Thursday, March 21, 2013

Stomaching The Church Impudent


THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL

This may come as a shock to the news media, but there are a lot of Catholics who love Pope Benedict.  I am one of them.

Not to take anything away from the new pope, Francis.  This is his day in the sun, his "honeymoon" period, if you will.  The Church is celebrating the election of a new pope and it is only right that he be shown the respect and admiration Catholics offer to their popes.  

The problem is that some of the "celebrating" has gone too far.  Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is being disrespected and trashed, in many cases by people who should know better.

XM Satellite Radio's own Catholic Channel has been celebrating around the clock, but I'd had enough this afternoon when one of the program hosts suggested that someone watching the pope who came back to the Catholic Church because in Pope Francis, they felt a human touch.  Just what does that mean?  That Pope Benedict was somehow less than human?

America's most embarrassing Churchman, Cardinal Mahony, recently tweeted this message:  "Moving from HIGH Church to LOW and humble Church!  What a blessing that we are encountering Jesus without trappings!"

One can almost hear him humming Ding-Dong The Witch Is Dead.

Germany's Cardinal Lehmann, a man one would think had some respect for his former leader, recently praised the new pope by stating that Pope Francis might bring in Catholics who in past years "were somehow disappointed".

Disappointed?

The soft, ignore-the-rules, left-leaning dissidents who are high-fiving each other about the new pope have had the reins of the Church since 1963.  Their "successes" include a free-fall drop in Mass attendance, an all-but-disappeared line at the confessional, huge defections in the ranks of priests and nuns and a Catholic populace with little objective idea of a basic catechism, embracing an eternally lethal pick-and-choose aesthetic.  Pope Benedict had a measly 7 years to rule the Church during this unprecedented epoch of disaster.  He dared to do what his previous three predecessors somehow forgot:  He tried to govern.

Those who knew Ratzinger were not surprised by his style, because he was not the "panzerkardinal" the leftist press portrayed.  He was gentle.  He let a lot of bad bishops serve out their terms before replacing them with prelates willing to restore the Catholic faith to their dioceses.  He reached out to the Church's most maligned (and faithful) group, traditionalists, and gave them the opportunity to worship as the Church always had.  He gave Anglicans and Episcopalians who were fed up with their own church's disintegration an easier pathway to Rome.  He reached out to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, a group whose most unforgivable crime was their distrust of Vatican II, which oddly enough, dried up vocations for the "mainstream" while their chapels exploded with new vocations.

Pope Benedict was unpopular with one group:  Fake Catholics.  Hans Kung, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the staffs of U.S. Catholic and The National Catholic Reporter hated Pope Benedict.  And now that he is gone, the media is going to ignore one very telling fact about Pope Benedict's pontificate:  No pope in modern history drew bigger crowds to his Vatican audiences than Pope Benedict.  That's right, not even the "rock star" pope, John Paul II drew crowds as large as Pope Benedict's.  Yet, to hear the current buzz in the media and among the dissenters, you'd think Benedict drove people away from the Church.  

Pope Benedict brought people INTO the Church.  And he would have done more if the people he trusted had served him well.

As I said, Pope Benedict was and is a gentle man.  He is a true Catholic.  He does not return insults and slights.  And that is precisely why the cheap-shot artists who despised him are showing us their true colors today.

Lest anyone doubt that Pope Benedict was undermined by his own curia, and by the bishops he trusted to obey him, look and listen to the "celebrations" of the new pope.  As more time passes, the insinuations against Pope Benedict will be less veiled.  The open contempt that is slowly unfolding before us is downright demonic.

Only one thing can be said to the priests and bishops who have turned on their former leader:

SHAME ON YOU.

7 comments:

  1. I don't know why I haven't seen your blog before. Just now I came by way of the Eponymous Flower. So nice to meet you. I very much agree with you. It is a shame and shame on them. I do give Pope Francis the honor of his Office, but I haven't celebrated, have continued to be stunned and sad. Don't you think we should ask everyone to send a greeting to Pope Benedict on a individual chosen schedule. How could we leave a living Pope (Benedict) uncherished ?

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  2. I have always love and valve Pope Benedict and reading what some people say about him really annoyed me. For me, Pope Benedict is a teacher and a treasure the church should never ever forget.

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  3. Go to, te-igtur.blogspot.com. . A nice video of Cardinal Ratzinger in Germany.

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  4. Due in no small part to the policies and reforms of Pope Benedict, I came back to the Church in February, going to confession for the first time in 13 years. The next day the Pope announced he was resigning. I couldn't help but think, "Was it something I said?"

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  5. Keyser, I agree with you that liberalism and indifference have corrupted the Church, but I would point out that the skepticism of many towards the Society of St. Pius X stems from both Bishop Richard Williamson and his successor engaging in Holocaust denial. That is simply inexcusable and repulsive and goes against every fabric of history. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his predecessors wisely and rightly stated that Holocaust denial and antisemitism have no place in the Church.

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  6. The focus of this post is not on the SSPX, but on the hypocrisy of leaders in the Church and their disloyalty to the only pope in the last 40 years who did anything to stop the bleeding. As far as Bishop Williamson is concerned, I disagree with some of his comments about the Holocaust, however if you look a bit deeper than the media headlines, Williamson has not denied the Holocaust. He simply questions the magnitude of the Holocaust based on what he thinks he knows about gas chambers. Do I agree? No. But he too at very least deserves to be reported on accurately. And Bishop Williamson has nothing to do with Pope Benedict, save for the fact the Benedict has been VERY patient with him.

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