Monday, March 18, AD 2024 9:36pm

PopeWatch: Bear Growls: Francis Fatigue

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Our Bruin friend at Saint Corbinian’s Bear is weary of Pope Francis:

 

So, woodland creatures and visitors. The Bear must confess that he is just tired of Pope Francis.

The Bear can’t even muster the creativity to deal with his ennui in some entertaining manner. Pope Francis doesn’t hold any mysteries anymore, not even dark ones. If tomorrow he announced that he were an alien, our reaction would be, “meh, can’t say I’m surprised,” and we’d go back to our Words With Friends game.

Francis has an uncanny way of telegraphing his intentions in the clear, while relying on their very outrageousness to protect him.  It was a colossal mistake to try to “read Francis through Benedict.”

Here’s the thing about Communists and prostitutes. If your explanation starts out “Well, he’s not exactly a Communist,” or “she’s not really a prostitute,” he is, and she is. So the Bear has not the least doubt that Pope Francis is a Communist of the pernicious Liberation Theology variety with a dash of Peronist confusion. His eyes are fixed firmly on the world, and we must make sure eyes are not fixed firmly on him, but on Jesus.

This has been a very spiritually damaging papacy. Somehow the Bear needs to place the Catholic religion front and center. Writing about the Francisphere every day has not been consistent with that.

Go here to read the comments.  PopeWatch has some sympathy for this point of view, but does not share it.  Valuable lessons can be gleaned from even the most negative of experiences and there are valuable lessons to be learned from careful and close scrutiny of this pontificate.

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Don L
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 5:44am

Valuable lessons indeed. One must deal with relearning many things about this faith handed down by the apostles in order to face Judgment some day.

This entire mess is but an opportunity given to us by a loving God to move closer to Him by seeking truth–no matter how discomforting we be.

Despair is not the answer—perseverance is!

Cthemfly25
Cthemfly25
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 6:41am

Bear, and for that matter all of us, may be weary, but the Pope is not weary of making us so.

Trish
Trish
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 7:51am

Couldn’t agree more.
I love my parish, my pastor and the congregation at my church. I will continue with my Catholic duties there until the Pope ruins it entirely for me. At which time I will be broken hearted at the loss.
Whatever his motives are, he is alienating those capitalist pigs who work hard for a paycheck, and use some of it to feed his coffers.
And he is pleasing the heck out of non-catholics who will no more become Catholic than they would give a cent to the church. Oh and he’s pleasing a whole load of Liberal Catholics.
Where is Jesus? We need him ever so much these days.
I

Patricia
Patricia
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 9:15am

Understandable. Staying in a God pleasing condition is vital to both us and Him. Nap, think about the comfort in the 23rd Psalm.
The following kind of explains what expectations leaders have for the led over time. Fatigue and resignation.
.
http://news.yahoo.com/justice-kennedy-acknowledges-gay-marriage-controversy-210817011.html

David Spaulding
David Spaulding
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 10:18am

I admit that His Holiness’ suggestions that he might step aside in a Benedict-like fashion, fill me with uncharitable hope.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 1:16pm

Bear speak truth. Ironically, Pope Francis has had a wonderfully clarifying and educational effect by his pure outrageousness, his catechetical incoherence, his climate change nonsense and most especially his visceral dislike of Traditional Catholics. He has caused me to seek out kindred souls on web sites such as American Catholic and St. Corbinian’s Bear.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 2:40pm

I am tired too- worn down. Almost. but it isn’t just the pope and it isn’t just The World- it’s the Church! It has been so infested and so misled and suffered so much loss. the 20th Century may have just been too much for us. My friend who loves to agitate me just sent me a snip from a post exalting Fr. Raymond Brown… one of the foggers of truth who helped lead us – so many seminaries and parish priests into these Badlands. I am sick and tired of them all. Timothy Radcliffe. Lack of dignity in the Mass. Campaign for Human Development. Catholics voted for Obama. New Age and/or Yoga sessions in the Church hall. Admonitions against praying the rosary together before Mass because it might offend someone.
Sick of them all. Catholic priests with rainbow colors on FB. Did I already say Dan Schutte?
Schutte.

The Bear
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 3:37pm

The Bear has a little poll running, because he was wondering how many others were suffering personally. He figured some would say they had been harmed spiritually, and about half the recipients admitted to that, far above what the Bear expected. Psychological harm was put in as an afterthought. The Bear is astonished at those results so far. So much so he was on the phone with a psychologist to set up an interview for an article. People are hurting. It shouldn’t be a surprise. They feel powerless and threatened as the center of their life is betrayed and abused. But the Bear has no doubt Pope Francis is a mental health hazard to that element of the Church that is — the Bear will just say it — the most Catholic. We are suffering from cognitive dissonance on a global scale and something’s got to give.

Foxfier
Admin
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 4:17pm

He figured some would say they had been harmed spiritually, and about half the recipients admitted to that, far above what the Bear expected.
That might be because you keep talking about it.
*
(I tried to re-write that a half dozen times so it doesn’t sound accusatory, and can’t. So I’m putting this in to tell you that it needs explanation, and ask you to please finish what I write before you’re upset. Thank you. 😀 )
*
My husband’s faith hasn’t been hurt by this Pope, but that’s only because we have a really awesome priest and he (my husband) actively avoids any reporting on the Pope– he’ll have me go look it up for him if he happens to hear something.
I actively watch out for when that research, or any discussion of the Pope, gets unpleasant–then ask myself if it’s unpleasant like exercise, or unpleasant like falling off a ladder, and avoid it if it’s the latter.
*
(Alright, end of trying to say what I meant in the first sentence; you can be mad or not, now, although I hope you’re not upset.)
*
So if you remove the folks who are protecting their faith by absolute avoidance from the pool, and then remove the people who disagree with you but don’t want to argue, the number of folks hurt is going to be much higher.
Even one is too much, and of course your survey isn’t going to catch the folks who don’t THINK their faith has been damaged because they’re “hearing” that the Church is now in alignment with stuff that is actually harmful to their faith, but feels good. Like an elderly relative of my husband’s, and homosexual marriage or divorce-as-annulment.

**EDITED FOR CLARITY I could’ve sworn was there when I hit post**

The Bear
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 4:49pm

How could anyone think the lovable, fuzzy-eared Bear would be provoked to anger by that? He’s actually flattered that anyone would think he would have such influence. Sadly, it isn’t as if bloggers are sitting around dreaming things up to criticize Pope Francis about. He’s The Giant Onion of Doom. Every week, at the least, he peels off another layer and we’re exposed to a new horror. If all the bloggers ceased writing about him (except for his fans) you’d have to live in a doomsday bunker with a time-locked door set for 2025 to be safe. Trust the Bear, he didn’t shove him in front of the Commiefix and tickle an appreciative grin out of him. That happened, and was reported.

If there were no blogs such as this site, people would be isolated, confused and misled all the same, if they had any notion of how a pope was supposed to act, or what the Catholic Church was supposed to be about. The Bear frequently gets emails and comments thanking him for providing a sense of solidarity in these times, and the constant reminder to nail your foot to the floor in front of your favorite pew and die there. People seek out the Bear AFTER they have been scandalized. Hopefully — if his feedback is true — they are finding some comfort there (which certainly goes for similar blogs).

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 6:22pm

Hi, Bear. Penguin (Fan) here.

Readers here are aware – maybe you aren’t – that my wife is from Latin America, specifically, Colombia. Colombia is very, very different from Argentina, but one thing they have in common is dissident Jesuits. The world is seeing why the Church is in freefall in Latin America. Bergoglio, Maradiaga, Ortega – they can make a committed Catholic sad and fearful for the future.

Don’t give up.

I find strength in fellow travelers such as the good folks here. My Polish ancestry is inseparable from my being Catholic. The Church stood with and defended the Polish people through the dark days of partition, the Nazi occupation and the Communist repression. No cleric from a hopelessly screwed up country such as Argentina can shake my faith. Oh, no doubt, he can do a lot of damage – just about every time he opens his mouth to spout off about an issue on which he has opinions but no firsthand knowledge. Kinds sounds like a typical teenager when you think about it.

Our own American bishops have been almost as bad. Self-proclaimed Catholic politicians and judges have shoved abortion and homosexulaism down our throats and nary a peep from the USCCB.

The world is not our permanent home. We can’t make it perfect.

Richard M
Richard M
Thursday, July 16, AD 2015 11:16pm

“…but one thing they have in common is dissident Jesuits.”

I’m not sure His Holiness is even formed sufficiently to call him a “dissident.” But then priestly formation, especially in the Society, was by all accounts pretty abysmal even before the Council in Argentina (the shining Fr. Leonardo Castellani, S.J. being the exception). After that, it dropped off the last cliff.

The initial defense offered after the election was that Bergoglio was cordially hated by all the right Jesuits down in the Southern Cone, which was indeed mostly true. But just because one has some of the right enemies doesn’t mean he will turn out to be a friend.

trackback
Tuesday, July 21, AD 2015 3:30am

[…] PopeWatch noted that our Bruin friend at Saint Corbinian’s Bear was weary of the Pope.  Go here to read about it.  Fatigue with the Pope is apparently a spreading reaction at this point in the […]

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