Vatican expert and journalist Marco Tosatti, who has been covering the Vatican since 1981, makes the argument that Pope Francis’ god bears little resemblance to God.
This God committed more than anything else to freeing man from blame, this God in search of mitigating circumstances, this God who refrains from commanding and prefers to understand, this God who “is close to us like a mother singing a lullaby,” this God who is not a judge but who is “closeness,” this God who speaks of human “frailty” and not of sin, this God bent on the logic of pastoral accompaniment” is a caricature of the God of the Bible. Because God, the God of the Bible, is so patient, but not lax; he is so loving, but not permissive; he is so considerate, but not accommodating. In a word, he is a Father in the fullest and most authentic sense of the term.
The perspective assumed by Bergoglio appears instead to be that of the world, which often does not reject the idea of God entirely, but rejects the characteristics of God that are less in tune with the permissiveness that is rampant. The world does not want a true father, loving in the measure in which he is also judging, but rather it wants a buddy; or better still, a fellow traveler who lets things go and says, “Who am I to judge?”
On other occasions I have written that with Bergoglio a vision triumphs that overturns the real one: it is the vision which says that God has no rights, only duties. He does not have the right to receive worship worthy of him, nor to not be mocked, but he does have the duty to forgive. According to this vision, the reverse is true for man: man does not have any duties, but only rights. He has the right to be forgiven but not the duty to convert. As if there could be a duty for God to forgive and a right of man to be forgiven.
Go here to read the rest. First Commandment violation. PopeWatch is certain that is beyond a Pope’s power.
For Bergoglio, God is an instrument in the hands of Man. The reverse, of course, is the truth.
If, and I believe that this is true, God allows bad things to happen and within the circumstances He is able to bring a good from it, then what is the good from a Francis pontificate?
Aside from St. Joseph consecration and year of St. Joseph and some writings that don’t bend the precepts of the faith. We know of the poor choices.
My question is what positive impact has resulted from his pontificate?
Has their been an increase in converts? I’m not aware of it, on a large scale anyhow.
What greater good has come about?
Where is the fruit from his pontificate?
Maybe it’s that the Catholic world is witnessing a cancer within itself. (?)
Maybe this pontificate is exposing individuals who have helped the cancer to metastasize. (?)
I’m just trying to figure out why this pontificate is present in our time.
Praying for his conversion is one of the only things that I can be certain of. He is in great need of prayers.
Luke 6:36-38.
Today’s first reading.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged….
God knows what God is about.
I must Trust in Him.
“This god”?
“Thou shalt have no other god before me”
The church’s wisdom in reminding us that all popes must also go to confession, or risk eternity.
Many years ago I heard a homily regarding how protestants worship a false image of God; no doubt the pope’s distortion is just as bad.
Too many of the Church hierarchy act like the Church is their personal private property to do with as they please. The first recorded case when this attitude occurred was when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. They took the things that are God’s without His permission. When people say “Who am I to judge?” they should be reminded about the clerical abuse crisis. It took judgment and removal from priestly ministry to end the abusers abuse within the Church. Last I heard the Church is the Bride of Christ, the clergy don’t appear to be treating her as such. Their treatment is more along the lines of a worldly Whore of Babylon. The Amazon Synod reminds me of King Solomon and his foreign wives, who turned his heart to other gods. His behavior was ecumenical, multicultural, and inclusive. The Church hierarchy is a mess.
The essence of Protestantism is: “Rome is without a pope.” That’s what the linked article says.