around secular issues. In line with the forma mentis of your average IYI (“Intellectual Yet Idiot”) reader, the Church is seen like a party, or a product, or a firm: where an “innovator” who seems “in line with the times” steps in and “revitalises” the ailing organisation. And this leader does such wonderful things as living in a luxury hotel, wearing black shoes, shooting selfies, and other such like stupid things very much liked by a stupid age.
The article, showing the great ignorance of this author in matters of Catholicism, (but we are talking of Libtards here) even absurdly criticises the Pope because "Francis has also shied away from big changes on doctrinal matters. Instead of explicitly endorsing communion for the divorced and remarried couples, he has quietly urged them on with a wink and a nod".
The secular mind sees the secular Pope at work; it sees him trying to make of the Church something similar to the Democratic Party; it sees, also, that he is failing miserably.
The secular mind cannot understand the Church more than the devil can like holy water. They just do not get that the Church – as an organisation – prospers when she opposes the world, and withers when she cozies up with it.
If they knew this simple truth, they would never invent strange and absurd expressions like the “Francis effect” and mean that it would be good for the Church as an organisation.
The Catholic mind understands the folly of all this. But hey, they are “homophobic”, so they don’t count.
As the author points out, very rightly, Francis has failed miserably even in the other – and originally, we were told, the most important – reason for his appointment: the reorganisation of the inefficient, corrupt Vatican apparatus. We knew that already, because we know that South American dictators tend to be extremely stupid wreckers of everything they touch. But it’ s nice to see that some libtard notices that, too.
However, the obviously Catholicism-free author must have heard, at some point, something about Catholicism at
First Things, because he seems to have a very confused idea of how the Church works. Examining the cause of the continuing decomposition of the Church in the US, he writes something that has always been a mainstay of this little effort:
"Francis has built his popularity at the expense of the church he leads."
The cult of man damages the Church of God. Francis, in his vanity and folly, presents himself as the good guy in opposition to the bad guys of the sixty generations before his. It can work for him, for a while, until people understand what a phony the man is. But it will never be any good for the Church. This is now apparent, and the “Francis effect” thingy has gone the way of “reading Francis through Benedict”.
The author, who is so blind that he sees something positive in Francis “paying his own hotel bill” and “eschewing the red shoes”, still has some ideas left of what Catholicism is:
Those who wish to see a stronger church may have to wait for a different kind of pope. Instead of trying to soften the church’s teaching, such a man would need to speak of the way hard disciplines can lead to freedom. Confronting a hostile age with the strange claims of Catholic faith may not be popular, but over time it may prove more effective. Even Christ was met with the jeers of the crowd.
So, is this author Catholic after all, and just too servile to the NYT to write like one? I don’t know, and I am not interested to know. What interests me here is that even the entirely secular outlook of this article must see Francis’s dismal failure.
The Church is the enemy of the world. Francis is the friend of the world. Francis is the enemy of the Church.
And he has failed. Even libtards see it now.
[But there are two levels of failure here: this pope obviously has failed the Church. But the libtards don't see it that way. They cheer that he has failed the Church by rendering her doctrine and discipline fluid in order to conform with the world. But they see that his secular agenda - despite the priority he gives it over what ought to be his only agenda, his spiritual mission as pope - is not prospering beyond slogans and headline-generating platitudes, for the simple reason that all earthly utopias are bound to be unachievable.('Utopia' means 'no place'.) So in that sense, they find him failing - failing to parlay his popularity and his papal authority into concrete measures that will even begin to end hunger, poverty and war, or cause all intending immigrants to be miraculously resettled in host countries where they will be getting more perks than the disadvantaged citizens of those countries themselves.]
Even Libtards see it now.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/09/2016 22:18]