Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:33pm

PopeWatch: Surprise!

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The Pope gives us yet another example of how he is a man who acts on impulse:

 

Pope Francis has made a surprise announcement to dioceses around the world, on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday.

Addressing faithful in St. Peter’s Square at a Saturday evening prayer vigil for the Jubilee of Divine Mercy — 11 years to the day after the death of St. John Paul II — the pope announced his wish that, in every diocese, “a hospital, a home for the elderly, for abandoned children, a school where none exists, a home for the recovery of addicts,” or some similar structure be established as “a living memory” of the Year of Mercy.

The Pope said the idea came to him recently during a meeting with directors of a charitable agency. But he thought to himself: “I will share it in the square on Saturday.”

“There are so many things that could be done,” he said. “It would be very good for each diocese to consider: what can we leave as a living memory, as a work of living mercy, as a wound of the living Jesus for this Year of Mercy? Let us reflect on this and speak to the bishops about it.”

Go here to read the rest.  Remember how the Pope was going to increase collegiality with the bishops?  Obviously the Pope does not recall it.  Major undertakings in construction by a diocese are usually planned years in advance.  Dioceses differ wildly in their financial resources.  These and dozens of other reasons indicate why the Pope would want to consult with the bishops before making this type of announcement.  PopeWatch doubts if he consulted with any of them.  An idea pops into the mind of the Pope and he begins yakking about it, practical considerations be hanged.  That is a good brief summary of this purgatory of a pontificate.

 

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Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 5:38am

A home for the recovery of addicts? Really?
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Has the Pope never heard of:
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http://www.aa.org
.
Or
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http://www.na.org ?
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I wonder what my sponsor’s sponsor of 30 years ago – a priest and my Confessor – would say?
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I know!
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“Don’t drink! Don’t drug! Work the Steps! Go to meetings!”

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 6:06am

Never let it be said that Pope Francis ever missed an opportunity to immanentize the eschaton.

Rather he could have emphasized the way to obtain total forgiveness of all sins and punishment on Divine Mercy Sunday is to go to confession and receive Holy Communion which would mean each person would go immediately after death to heaven without suffering in purgatory (or hell). Seems to me this is a rather big deal and a great deal.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 7:14am

I haven’t traveled much. I thought every diocese already had these corporal and spiritual works of mercy going on.

DJH
DJH
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 7:31am

It is very possible that the various dioceses in Africa and China and India don’t necessarily have these things. Still, I am not sure building another “structure” will help convert and “feed the sheep.”

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 7:48am

I guess it’s a good thing Pope Francis said “consider it” and not “just do it” then.

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 9:20am

It’s a nice idea; with some follow-through, it could even be made to work– give people an outlet that isn’t already someone’s private reserve where they can serve. (Until it gets taken over in a pissing contest, too, but all things die.)
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I don’t think it would actually work, either. The same people who organize the charitable options around their own preference would end up in immediate control, too. *Sigh*

bill bannon
bill bannon
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 9:21am

Imagine a Pope who was silent and worked the phones all day making sure no Catholic colleges were allowing coed part night room visits ( Newman Society…over 90%)… or making sure no Catholic colleges awarded Joe Biden anything. You can’t imagine it because we are all about Popes doing image work instead of real work from 8 to 4. I like Francis but the papacy is destroying him because its giving free reign to the foolish side of him. Scripture says in the OT…” the fool follows every impulse”….check….” where words are many, sin is not wanting”… check. Will he sit down for even one day and phone all the Bishop princes he criticized to tell them to get rid of their mansions. No. That is real work. It’s easier to say it in a speech that they’re princes then do zero about it even though canon law gives him power that is ” immediate” and “supreme”. I’m working on clouds in a seascape. I could take shortcuts like most oil painters on the clouds or I could use glazing like Rembrandt used…that takes days but gives a soft shadow within the cloud which then looks real. In every job, you can hustle or you can do real work. In the papacy, you can work the phones or you can image or become an author which is more imaging in that context. No one is working the phones. They’re talking for the media consumption of image.

David Spaulding
David Spaulding
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 11:24am

How about funding Catholic schools in a way that makes them viable options for Catholics of limited means?

His Holiness is so wonderfully progressive, always thinking of some new thing that will do amazing things, always reinventing the wheel when, what we really NEED, is leadership.

The LAST thing dioceses need are new ideas. What they really need are to make the old things work again after decades of neglect. Given the importance of Catholic schools in America, I sure would like to see the choice to send one’s kid to public school be a moral choice, not an economic one.

Pinky
Pinky
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 11:59am

I pray for Benedict. The quiet, deliberate theologian who helped to steer one papacy, then was elected to the office, now watches his successor. Second-guessing one’s retirement can be a terrible burden.

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 1:45pm

Yeah, it isn’t like most bishops aren’t already wasting the faithful’s money on stuff like open borders and anti-death penalty activism, and other left wing nonsense that have absolutely nothing to do with the mission of the Church.

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Monday, April 4, AD 2016 6:51pm

Francis is a Star Trek Pope. He talks on impulse power.

Paul DeWeese
Paul DeWeese
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2016 5:53am

I am so grateful for the Pope! The Church must enrobe itself in both the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. As Mother Teresa says: “Jesus comes to us in the distressing disguise of the poor.” When I was in Uganda it was common for local folks to tell me that wherever the Catholic Church went it established a church, a school and a hospital. No wonder that a very high percentage of Uganda’s population is Catholic. When the Church is merciful it will draw all people to Jesus.

Guy McClung
Admin
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2016 7:50am

Greg-You forgot our over 2,000,000,000 $$$$ -yep, overr 2 Billion dollar$$S, which we put in the collections as priests and bishops were abusing mostly young men and other bishops were shuttling them from diocese to dicoese to cover the predators tracks. How many mercy houses would that $2,000,000,000 bulid? Truly this guy is turning into the biggest “mercy bully” on the block. And – need another chance to repeat the figure- that over $2,000,000,000 is ONLY the U.S.!

Guy McClung
Admin
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2016 10:15am

Why do I have this foreboding feeling that someone must have had 72 hours before Halloween 1517 if someone had told him that this guy named Luther was going to rebel against the church and publish an Exhortation [95 theses] for others to rebel? Will a mercy bully harm the church? I fear what we are about to witness.

And as for every diocese in the world building a new “mercy structure,” Luther was prescient and spot-on “Thesis 86, which asks: “Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?”

James
James
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2016 1:22pm

The inoperable brain tumor of Pope Francis appears to be growing. This has been mentioned, and it is surprising that it has not been reported on more at this point in time.

CAM
CAM
Wednesday, April 6, AD 2016 10:08am

Let’s see and all these new structures are to be named the “Pope Francis Merciful Asylum”, the “Pope Francis Neurology Wing of Mercy Hospital”, the “Pope Francis (you fill in the blanks)”.
What does his Holiness think the Catholic Church has been doing for the last 20+ centuries?

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