Last week 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 current pontificate:
Carl Olson at The Catholic World Report:
They are not “Woe is me!”, but they are certainly tired of the seemingly constant addresses, homilies, interviews, texts—many of which read like lectures—that come from the Holy Father. And it’s not just the quantity, although that is staggering in many ways, but it is quite often the tone and approach found in many of those texts: haranguing, harping, exhorting, lecturing. It probably doesn’t help that Francis obsesses over particular points, to a degree that is, frankly, grating.
Case in point: the Vatican website returns 104 results for a search for “gossip”; of those, 96 are by Francis. But, again, it’s not the quantity alone, but the hyperbole: “Gossip kills more than weapons do” and “Gossip can also kill, because it kills the reputation of the person!” And:
The greatest danger is terrorism in religious life: it has entered, the terrorism of gossip. If you have something against a sister, go and tell her to her face. But never this terrorism, because gossip is a bomb thrown into a community and it destroys it. Unity without the terrorism of gossip.
This, I have to note, from the same man who spoke publicly—in remarks reported on numerous websites and newspapers—about a mother of seven whose pregnancy, said Francis, “is an irresponsibility”. Do public scoldings over sensitive and personal issues qualify as acts of “the terrorism of gossip”?
Go here to read the rest.
Elizabeth Scalia at The Anchoress:
However, I happened to see some people on social media who were discussing this piece by Fr. Robert Barron, and their own takes on the encyclical, Laudato Si’. Some were weary-negative of the encyclical; some were weary-positive.
What struck me most was that they all seemed in some way weary.
I’ve said before that Pope Francis is “the most exhausting pope of my lifetime”, so I think I understand why they’re tired. Some of them wish Francis was clearer in his meaning; they’re tired of trying to “figure out” his point, which often seems ambiguous.
Others are tired of trying to defend and explain him.
Others are tired (or actually, perhaps not) of blowing Gabriel’s trumpet and warning the world that hey, we have an anti-Capitalist-anti-American-anti-Christ on our hands, over here!
I don’t care about any of that — everyone can duke it out and expend vast amounts of energy as they debate the ludicrous conceits that this generation of men, women, and popes will either save the world and make everything right, or that the very same people will successfully take down a church, when better, smarter saints and fiends of the past have tried and failed on both counts.
The church survives, and outlasts everyone — all nations and institutions and all manner of clerics — by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and that will always be true.
So, I’m no longer interested in the “which pope is what” question. I’m frankly just tired of feeling scolded.
Go here to read the rest.
Katrina Fernandez at The Crescat has adopted a policy of ignoring the Pope:
For my sanity, I was right to shield my mind and eyes from this papacy last year. I’ve run out of cares to give.
I’ll be honest, I am not even going to read what’s being published in his defense because it’s indefensible. This is just one of many more sure to come utterly tone deaf actions and off the cuff remarks that I’ve come to expect with this papacy.
Jesuits gonna Jesuit.
I’m only lifting my Francis Sanctions now because this incident is so incredibly unbelievable and almost laughable. Except that it’s not. Not even a little bit.
Go here to read the rest.
Catholics fatigued by a Pope or doing their best to ignore the Pope? How very, very odd. However, that sentence could serve as a motto for this pontificate
Amy Welborn also expressed similar fatigue with Pope Francis obsessions:
“So it has been over the past two years that I have marveled at some people’s insistence that Pope Francis, in his priorities and public expressions, defines – or is in the process of redefining Catholicism. What? Actually, that’s not supposed to be the way it is – Catholicism is supposed to define him, as is the case with all of us.”
Don, you should change the name of Pope Watch to Poop Watch, because we’re getting so tired with this Pope!
Maybe he’s talking in parables and only sainted can comprehend what he says?
Fr. Andrew, thank you for that link–great article.
“[H]aranguing, harping, exhorting, lecturing…”
Which is what we find on every page of the New Testament. “to renounce the world, and differ in every temper and way of life, from the spirit and the way of the world: to renounce all its goods, to fear none of its evils, to reject its joys, and have no value for its happiness: to be as new-born babes, that are born into a new state of things: to live as pilgrims in spiritual watching, in holy fear, and heavenly aspiring after another life: to take up our daily cross, to deny ourselves, to profess the blessedness of mourning, to seek the blessedness of poverty of spirit: to forsake the pride and vanity of riches, to take no thought for the morrow, to live in the profoundest state of humility, to rejoice in worldly sufferings: to reject the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life: to bear injuries, to forgive and bless our enemies, and to love mankind as God loves them: to give up our whole hearts and affections to God, and strive to enter through the strait gate into a life of eternal glory” – Quite a programme!
Maybe we should refer to Pope Francis as……….”FrankenPope”……………
Michael: I’ve heard of this Jesus you mention; I’ve even heard of the Bible. Actually I’ve led a weekly Bible study at my parish for 15 years and have written the weekly Scripture column for OSV for almost ten years, so I’ve read quite a bit by and about Jesus. Sorry, but the mere acts of harping and haranguing do not immediately equate to Christ-like exhortations. Yes, Francis says some great stuff; heck, I’ve written several articles in praise of this or that statement or address. But when you combine the incessant chiding with the consistent lack of clarity, you end up with something that doesn’t, to me, seem Christ-like at all. You end up with a scold. And one who is often contradictory and confusing to boot. It’s not enough to say, as some do, that Francis is simply about mercy and caring for the poor (after all, those have been key aspects of Church teaching for quite some time), because some of his critiques of matters political and economic are either muddled or problematic. His embrace of doomsday-ism in “Laudato Si'” is strange, to put it nicely.
” … to give up our whole hearts and affections to God, and strive to enter through the strait gate into a life of eternal glory ”
” … to live as pilgrims in spiritual watching, in holy fear, and heavenly aspiring after another life:”
There is a sickening lack of a moral leader.
“For my sanity, I was right to shield my mind and eyes from this papacy last year. I’ve run out of cares to give.”
Since 2008, these eyes and ears have practiced similarly, the ‘practice made perfect’ since that modus operandi began in 2013, although the mind is impossible to shield.
Maybe my age is catching me. Here’s my new attitude toward Francisco: Francis who?
God bless you, Mac. I admire your courage and fortitude. If it weren’t for you. I would know nothing about that pope.
“…His embrace of doomsday-ism in “Laudato Si’” is strange, to put it nicely….”
Well, if one thinks of religion, yes, but if one thinks of worldly politics as practiced by the Jesuit liberation Theology mindset…….that’s a far easier read.
Scolding? Exhausting? Obsessive? Have you ever read the letters of St. Paul?
I forgot the part where Saint Paul scolded Christians over climate change.
Every talk he gives to the Press is “wide ranging.” That must contribute to the fatigue, if only because people are weary of the phrase “in a wide ranging interview…” I know I am very, very tired of that phrase.
If Pope F. were a book who could finish reading it? Pope F. , the book, doesn’t inform, doesn’t inspire but rather confuses and contradicts. Pope F. could have been a creation of Franz Kafka where any attempt to understand only leads to madness.