The National Catholic (sic) Reporter (NCR) has an article written by one Eugene Cullen Kennedy entitled, "Pope Francis is guilty of being a Christian." Anyone familiar with NCR knows that its the apex of Modernism and the zenith of cheerleading for the Vatican II sect. Their definition of "Christian" is tenuous at best. Note well, that Modernists hate using the word "Catholic" and will substitute "Christian" at every opportunity as their sign of reverence to the god of ecumenism. So why, you may ask, is Frankie "guilty of being a Christian?" The answer should be obvious: Traditionalists reject him and his errors! The article will be reproduced below with my comments in red.
I never did quite believe that the "age of revelation" ended with the death of the last surviving apostle. We experience revelations every day, sometimes when it is both so great and yet so utterly human that we feel caught up in the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the great and engulfing mystery of everyday faith.
The only "fearful and fascinating mystery" is how someone can write this in a paper containing the word "Catholic" in its title. CONDEMNED:Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.( Pope St. Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, 1907).
That occurred on 9/11 when, for the first time on a large scale, we learned what people do when they know they are going to die. They do not wail or rend their garments, nor do they recite the creed or sign hurriedly on to any specific teaching they were to hold onto under pain of mortal sin that stamps your visa for eternal punishment.
Nor do those suddenly facing death experience "celestial flights" or other out-of-body phenomena that are sold as indulgences in the great evangelical marketplace, as they once were in St. Peter's Square. Those confronted by imminent death find their minds cleared, as the temple once was by Jesus, of such religious trivia.
And the author knows this---how? Living in New York and having a friend from Church (a NYC Fireman) die on 9/11, as well as knowing other victims and survivors personally, I am unaware of any research, study or first hand information that would support Kennedy's contention that no one held to specific religious doctrines in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Notice too, how he compares the dogmas of the Faith to "trivia" such as the statistics of a person's favorite football team.
9/11 revealed that those about to die do not seem afraid or plead for forgiveness for their sins, if they think about them at all. They all have one thing in mind -- those they love -- and they all do the same thing: They call them up -- spouses, family or friends -- to tell them they love them. This is so obviously the first thing in their lives that they do not think at all about the last things -- death, judgment, heaven or hell -- ballyhooed by generations of preachers as subjects we will be quizzed on in the SATs we must pass before the Last Judgment.
Again, Kennedy assumes as facts unproven assertions. I know one survivor of 9/11 who clearly and continuously had God in mind and prayed for help and forgiveness even as she thought of her son. Let's all pray for the grace of Final Perseverance and the grace of the Last Rites (along with perfect contrition) before we depart this life.
Pope Francis seems to understand all this: He speaks of Christian faith not as a bound volume of dogma but as a "love story"; he rides the bus after the conclave at which he was elected and pays his hotel bill, as the saying so well expresses it, "like any ordinary person."
That Pope Francis understands that the mystery of faith has an ordinary face perplexes some Catholics and, according to reports, moves others to complain about him. Francis irritates them by speaking to the world rather than just to the church as his predecessors did, and those who miss Benedict XVI "desperately," as one of them put it, feel challenged by Francis to view the world in the direct way that he does.
When Ratzinger looks orthodox in comparison to Frankie, what irritates anyone with an iota of Catholicism left, is his utter contempt for the One True Church.
In a Washington Post article, "Conservative Catholics Question Pope Francis's Approach," writers Michelle Boorstein and Elizabeth Tenety explore some of the papal discontents of traditionalist Catholics. Their concern began when the new pope "told non-Catholic and atheist journalists he would bless them silently out of respect." They were also upset when "he eschewed Vatican practice and included women in a foot-washing ceremony."
"traditionalist (sic) Catholics" are not here meant as Sedevacantists who are the True Catholics, but anyone holding some Catholic sensibilities. To "respect" the denial of God Himself is blasphemous.
They have also been alarmed by his urging Catholics not to be obsessed with just a few issues, saying they should see these teachings, including those on certain sexual matters, "in context"; that is, in relationship to the Gospel basics. You could hear their resonations in Francis' telling journalists on the flight home from Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day that it was not his role to judge gays "if they accept the Lord and have good will."
"Behind the growing skepticism," the article continues, "is the fear in some quarters that Francis's all-embracing style and spontaneous speech ... are undoing decades of church efforts to speak clearly on Catholic teachings."
Indeed, the True Church always spoke clearly. It was the heresy ushered in at Vatican II that caused any "effort" in trying to make the false seem to be True.
Family counselor and radio adviser Gregory Popcak is from Ohio, but he might as well come from New Orleans because of the betrayed lover feeling with which he sings the traditionalist blues. He told the Washington Post he was sent into deep prayer "after several clients used Francis's public words to push back on Popcak when he explained church teachings on sex and love." Did he teach, as do traditionalists who envision the path to salvation as a tightrope walk across the Grand Canyon on a windy day, that failure to renounce the sexual feelings that enter uninvited into people's imaginations are always a mortal sin when in reality, they are homely evidence of our being ordinary, garden-variety humans?
The "Traditionalist blues" lament the departure of Catholicism from our once holy churches. This beats singing "Michael Row The Boat Ashore" while the Vatican II ship is sinking into the abyss. Christ told us that the road to Heaven is "narrow" and many travel the wide path to Hell. (See St. Matthew 7: 13-14). Thoughts that enter "uninvited" are NOT sinful unless and until willfully entertained. "But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (St. Matthew 5:28).
At first, Popcak reacted to Francis by feeling "frustrated, then ashamed," the Post says, but in a separate online essay, he identified himself in the story of the prodigal son as the "good kid who stayed behind, did everything his father told him to do" while "people who left the Church, who hated the Church ... were suddenly realizing that God loved them, that the Church welcomed them, and all I could do is feel bitter about it."
Let's see if we have this straight. Despite Jesus' telling his followers to welcome the lost sheep whose return would bring more joy in heaven than the 99 that did not go astray, Popcak and those for whom he speaks are irritated by a shepherd whose voice is heard and heeded by Catholics who, sometimes feeling fleeced rather than found by other pastors, slipped out of the sheepfold. Francis displeases the Popcak conservative by being the good shepherd whose message of acceptance and welcome would go unheard if he spoke only to those inside the church and not to the world at large.
Popcak is no Traditionalist. He should see that Frankie is a fraud. There's nothing wrong with inviting those outside the fold back in, BUT it must be on Christ's terms not their own. Homosexual? Who am I to judge? Go for it! Abortion? Don't worry! We "obsess" over millions of murdered children. Atheists can go to Heaven too, so don't worry about what you believe or what you do as long as YOU think it's OK. "Have your cake and eat it too" is the motto of Frankie the Fraud, inviting a world of sinners to remain in sin yet have "participation" in Frankenchurch--the Vatican II monster of ecumenism gone wild.
In short, traditionalists who prefer leaders who season their public utterances with a dash of masochism are dismayed to find that Pope Francis is a Christian who sees a suffering world spread out beyond St. Peter's Square and who understands the church not as an exclusive gated community of self-satisfied believers but as a field hospital that does not ask for a believer's ID card but takes in and cares for all those wounded by life.
Traditionalists claim that by such statements, Francis is undermining all the hard work his predecessors did to underline "Catholic identity" in a relativistic, secular world. But perhaps he is the first pope to which that outside world has given its attention for many decades. Perhaps that is why the European Parliament has invited Francis to address its members. The world, more suffering than sinning, turns toward Pope Francis as in a conversation people turn to the person who is making sense of things. Obedience, which that many traditionalists prefer so blind that you need a guide dog to follow it, comes from the Latin ob audire that means "to listen to." In the Scriptures, we read that the lost sheep recognize and respond to the voice of their shepherd. Something like that is occurring in the great world that hears Francis who disarms its nations, so to speak, because they find they do not have to raise their defenses against him. They want to hear what he has to say precisely because he is, as the traditionalists charge, guilty on all counts of being a Christian.
Once again, Frankie tells people what they want to hear, DON'T repent. Stay in sin, and "god" will love you as you are on your terms. Frankie is guilty of being an ecumenist not a "Christian." That appellation rightly belongs exclusively to the True followers of Christ--Traditionalist Catholics. The weight of the credible evidence is manifest to any juror that Jorge Begoglio is not guilty on the charge of being Catholic and acquitted of the charge of holding the office of pope.
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