PopeWatch is curious. If Pope Francis were your parish priest, what would you do?
PopeWatch: What If?
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Go to another parish.
Leave – find another parish.
Ask his Bishop to consider removing him from his duties as priest to supply him with enough time for reflection and reevaluation of his calling. In particular, giving him a chance to understand that telling his parishioners to ” go with your own conscience,” in relationship to concupiscence, is false mercy. That the past two thousand years of teaching and implementation of Holy Catholic doctrine is to be implemented, not twisted regardless of intent.
Of course, who his Bishop is is key here.
Attend elsewhere. My Bishop is a Francis pick of the litter. My pastor is a wonderful Indian priest…from India.
Switch to another parish. I had to do it once before and was much happier.
If Pope Francis were my parish priest…… first, he would have to learn Latin and then he would have to learn the Mass of the Ages, the Tridentine Mass.
Since neither will happen, I am grateful for our parish priest.
I want to wish a Happy Epiphany to all who observe the Traditional church calendar today, as well as the Eastern Catholics and Catholics in those countries whose bishops have not moved Epiphany to Sunday.
Have a blessed day.
Find another parish pronto.
O/T: Do you guys at American Catholic know anything about the great site “Midwest Conservative Journal” (Christopher Johnson)? For the last couple of months, I can no longer get to his site at all and get the message from my internet security that that page is now blocked…danger, danger. What’s up with that? Does he have a new webpage other than themcj.com ?
I have been in contact with Christopher but apparently there has been no solution to their technical problems yet.
@Donald McClarey: Thanks. It’s at least good to know that it’s not just my computer system. So does that mean that nobody’s able to access their site anymore?
I haven’t been able to, and as far as I know there has been no new content posted since December 11, 2016.
Send a pro forma letter of complaint to the bishop (which he will never read and Sister Faltshoes of the Chancery will toss in the circular file). Then I’ll get off my duff on Sundays and get to the Byzantine-rite parish where I should have been all along.
I would be going to confession mass somewhere else. As it is we are supporting parishes in two dioceses. I have tried to talk with the people in the nearest chancery but the walls are nearly impenetrable.
He posted new content on 22 December 2016, but nothing since. He has a co-blogger who’s evidently in the IT trade, IIRC. I’ve been somewhat purturbed by the radio silence. He’s 61, unmarried, and (best I can tell) lives nowhere proximate to any relations or to any friends who are close enough to help him out of some of the scrapes he’s been in in recent years (landlord trouble, traffic court trouble). He’s never directly said his health is poor, but one does get the impression that he’s not vigorous enough anymore for anything but desk work.
If I had a parish priest who:
1. Never lost an opportunity to remind me how humble he is.
2. Promoted and made advisors of dubious characters while sidelining/demoting orthodox
Catholics from any positions of influence in the parish,
3. Gave speeches and homilies so vague and incoherent as to be useless while contradicting
Church doctrine in his off-the-cuff remarks,
4. Used his authority to rig and manipulate parish consultative bodies to achieve his
own pre-determined conclusions, making a mockery of the process,
5. Made no secret of his contempt for persons like myself who have a love for Tradition,
6. Used his authority to undermine and bully a congregation of religious, the FFI, that
had been operating in the parish with great results, solely because he did not like
their love for Tradition,
7. And refused to either acknowledge or answer reasonable questions about his teaching…
I would find another parish, at least until he was gone from the scene. However, if I were to
have my God chastise me by sending such a man to be my Pope, I would stay– where else
could I go? I would cling to the Sacraments while ignoring that Pope as best I could until
God chose to call one of us to our judgement. What else could anyone do?
Pray for his successor
A “pope francis” WAS my parish priest, so I found another parish. True story.
Beautiful and thoughtful answer Clinton
I’d tell him he’s arrogant moron.
Basically, we had “Pope” Francis for a Deacon and that was motivation enough to drive the 1 1/2 hours to a FSSP parish.
I’ve had good and bad pastors over the years. Right now I’ve got a very solid one, not just orthodox but someone who fits my thinking and personality. That’s how I felt about Pope Benedict too. It’s tough to go to a new one who is weak in exactly the same respects that the old one was strong. I’d probably keep attending my current parish, but it would sting.
I’ve never left a parish because of a pastor. I’ve only switched away from one for a reason other than scheduling, and even that was a scheduling issue in a way. They made my usual Mass into a young adult Mass. The brought in a really cute new music director, and the music went way downhill – neither of which was good for my spirituality.
Clinton, I may never have thought of the good words you’ve written, but I absolutely agree with them and am living them! Great answer.
“Nail my foot to the floor in front of my favorite pew and die there.” He’s not much different from a lot of parish priests. I’d email a copy of my blog every day.
I believe Catholics need to find the best parish they can and support it. We have to drive, but in so doing have made good friends and developed relationships with the priests and hope to expand their ministry. If I was younger and still had kids at home, I’d also be very leery of exposing them to the rot that has infected so many Catholic parishes.
Well, in Brazil, maybe also in Argentina, it is really tough not to have a Pope Francis as a priest in any parish.
I think I only found two or three priest in my entire life as a Catholic that would not be like Francis. Once I argued with one priest defending Leonardo Boff in his homily. Another said that Christ never expelled demons. And another hated Pope Benedict XVI.
I have changed parish constantly. Welcome to my terrible world in parishes. Sorry.
He’s a fair-to-middling version of the priests I grew up with– we’d get either him, or the guys who got in trouble, or who were brand new. (The Irish priest who didn’t have a very good rein on his tongue was DELIGHTFUL! First and last time I ever heard of a priest in our area actually doing visits to folks’ houses to say hi or anything. )
On the flip side, it’s odd when our priests are in the valley for more than four hours. Satellite parishes.
The Seattle dioceses was a delightful shock– the hippy priest did a pro-life, anti-ABORTION sermon! That’s it, no other stuff– just flat out, “killing babies is bad.” <3 <3 <3
Leave, go to abother parish!
Avoid him as much as possible but pray for him.
I’d like to meet with him and ask him to explain what his real agenda is, i.e., why it is that he wants to Protestantize the Catholic Church and if he has lost faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. If I got the same old blather back that he comes up with every day, I would state my reasons for disagreeing with him and tell him about the effect of his “chaos and confusion” on the regular pew sitters. I could imagine his face becoming tight and severe as his authoritarianism sets in. The man is living, in his mind, back in the day in Argentina. He tilts at windmills that are no longer there. There is an air of unreality about his complaints and he seems to feel the need to punish people who remind him of when he was brooked and checked as a young man. I would not stay in the parish and listen to him. He is a fake leader with a fake idea of what the Church is. He is badly mistaken in his judgments, but loves to exercise his power.
“The Seattle dioceses was a delightful shock– the hippy priest did a pro-life, anti-ABORTION sermon! That’s it, no other stuff– just flat out, “killing babies is bad.””
I’ve had such great surprises in the past Foxfier. The hardest core pro-life priest I ever knew looked like he was preserved in amber from Woodstock!
Find another parish.
Like W.C. Fields did when he thanked a woman, ABS would thank him for driving him to drink
I love my parish priest. He’s humble and loving. Unfortunately, the deacon has had very poor formation and has only a glancing understanding of Catholic teachings. The Religious Ed director can’t make distinctions between Protestant and Catholic understandings of either the old testament or the new testament. The church, before mass, is filled with the deafening noise of too many hearty greetings and boisterous conversations.
It all reminds me that I must throw myself on God’s mercy for all the times I have not shown Our Lord proper reverence or all the times I may have acted from a deliberate misunderstanding of God’s Word and Church teaching.
If Francis were my parish priest, I would pray for him, that God fill him with deep reverence for the teachings of the magisterium and Our Lord’s words in scripture. This is the same prayer I offer for Francis, our Pope.
What a horrible thought. ..
..
Well, confession, with him, would be useless: the Decalogue and trad moral teaching out, environmental & social justice “imperatives” in. Everything screwed up, just like the Church is now.
A. Stay home, say the Rosary, read the trad Missal, and financially support trad Catholic priestly orders.
[I am assuming there is no other nearby parish, such as with one of my favorite Wyoming summer escapes.]
I think Art Deco nailed it on writing letters: it doesnt work. The fish rots downward etc. Dealing with a really bad situation in Phoenix about a decade ago, the corrupt bishop (Thomas O’Brien, of unhappy hit-run memory) laughed off my letter documenting the problem. Then my letter to the US papal nuncio (“Most Rev” Gabriel Montalvo Higuera, 1998-2005) was copied and handed over directly to the reprobate priest, from whom I next received a lovely threatening personal letter (I still have it, pull it off for a laugh. )
Only eventually did Fr. Reprobate get addressed by the succeeding Ratzinger appointmentee. He now is more or less happily celebrating liturgies in a storefront site of the Metropolitan Church in San Diego.
No, letters are a joke, part of the big farce
Get up and leave during his homily and never come back until he’s reassigned.
Steve, are you saying you’d abandon the sacraments and your obligations? That’s a big no-no.
Assuming there is no reasonable alternative, such as in some isolated parts of the country, except a once a month jaunt to Boise or Casper, I will no longer waste my time going to a false priest who preaches a false gospel (small “g”) in a false church (small “c”), if that is the premise. It is taking in a full cup of poison onto your spiritual life. No more.
But practically speaking, at present, and except during summer, even in the San Fran-psycho Baytheist Area, as long as you can drive an hour, you can find an incorrupted group of priests. I am sure they are PF’S “Herods” of course.
Oh, and as a sequel, Fr. Reprobate, from my prior account, I coincidentally found out over the weekend has finally found his place as a “bishop” in an “independent reformed ‘catholic’ church” (small “c”, small “c”) in San Diego, with his man-wife. He posts regularly to the gay SD review “Rage” about his admiration and inspiration derived from ex-bishop Gene Robinson and his husband. He would still be in the official Catholic Church, except for a courageous orthodox bishop (Olmsted of Phoenix) who helped him, and many others in that then-cesspool, find his true calling.