PopeWatch: Ten Points
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Pray should be #1. Otherwise good list.
Yes, Prayer #1. And I would add two more: 11. Never apologize for your faith or anything it requires, and 12. Never give up.
Finding “good” in all this demonic activity within the church has one slight possible good, and that is , people of faith will be forced to learn more clearly exactly what they are called to believe and why, unless…they play the “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,” game.
“Do not generalize.” I couldn’t agree more. Name the names of those who Francis “broke”. I can think of three such quislings off the top of my head: Jimmy Akin, Al Kresta and Teresa Tomeo. Over the years of this pontificate, I’ve heard all three ignore and/or excuse anything and everything from Francis.
Increasingly relevant in our decaying culture is the necessity to reply to immoral demands with a firm
“No. I won’t be doing that. Your move”
Many would say this is the path that leads to personal ruin. They are wrong. It leads through personal ruin – to Christ.
May God grant us courage when our moment comes!
The company men and women are always with us, and are to some extent excusable. The spiritual culture engendered by Vatican I was largely unhealthy, making people rally around the reigning pontiff to an excessive degree–some of the titles bestowed by popular piety on pontiffs would be blasphemous if they weren’t so ridiculous. Hard to tack against those headwinds.
No, the more tragic ones are those who have lost their faith. I’m especially saddened for the Anglicans who joined the Church just to see it morph into a more totalitarian version of the hellscape they fled.
As to the list itself, it boils down to spiritual guerilla warfare against a triumphant enemy. And here’s the thing about guerilla warfare: it never succeeds without help from the outside. So pray hard for that intervention from the only One who can make things right.
The fetid miasma from Rome will only grow more toxic with time. If you hate what wildfire smoke does to your lungs, you ain’t seen nothing yet with the toxic cloud building and spreading from Rome and what it is intended to do to your soul. As time passes, you’re going to have to somehow maintain communion with one of the pontiff’s flunkies who runs your diocese. Rome’s ecclesiology demands no less.
I find it increasingly difficult to condemn those who throw their hands up at the madness.
Much more optimistic than you Dale. They may have the buildings temporarily, we have the Faith. They will be chiefs with precious few Indians to follow them.
The Catholic Church gives us the Real Presence of Jesus Christ.
Oh, I’m optimistic in the very long term. God wins in the end.
But like a British infantryman who fell on the beaches of Dunkirk, I won’t live to see the tide turn, let alone something resembling victory.
Then again, my prognostications are a decidedly mixed bag, so that’s a personal comfort.
“They will be chiefs with precious few Indians to follow them.“ hard to be optimistic about that. Leaderless Catholics is not our style. Maybe that more like the way of the East, and the way of the synod A horizontal organization structure. It seems brave and chin- lifting, but is exactly the shape of the destruction.
Leaderless Catholics is not our style.
Saint Athanasius would like a word. Throughout most of the history of the Church most Catholics not living in Rome could not have named the current Pope. We tend to confuse current Catholicism with Catholicism and the History of the Church states otherwise. Throughout the life of the Church the Saints have had a much greater impact than the Popes.
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