DICI: Vatican specialists perplexed

JMJ

While Sedevacantists will (as usual) dance about trying to make the Pope fall from his Office, the SSPX continues plodding along being Catholic.

P^3

Courtesy of DICI

Vatican specialists perplexed

26-02-2016
Filed under News, The Church in the world

After every pontifical journey, Pope Francis gives a press conference on the return flight. But rather than offering clear answers to the journalists, his statements always create serious interpretation problems. Everyone remembers his famous “Who am I to judge?” when he was asked about homosexuals after his apostolic visit to Brazil in July 2013.

In the press conference after his recent trip to Mexico, Francis voiced a severe judgment on American presidential candidate Donald Trump, declaring at the same time that he does not get involved in the Italian politics on the question of civil unions (i.e. homosexual “marriages”) in Italy; he then firmly rejected the crime of abortion while mentioning the possibility of contraception as a lesser evil to help avoid the consequences of the Zirka virus…

The Italian press spoke of “enigmatic exits” and of “multiple ‘Jesuitisms’, constantly on the move, that can never be stopped of grasped”, and resumed his contradictory answers as follows: “I meddle, I don’t meddle; I judge, I don’t judge… Francis disconcerts the Catholic world with his fluctuating evaluations.” The fact remains that the average reader’s conclusion will be very simple: “A Christian cannot vote for Donald Trump; as for the bill on civil unions, each person should listen to his own conscience… but no barrier has been laid down to keep it from passing; abortion is a crime, but contraception is only a lesser evil, so it is acceptable…”

Back in their writing rooms, these Vatican specialists denounced what causes their uneasiness: today, pontifical talk is “a perpetual ‘say, unsay and contradict’.” Some are doubtful as to Fr. Federico Lombardi’s efficacy as decoder of a line of thought that remains hopelessly muddled. What slightly reassures them, it is true, is the pope’s recent answer to the criticism of one of them, Antonio Socci, in an Open Letter on the Church in Time of War. “I am sure that many of the things you say will do me much good,” Francis wrote to him. So the journalists have hope. And while there is hope there is life.

Fr. Alain Lorans

Comments

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