Munkácsy Mihály: “Ecce Homo!” (1896)
The demon of messianism leads ministers to set themselves up as the center of all pastoral activity in which they participate. The temptation subtly penetrates their lives, until they end up feeling indispensable in everything. … Those who fall into this temptation do not ignore God nor do they fail to pray and appeal to the Lord with problems. They do so, however, so that God may help them in the ministry they plan and direct. Ultimately, what we are dealing with here is incorporating the Lord into our work, and not incorporating ourselves into the work of God. Following the temptation, we unconsciously substitute our personal messianism for the messianic ministry of Christ, the one evangelizer.This attitude before God manifests itself in an equally faulty attitude toward those with whom we collaborate. We become incapable of delegating responsibilities or tasks. We do not really trust people, except for a few—those who are a consistently faithful copy of ourselves, with whom we permanently surround ourselves. … There is always a relationship between the attitude towards God and the attitude towards others, and vice versa. Distrust of collaborators in ministry, therefore, reflects a distrust in God. This is what we mean by the demon of messianism. …The messianic attitude does not allow others to grow, since the apostolic endeavor’s growth and maturity do not run parallel as they should with the maturation and growth of all who carry it out. In the same way, the messianic ministers’ [sic] initiatives and creations do not necessarily contribute to a community’s formation nor do they prepare anyone to succeed them in ministry. Often they identify themselves with their work even to the point that the ministry ends when they leave or are transferred. It has been tied too much to the person, and successors are not prepared to step in. (pp. 23-24)
[Another temptation is] not trusting in the power of truth…. [which] is a variation of lacking confidence in God [as in messianism], but it has separate characteristics as a temptation. … Many cannot believe that there are times to accept without understanding. It is not ‘popular’ to assert truths such as the positive value of austerity, suffering, and the cross, or life after death. Likewise the value of chastity, virginity, persistence in marriage, or the defense of life even in extreme cases may be unpopular. …In this context, the minster is tempted to vacillate. He or she may not offer Christ’s truth as it is…. The assumption may be that the truth will not be accepted and followed, or that is inconvenient. Some truths go by the wayside or fall into ambiguity when in various ways the minster of the Word trusts more in human prudence than in the truth force and attraction. … Instead of the the Gospel’s demands and its light, the minster proposes the ‘reasonable’ advice of human experience, depriving people of the opportunity to yield progressively to the truth that sets them free. (p. 29)
[A third temptation is] preaching problems and not certainties… [which] causes confusion between different moments and levels of ministry in the Word. … [O]n the level of catechesis, homilies, and missionary preaching, it is always necessary to hand on the Christian message…. People in this situation expect the certitude of faith in order to renew their lives. They do not want their issues and problems returned to them without a response. … The essence of evangelization is to announce a message and not problems…. Evangelization announces certainties, not conjectures or personal opinions.There may be many causes of this temptation. Ministers may lack experience, judgment, or discernment. They may be projecting their interior state. If they themselves are vacillating in their convictions, or if their Christian life is more a bundle of problems and questions than certitude, they will tend to transmit that to others. The old saying ‘the mouth speaks from the abundance of the heart’ fits ministry perfectly. The Christian community is built on the faith, hope, and love of its members. It is not built on doubts, confusions, and shared problems. (p. 30)
[A fourth, and, for the purposes of this essay, final, temptation is that of] secularizing Christian hope…. [This temptation] consists in transmitting a message of purely secular hopes to the detriment of fundamental Christian hope. For example, the minister promotes a better social or political future, with the accompanying freedoms that men and women are searching for today. He or she preaches confidence in overcoming sickness, poverty, and other human dilemmas. Although we should strive for these legitimate human hopes, the promises of Christ do no guarantee them in this life. We do not know with certainty if they will be achieved. To proclaim them as Christian hope deceives the people, and reduces the Gospel to a message of legitimate human liberation or optimism about the future. …To secularize hope is to do away with the proclamation of the human vocation to eternal life, holiness, faith, and love as the driving force and the supreme value of human liberation. With that, ministers will be tempted to change their service into the inspiration of secular expectations and the commitment to a better future. (p. 31)
iPhones capturing iPope[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46RTOoK7Nm4]
In contrast to the photo of the iPriests, ponder this photo of Pope Pius XII in procession:
The multiple layers of order, decorum, and rank act like a Kevlar vest for the fusillade of instinctive popular affection, or like the arresting wires for a tailhook on an aircraft carrier, slowing down and tethering the ultramontane instinct of the masses before it goes the way of Kid Icarus beneath a papal sun. Precisely because Pacelli was ensconced in such an intricate web of sacred semiotics—his individuality cloaked by the mystical bureaucracy of the papacy—the appeal of Pacelli the Man was blunted, dimmed, diffused, so that the popular devotion could flow over him, past him, beyond him towards what he was merely animating, rather than being caught in the populist hydraulic of his personal charisma (much less his shoes).
Once upon a time, a man elected to be pope did not just die to himself by devoting all his labors to the care of the Church, but also rather literally buried his own self under the byzantine demands of the papal attire, routine, manner of speech, associations, residence, and so on. “Congratulations, you’re the pope—now vanish!” That was how a sacrosanct apparatus like the papacy ran on the stable fuel of sacrosanct populism.
When the papacy decided to “loosen up,” lose the triple tiara, and dye the Church’s allegedly graying hair, the semiotic and spiritual focus shifted from the office to the man in that office. “Ecce homo!” As the traditionally robust papal exterior has been scraped and sanded down to a thinner, more “functional,” more “personal” veneer of down-to-earth pastoral accompaniment, rather than a seemingly aloof royal authority, an otherwise healthy love for what the pope represents has been projected onto the man who happens to be representing the papacy.
It is, to use a crude analogy, as if children at an amusement park have been conditioned to fawn over the man inside the Goofy suit instead of loving Goofy qua iconic reality. Once you removed Goofy’s head, the spell was broken, and the only choice for most children was to walk away disillusioned or to latch onto that new, all-too-human face with the same instinctive zeal. But just as an actor is hired to hide inside his role, so a pope is elected to deny himself inside the larger iconic reality of the living authority of St. Peter, who “to this day and for ever he lives and presides and exercises judgment in his successors the bishops of the Holy Roman See, which he founded and consecrated with his blood” (Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, chapter 2).
“The Catholic Church’s Bold Message—nah, not quite the same ring.”
What We Now Call Personality
As long as our pastors insist on thinking with “the world,” on trying to learn from “the world,” on appealing to “the world,” rather than simply calling it to conversion–in a word, as long as the hierarchy remains stuck in the rut of pastoral accommodationism that was carved out at Vatican II, we will not shake the perception that the pope is but the most prominent “mega-church” pastor in the pack. The papacy has become so democratized, so “personalized”, that the ancient instinct to venerate the pope can only find purchase on the particulars of The Man With The Papal Ring. Hence, authentic love for the pope and our shepherds is not based on popular relevance, but on traditionalism. For it is by anchoring ourselves in the ornate sanctuaries and estuaries of the larger Catholic Tradition that we, to paraphrase Chesterton, may be freed from the tyranny of our own age–the age of the image, the I’mAge.
To cite Chesterton again:
Luther opened an epoch; and began the modern world. He was the first man who ever consciously used his consciousness or what was later called his Personality. He had as a fact a rather strong personality. Aquinas had an even stronger personality … [but] it never occurred to him to use anything except his wits, in defence of a truth distinct from himself. It never occurred to Aquinas to use Aquinas as a weapon. … [H]e belonged to an age of intellectual unconsciousness, to an age of intellectual innocence, which was very intellectual. Now Luther did begin the modern mood of depending on things not merely intellectual. … When he quoted a Scripture text, inserting a word that is not in Scripture, he was content to shout back at all hecklers: “Tell them that Dr. Martin Luther will have it so!” That is what we now call Personality. A little later it was called Psychology. After that it was called Advertisement or Salesmanship. … [Luther] destroyed Reason; and substituted Suggestion.5 Thomas Aquinas (1933), chapter VIII.
Personal Charisma, Popular Appeal, and Pastoral Persuasion vs. Reason, Tradition, and Royal Order–that is the choice Catholics face, a choice between good-guy, rockstar popes, on the one hand, whose kinetic personalism compels them to “open for” Buddy Jesus in all the major cities, and popes, on the other hand, whose quasi-anonymous bearing and traditional, sacrosanct trappings actually bespeak the vice-regent of Christ the King.
Without the traditional semiotic buffer that obscures his individuality, the Man In The High Basilica cannot but become one Great Leader among others (e.g. “the Catholic Reagan,” “the Catholic Obama”, etc.). This is why Pope Francis’s World Famous Humility™ rings so hollow. By rejecting the conventional residence, clothing, shoes, expressions, liturgical disciplines, etc. of the papacy, Pope “Call Me Jorge” Francis becomes a tractor beam of attention, deepening, as I have argued, a spiritual displacement that began in the Conciliar Epoch, when the papacy decided to vulgarize itself in the name of ecumenical outreach. By emphasizing how different he is from, and how much more selfless he is compared to, his predecessors, Pope Francis has become the biggest egotist in the world. After all, sadly, “bosses are often narcissists.”
Nothing personal, Fr. Bergoglio, but you’re the pope–please act the part. We Catholics will be your biggest fans.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | This is a win of sorts for Rome: the Synod managed to cause far more damage and chaos than the largest hurricane ever recorded by satellite, proving that the Church is still a mighty force in the world. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | This danger is also sometimes referred to as “in cauda venenum“. |
| ↑3 | U.S. Presidents have not needed to change the Constitution to flout it, so why should leading prelates have to “change doctrine” to achieve the same effect? |
| ↑4 | I do admit, though, that there is something very odd, and oddly disturbing, about a hall full of ordained men snapping photos at the pope like teens at a pop concert. That’s what you get, though, when you raise up a generation of pastors to “learn from the world.” |
| ↑5 | Thomas Aquinas (1933), chapter VIII. |
This Pope is a real joke to be honest…He comes to the States and has an audience of a bunch of Catholics supposedly who support child slaughter/abortion and sodomy and WHAT does this Pope talk about??? He talks about climate change and immigration, I mean, HOW BIBLICAL IS THAT??? Nothing about saving souls or repentance, pretty much NOTHING….Also, WHY aren’t these Catholics who support abortion or gay marriage and are NOT repenting kicked out of the Church as the BIBLE3, THE BIBLE, clearly says to do in Matthew 18:15-17 and 1 Corinthians 5:13??? Why do so many leaders including in this Pope fail to utilize or apply the Spiritual Works of Mercy, ADMONISH THE SINNER, in this church???? One cannot be sitting there like the coward in Chicago, Cupich, does and give out communion to folks like Durbin, etc, etc, AND at the same time say that they are admonishing the sinner, does NOT work like that….
Oh, Mr. Feehan, I’m sorry, but you’re at least 55 years too late. Please stop talking like a Catholic; there’s no room for that in the neo-protestant religion of Rome.
You know, a lot of you folks like to think that you are better than Protestants, EXACTLY WHY is that?? I have been on both sides of the spectrum and my experience has shown me that most protestants that I have met REALLY read the BIble unlike most Catholics and they rely on the BIBLE, THE BIBLE, alone…I could really care less what some Pope or some Catechsim says, the BIBLE, THE BIBLE is and always will be my final authority, NOT SOME WEAK SOCIAL JUSTICE COWARD POPE….Again, why the arrogance/better than attitude among far too many Catholics as it relates to solid evangelicals, it REEKS of pathetic arrogance, ESPECIALLY when I have met a TON, A TON, of Catholics over the years who have little to no clue about the Book of Romans, how they can KNOW that they are going to heaven, etc, etc…
I was attempting sarcasm. I guess it fell flat.
I’m not well enough versed (pun intended) to get into this discussion with you. Ask Mr. Skojec.
You do not know if you are going to heaven and if you think you do know you have swallowed a lie and one of your big problems with your approach to the Bible is that every single word of the New Testament was written by a Catholic to other Catholics in an already existing Catholic Church and yet the author of the New Testament – The Catholic Church -has never taught what you claim.
One has to be a Catholic to be a Christian for for that is what Christ ordained for He called all to be a member of it, to be taught by it, to be under its authority, to receive the Sacraments as the way to Salvation and Sanctification.
Have a nice day
Yes, I DO know that I am going to heaven, ephesians 2:8 and 9, Romans 6:23, Titus 3:5 iand 1John 5, verse 13….Your church does NOT teach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ so you would not know this….Catholic means Universal and so one does NOT, THANK GOD, have to be a Catholic in order to go to heaven, DROP THAT WEAK GARBAGE with me….I don’t CARE what your church teaches, THE BIBLE is my final authority, NOT SOME WEAK SOCIAL JUSTICE COWARD POPE YOU FOLKS LIKE TO CALL HOLY FATHER, NOT SOME CATECHISM, BUT THE BIBLE, GOD’S WORD, is my final authority….Drop the garbage also that you wrote the Bible, that is an outright lie…..One has to be called a Catholic in order to be a Christian????? REALLY???? SO, BILLY GRAHAM, C.S. LEWSIS, DIETRICH BONNHOFFER, DL MOODY, AW TOZIER WERE NOT CHRISTIANS, IS THAT IT???? ARE YOU KIDDING ME HERE GENIUS????????? You are barking up the wrong tree here as UNLIKE MOST OF YOU CATHOLICS, I actually read and know God’s Word, I don’t just go to some weak ritual for an hour every week and that is it….If you are such a CHRISTIAN, then why do you and folks in this church participate or support so many things that are NOT, NOT in the Bible…I want BOOK, CHAPTER, AND VERSES to support your position on the following Catholic Church teachings and I am not messing around here, I want SPECIFIC BIBLE BOOKS, CHAPTERS, AND VERSES….You want to come on here and give me this big lie that you folks are such CHRISTIANS, then please, IN THE BIBE, tell me where the following information can be found:—–Praying to Mary—-NOT BIBLICAL
—-Purgatory___NOT BIBLICAL
(OBVIOUSLY YOU FOLKS DO NOT TRUST THAT JESUS DEATH ON THE CROSS PAID IT ALL, WHAT ELSE IS NEW WITH THIS CHURCH??) –
—Praying the rosary
—-Going to some priests, a fair amount who are gutless cowards/homosexuals to confess my sins (plenty of bible verses to refute this lie)
—-Calling someone Holy Father
—–Praying to a saint
—–Calling your priests Father
—–Praying for the dead
—–Mortal versus venial sin…
****And again, DO NOT bring up the Catechism or ANY OTHER document to support your weak argument, I WANT bible books, chapters, and verses…..
I know so many people getting out of this “dead religion”, it is not even funny….Oh, and answer me this one please….IF, I am not going to do it, but let’s suppose that I give you the benefit of the doubt….IF the Catholic Church, as you say wrote the Bible, then PLEASE EXPLAIN to me why there are NO, NONE, NO BIBLES in the pews, answer me that one???? Also, please explain to me why SO FEW Catholics ever read the Bible or attend Bible Study????? Come on, I want good answers to those questions…and ONce again, THE BIBLE, THE BIBLE, is my final authority, NOT some weak social justice left leaning COWARD Pope and NOT some Catechism or church tradition….True Christians that I know, and I know a TON of them, A TON of them former Catholics, they have found the TRUTH, not a bunch of man made traditions/CRAP, use the BIBLE, THE BIBLE as their final authority….If you support this joke of a Pope, then that is further evidence that you just may be a little bit lost….I mean, the weak social justice COWARD gets in front of Congress, a bunch of wicked sinners and WHAT does the coward focus on, not abortion or ss marriage, but CLIMATE CHANGE AND IMMIGRATION, I MEAN, WHAT A JOKE THIS COWARD IS….Oh, and your “Holy Father” certainly NOT THE HELL mine, and NEVER WILL HE BE, said that Jesus death on the cross was a failure, YEP, HE SAID IT….BUT, BUT you and your type, you keep on keeping on calling this coward Holy Father, I sure the heck am not going to stop you….
IANS will no longer to respond to you because you are so niggardly in your use of capital letters.
Separate and aside from my capital letters, you do not have a leg to stand on…I will pray for you that God opens your eyes to the TRUTH of his word and his word only. I was once where you are at, but ONCE I opened up God’s Word and actually read it, things changed for the better…. WHY no bibles in the pews, can you answer me that one??
Mike, you’ve stumbled into the wrong place to go dropping your Jack Chick theology around like so much digital napalm.
There are more than enough people here who could substantively engage your questions, if you chose to phrase them respectfully. But since you’re not, let me just say this (it’s probably more your speed):
Repent and convert, lest you risk eternal damnation.
“Urged by faith, we are obliged to believe and to maintain that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic. We believe in her firmly and we confess with simplicity that outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins, as the Spouse in the Canticles [Sgs 6:8] proclaims: ‘One is my dove, my perfect one. She is the only one, the chosen of her who bore her,’ and she represents one sole mystical body whose Head is Christ and the head of Christ is God [1 Cor 11:3]. In her then is one Lord, one faith, one baptism [Eph 4:5]. ”
https://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/B8-unam.asp
Catholic means Universal, CERTAINLY NOT something of which a bunch of man made TRADITIONS which Jesus Christ himself spoke CLEARLY against following in Matthew 15:9…You want to throw one out one verse here, one verse there, you go ahead with someone else…Jack Chick theology, ARE YOU REFERRING TO GOD’S WORD as that???? I know your religion, me and the TONS of foliks who have gotten the heck out of if know it quite well and ALL of the things which your church teaches that ARE NOT found in Scripture…Why don’t you respond to ALL of the specific things above, which I mention which are NOT in Scripture, NOT EVEN CLOSE. to which your church adheres to??? Purgatory, NOT BIBLICAL, praying to Mary, NOT BIBLICAL, praying the Rosary, NOT BIBLICAL, going to some weak coward, quite possibly homosexual priest for confession, NOT BIBLICAL, calling priests Father, NOT BIBLICAL, calling some weak social justice left leaning coward Holy Father, NOT BIBLICAL, mortal/venial sin, NOT BIBLICAL…Again, I KNOW the truth and the TRUTH is in God’s WORD, NOT based on what some Catechsim says, NOT on what some weak left leaning social justice coward Pope says, but in GOD’S WORD AND GOD’S WORD ALONE…And, you mean to tell me that CS lewis, aw tozier, dl moody, spurgeon, all great men of God are in HELL because they were not CATHOLIC, is that it??? Again, you want to spew that garbage somewhere else, you go right ahead, NOT with me…..Now, why don’t you go and pray to Mary while I will go STRAIGHT TO JESUS as the Bible clearly indicates to do, 1 Timothy 2, verse 5…I will pray for you as well as you are quite confused and lost., don’t worry, you have plenty of company….Go ahead, pray to Mary, I will go straight to Jesus Christ……
Christ is the head of one church, not some weak left leaning social justice coward….Start following Jesus and stop putting this weak social justice coward on anywhere near the same level as Jesus, he is NIT even close….
Goodbye, Mike.
Your arrogant Bible-alone ignorance has led you into the sin of presumption, whereby you arrogantly claim to know for a fact that you will enter heaven before your final judgment with Jesus. You are in for a huge surprise.
I will be praying for you as you are confused/lost…Paul never called himself a Catholic, never did…
You are filled with know-it-all hubris, rooted in your individualist, self-serving interpretation of Scripture. Nowhere in the Bible does Scripture claim ONLY the Bible can be the source for understanding the Christian faith, which is Catholic and, by the way, more accurately means “whole” – notwithstanding the rampant ignorance of the term so often repeated in service to false claims to the name.
In the youtube video that is linked (call me jorge) at the end of this article, the man speaking knew Bergoglio in Argentina. He started a school program to teach children of different religions to [he stated] “respect others” because “that is the most important thing”. He went on, “It’s in the jewish tradition and in the talmud”. Well that’s good enough for me!
(I think all references in the article to “Pascalli” should read Pacelli.) This perceptive essay catches the great problem at the center of this papacy, the cult of the personality; not even with John Paul II did we see anything approaching the (silly) adulation we see lavished on this pope. And why the current pope-boosting? Because Jorge Bergoglio has cultivated the “persona humilde” look, the note of ostentatious humility we saw from the first instance of his reign, and it is something well-liked on today’s world stage, even if the spectators choose not to follow the example themselves. Personally, I catch a faint whiff the pharisaical in the theatrics.
It struck me from day one of his election, that perhaps a truly humble attitude if one disliked pomp and ceremony would be to endure the trappings of the office in order to convey to all its majesty, not to cast them on the floor to demonstrate….well, to demonstrate something. After all, “enduring” entails personal suffering, while peremptory rejection would seem to involve at least a little personal pride. And I always thought that an essential note underlying true humility and charity was to hide their workings. If we shared a poor man’s meagre meals, we were to do so in private, not in front of television cameras; if we gave lodgings to someone needy, we weren’t supposed to advertise the gesture to every reporter who cared to record it in his newspaper. There was a reason no one discovered Becket’s hair shirt till he was murdered.
These days especially as never before we should apply a rule of thumb to what occurs around us: Any person or institution is authentic only in inverse proportion to his or its public acceptance. When vast swaths of the population applaud a man and admire him, it is an almost infallible indication that something is amiss. There are endless examples to certify the reliability of my rule. Remember the embarrassing night of Obama’s election when fully grown adults made perfect fools of themselves crying in front of cameras, overcome with joy at the election of an absurdly mediocre small-time Chicago politician? Now think of the popularity of Pope Benedict compared to that of Pope Francis and draw your own conclusions.
Precisely. We knew there was an issue when Pope Francis refused to wear the red shoes. He told the world that he was going to be different,and thst means better, than his predecessors.
Good point, Laura. Upon assuming an office, most men don’t mean “I’m going to be worse” when they announce they will be different.
Thank you for catching that error. I had written that section weeks ago and the transposition got away from me during revisions.
Also, I don’t know if I conveyed it clearly enough, but, yes, the element of SUFFERING and SELF-DENIAL that being pope entails is what is most spurned in this papacy, and, I would argue, since Rome decided to “modernize” and “personalize” itself at V2. To recall Mel Brooks, “it’s good to be the king”–but only if one exploits the carnal benefits thereof. For a Catholic, our share in Christ’s royal authority–and ESPECIALLY SO for the pope!–entails deep self-denial. After all, Christ the King was emptied of glory, shrouded in weakness, and subjected to death in order to show His Kingship most decisively. The pope can only do the same, but in an inverse way, since he is an icon to that Kingship. His weakness is to be shrouded in regal trappings, his personal-preferences immolated in fidelity to the Kingdom.
In a word, away with beta, celebrity popes! 😉
Elliot, you made many good points but the article was soooooo very long. And I am not sure what the first half of your piece had to do with the second. I wish your article had started with ‘Theandric, Cruciform, Ultramontanist—Catholic’ .
Anyway, our Pope is Mr. Personality, the Mercy guy who has a good word for every sinner by telling them, if effect, if it feels good and your conscience says it OK, just do it. Happy, happy Pappy. But unfortunately Pope Francis’ kind of mercy (not telling folks to stop sinning) is soul killing. Our dear Pope doesn’t seem to understand that letting folks continue sinning is not why Christ came. Christ wants us to stop sinning because sinning make us unhappy in the long run. Christ is merciful when he gives us rules on how to behave; the Pope is not when he fails to do so.
Yes, Jesus Christ the Son of God brutally suffered and died just so thst we could continue reveling in our sin. It is all so mind-boggling….
It is becoming more apparent that Francis wants a Protestant Catholic Church. As a beginning. After this is accomplished we will be asked to move ‘forward’ to embrace pagan religions (sic) and then to embrace the non-beliefs of atheists.
There must be a goal to all this nonsense and I think that it is One World Religion.
Agree completely Barbara. Excellent observation.
He isn’t the first Pope to want that.
It’s what I call “Roman Anglicanism”. This is our Lambeth 1930 Moment.
Mr. Dowd, thank you for your comment. I did indeed grapple for many days about whether to cut the piece in two, but ultimately it seemed like a unified “story” I had to tell. The transition was rather artless, but the point of the first ‘half’ is to show what temptations our hierarchy is flirting with (and often wallowing in), and to establish that the “Bergoglio” problem roots that go much farther back than 2013.
Jorge Bergoglio is not Catholic, therefore, cannot be Pope.
Be careful what you say about that….I was already warned.
We might re-frame this into: Francis is the pope. He’s a bad pope. History will eradicate all he has done.
Very well done.
Thank you!
Thanks for a fine, insightful article.
Much rings true regarding the importance of distinguishing the divine office, from the personality with the strengths and foibles of the man himself. For that matter the article outlines a good model for how all Christians should conduct themselves; as disciples of Christ, office holders or ambassadors of a sort, who are representing our Lord, each of course in his/her own unique way, but ultimately drawing others to Him, not ourselves. I say this all as one who along with my wife, was blessed to have seen His Holiness when he was in DC recently. As wonderful as the experience was, it will only bear fruit in so far as it leads to a deeper relationship with our Lord.
Thank you, I’m glad you were edified.
Pat Buchanan whispers the “H word”.
http://buchanan.org/blog/is-the-pope-toying-with-heresy-124205
Nobody ever expects the American Inquisition!
Brother Elliot. This is prolly your best work yet. God Bless you and thank you for this courageous and apt piece.
It was a hell of a fun piece to write! Glad you liked it, brother.
Of course here at 1P5 we are naturally most concerned about Francis’ baleful effect on the Church, the disastrous results of his comments and actions over the last 30+ months. But a pope is also a political figure, someone whose words matter in international affairs. There too Francis’ innate liberalism, his disturbing penchant for siding with leftists everywhere, gives cause for alarm. Nowhere is that more true than across Europe, a continent now in extreme danger because of a massive invasion of Mohammedans, an invasion that, far from criticizing or even rationally analyzing, the pope seems to support. Read this analysis from American Thinker magazine:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/mday_the_invasion_of_the_west.html