Pope Francis took a slap at those priests retrograde enough to be concerned about religious liberty:
“This priestly creativity has won out over some, a few, adolescent expressions against the measures of public authorities, who have the obligation to take care of people’s health,” sniped the Pope. “The majority were obedient and creative.”
Go here to read the rest. This is unsurprising considering how willing this Pope has been to enter into a partnership with a government, China, which is the chief persecutor of Catholics in world. The persecution of Christians is clearly at the bottom of the Pope’s agenda, if it makes the list at all.
“The persecution of Christians is clearly at the bottom of the Pope’s agenda, if it makes the list at all.”
Could be because, like most leaders supporting what we’re seeing, he assumes it won’t impact him.
Yes, “Pope” its not (career) healthy to promote liberty in your presence.
I would submit that–based upon the lack of publicly started concerns–the salvation of souls appears to be at the very bottom on his list.
@Dave G – or worse, he thinks Catholics deserve it.
Nate, I agree. I think it’s high on his list of things to do. From what I’ve read he has an explosive temper and is vindictive to those cross ir slight him.
Well he is the chief persecutor of Catholics.
Nate, I think his message to the world is that we have met the enemy, and it’s those Catholics over there. I notice that many Catholic fans of Pope Francis seem to always assume he means those other Catholics whenever he says something.
Of course, Dave. It’s what Lewis talked about in “the dangers of national repentance.”
http://merecslewis.blogspot.com/2011/05/dangers-of-national-repentance.html
“Unfortunately the very terms in which national repentance is recommended to him conceal its true nature. By a dangerous figure of speech, he calls the Government not ‘they’ but ‘we’. And since, as penitents, we are not encouraged to be charitable to our own sins, nor to give ourselves the benefit of any doubt, a Government which is called ‘we’ is ipso facto placed beyond the sphere of charity or even of justice. You can say anything you please about it. You can indulge in the popular vice of detraction without restraint, and yet feel all the time that you are practising contrition. A group of such young penitents will say, ‘Let us repent our national sins’; what they mean is, ‘Let us attribute to our neighbour (even our Christian neighbour) in the Cabinet. whenever we disagree with him, every abominable motive that Satan can suggest to our fancy.’”
There was a time when this would have infuriated me.
Don’t get me wrong–once again, he’s the preening rhetorical bully who picks unpopular targets. It’s a jerk move.
Just do what I do–turn it into a game.
Insert the phrase “Ever the petulant man-child” somewhere before his name in every news story where he criticizes Catholics.
He needs to be laughed at way, way more often. Even if it’s just a tired, angry jeer.
Some churches are going far beyond obedience to civil authorities.
In Rochester MN, there was a decision among the city churches to not open for masses until all the churches could adequately clean everything. The fear was that if not everything opened at once one church would be overrun. Because of this, there were no masses anywhere in Rochester for three weeks after Governor Walz allowed churches to reopen. However, as far as I can confirm the Co-Cathedral still has not reopened for mass, and does not list any plans to reopen.
The other churches all have some type of registration system in place and at least say that they will bar the doors if their capacity is reached. (In practice this doesn’t come up because mass attendance is down so much). That raises the question of why it was necessary to close down all the churches, if they would have strictly maintained capacity counts anyway.