On Wednesday, it was noted that Pope Pius XI’s page on the Vatican website had vanished, along with all of his encyclicals, even though the work of popes both before and after him remained.
We noted that his Mortalium Animos is damning of modern-day ecumenism, and Quas Primas is, of course, another encyclical that has — inasmuch as it promotes the civic duty to recognize Christ the King — shoved down the memory hole in action, if not in fact. Others noted that Casti Connubii — still arguably the most authoritative papal document on marriage and family — is an even more inconvenient bit of magisterial truth. But despite many suspicions, at some point yesterday, his page — and his documents — returned. There was no notation of any kind, so we may never know what happened, or why. And perhaps it doesn’t ultimately matter, if it was really (as is likely) just a mistake.
Nevertheless, Bai MacFarlane of Mary’s Advocates observed something similar yesterday, and it’s a problem that hasn’t been resolved:
Five translations of Saint Pope John Paul II’s often-quoted instruction to tribunal judges was removed from the Vatican’s website some time last year. It is now only available in Italian.
Each year, the Pope gives an address to the Tribunal of the Roman Rota and these are instructions to the world’s canon lawyers from THE legislator, the Pope. In 1987, Saint Pope John Paul II gave an address that cautioned against misusing the grounds for nullity of marriage – particularly “on the pretext of some immaturity or psychic weakness” (Canon 1095).
I posted a YouTube video on the Mary’s Advocates channel, showing how the Vatican’s website used to have a page showing all of Saint Pope John Paul’s addresses to the Roman Rota (in up to six different languages). That webpage was removed some time last year, which I demonstrate in my video by using a public webpage archiving tool, “way back time machine.”
[…]
In Saint Pope John Paul II’s 1987 address to the tribunal, he cautioned against the “scandal of seeing the value of Christian marriage being practically destroyed by the exaggerated and almost automatic multiplication of declarations of nullity of marriage in cases of the failure of marriage.” He taught, “By preventing the ecclesiastical tribunal from becoming an easy way out for the dissolution of marriages that have failed, […] it also brings about an increased commitment in the use of resources for pastoral care of people after marriage.” He cites Familiaris Consortio’s instruction for helping married couples in day-to-day married life, long before anyone is thinking about divorce.
In my research, I found that in the active tribunals that cover half the population of the United States in 2012, they granted annulment (on average) in 98.7 percent of the cases judged.
In the summer of 2015, Pope Francis made some newsworthy changes to the annulment process, making them less expensive and faster. However, the grounds for annulment themselves were technically not changed. Sometime after that, the English translation of Saint Pope John Paul’s 1987 speech the Roman Rota appears to be missing from the Vatican’s website, along with the list of all of his speeches in multiple languages.
The sad thing is that in an age where we have a Vatican that can’t be trusted — and a complicit Catholic media helping them to edit inconvenient statements out of papal speeches in real time — occurrences such as these automatically take on the suspicion of being anything but an accident.
I am reminded time and again by even my most suspicious friends who have dealt with the Vatican directly of the first rule in such cases: Never ascribe to malice what can be equally easily attributed to incompetence when it comes to the Vatican and the Internet.
Nevertheless, an entire missing page is a bit easier to believe is an accident than the surreptitious removal of easily accessible translations.
this could be an orthodox catholic working on the Vatican website, trying to make the blogosphere talking about those texts
?
Why is it always the documents which refute Francis that disappear? One-sided errors are not errors. We already have examples of manipulation – the Synod documents and the process used to create the 2015 final Relatio document.
It seems that instead of encouraging couples to stick it out and work through the Har Stuff of marriage, the prelates are more interested in helping to break up what used to be the most beautiful Sacrament of Marriage! Why are they bending to this horrible culture, is beyond me. My husband and I have been married for 53+ years and yes, there are many, many Hard Bumps in the road! But the word divorce for separation or annulment should never ever, enter the discussion!
there are many, many Hard Bumps in the road! O but how beautiful it is to come through them still one flesh!
Yes, still one flesh. We have found ourselves at a time when many would end up in a nursing home or shuttled off somewhere. Well Thanks be to God, our three children have made it so that we just moved from a large property we could no longer manage, in So. Calif. to Nevada. My daughters husband just did some changing in his job and they moved from Virginia to Nevada. They found a home that was suitable for their five children and a bedroom and bath for us. A big responsibility for a growing, active family. I don’t think I need mention that they are Faithful, active Catholics, in every sense of the word.
We will also be spending quite a large amount of time with our oldest son in the wine country of Calif. only a few hours drive from here. The others son is a Pilot with American Airlines and will do his best to see that we spend as much time with his family as possible.
I add all of this because this is the fruit of sticking together through all that Hard Stuff I mentioned. So for this Pope making annulments cheaper and faster, and to read the “stats” that 98% of those seeking Anulments were granted! That is downright diabolical in my point of view!
Thank you for your wonderful and edifying testimony. God bless you and yours and his work at your hands, and may you and your spouse surely not lose your reward.
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St. Paul urges to be of the mind that was in Christ Jesus. I couldn’t help but recall the following in regard to what you and your spouse have lived through and how your children by the mercy of God have turned out:
(My emphasis)
Thank you and I pray we gain some reward for making it through those Hard Spots. We are all fallen, so sin is a constant battle in day to day living.
I’ve been following your discussion and must say I agree with most everything your putting out there. Others are certainly well informed also. I think of myself as a well informed and educated Catholic, but somehow with age, it’s getting more difficult to elucidate my thoughts in writing. Get met talking and watch out…God bless
Mahalo Nui Loa! as we say in Hawai’i. I very much appreciate your encouraging comment! Sometimes one gets beaten up and the thoughts of , ‘what’s the point?’ crop up. You have made my day and your timely comment [He is always involved. Thanks be to him!] tells me it is worthwhile even though we may not see immediate results.
We just always have to remember there are those reading everything and digesting and always learning when we think ” what’s the point’! I certainly feel that way in a large family of in-laws, many of whom are very liberal and still call themselves Catholics, while buying into all the Democratic platform, including abortion on demand right up to the moment of birth. Denied of course! While on my side of the family, everyone is Protestant, Lutheran to boot! 🙂 But it keeps us on our toes and we best know our beautiful Catholic Faith. God bless.
It’s been a few years, but we spent about three glorious weeks in Maui with our children. A trip they still talk about. Out Pilot son has taken his family back a number of times. He loves it there.
The Valley Isle Mystical. Magical.
God is always faithful! Thanks be to God for all His tender mercies to you and your wife.
When we are faithful, it is amazing the grace that gets poured out.
Thank you so much for your witness of 53 years of marriage! My wife and I have been married just over 5 years now and she already hear’s whispers from others about divorce… nothing more than whispers, and she tells those people who say them to shut up and go away (such a thing never enters our dialogue ever). But it’s sad that any hard time can simply cause people to think of separation. So, yes, thank you! People like you make those of us new to this wonderful path know we can make it too!
Five years is doing pretty good these days. 🙂 And good for your wife for dismissing those whispering in her ear. Just keep Christ in your marriage and you’ll have a long successful life together. God bless.
I wonder the same thing. As a victim of unwarranted no-fault divorce, when my children were 4, 6 and 8 years old, I have survived and still have my faith…but my three young adult children have not yet recovered their lost faith. Divorce wreaks havoc on faith and morals…and is the one of the prime causes of abortion, along with contraception and usury….and of course fornication.
It’s great that you have kept the Faith. Yes we’ve had 53+ years of a phenomenal marriage, but that does not mean all three of our children are living the faith lives we’d like to see. Our sons have drifted away somewhat. I pray and sacrifice as much as I can for their full return to the Sacaments. But they have at not bought into abortion and all the other garbage being peddled out there. They know better, before I was totally disabled, I was active pro-lifer in every sense of the word! 🙂 Don’t give up on your children, you are a good example of maintaining your Faith. God bless.
But of course your husband can “repent” of “your marriage” so that continuing to live with his paramour, he can come to communion. It is a total joke. The lies we are being fed is staggering.
It’s a case of let’s feed them candies and sweets lest they leave their infantile faith behind.
But then of course that’s exactly what they do, leave their Faith behind!
Looks like they removed the wrong documents from John Paul of Unhappy Memory. How about throwing Ut Unum SInt on the ash-heap of Church history – or better yet his entire cult before that time bomb explodes?
That they can’t get past the great and saintly pope should give you cause for pause when you are about to make comments such as the one you have made above regarding Pope St. John Paul II the Great.
He kissed the Koran and brought shame on the office of the Papacy, his ecumenism brings any and all other false faiths to equality with the Divinely delivered Catholic Faith outside of which their is no salvation. No matter how avuncular and lovable he was the damage he sewed cannot be forgotten or forgiven. He may have tried to stop this march to oblivion the Masons have so masterfully accomplished with poppa Satan but we the rank and file do not have to accept it.
Great Saint of God and of His holy Catholic Church.
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‘damage he sewed cannot be forgotten or forgiven’ Wow!
In your opinion, now that the media mania has subsided rational re-examination of what happened between 1979 and Benedict can be done, ecumenism is completely illogical, the Faith was delivered it does not evolve. Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, all the sentimental whimpering in the world will not matter.
Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in all their perceived “postconciliar ecumenical enthusiasms” distinguish between true and false ecumenism.
What do you mean comments like these? Do you have any idea what I am talking about?
Unt Unum Sint called for a common martyrology with non-Catholics – this is against the Catholic faith as a martyr must give witness to Catholicism, not heretical sects.
JPII asked St. John the Baptist to protect Islam – it’s on the Vatican’s website. Asking a Saint to protect a false religion that leads people to hell? What???
JPII accommodated pagans in breaking the first commandment at Assisi by giving them rooms to worship their gods (which St. Paul calls demons) on sacred Church ground. The event also triggered a sense of religious indifferentism to a world that was already sensitive to confusion.
Not to mention his many other interreligious and ecumenical events that did NOT explicitly indicate the need to convert to Catholicism in order to be saved – contrary to what the Apostles and countless traditional holy Saints have done, especially those who have been killed for preaching the Gospel and the sacraments.
JPII had scantily clad women appear before him on several occasions giving scandal against modesty (e.g. circus performers).
JPII kissed the Qur’an: an act which the Franciscan proto-martyrs refused to do before they were killed, a smack in the face to normal traditional Catholic Saints.
JPII kissed the ring of “archbishop” Rowan Williams of the Anglican sect and then gave him a pectoral cross. BOTH gestures signify that Williams has Apostolic authority – yet he is merely a layman.
JPII had a pagan ritual done to him in Mexico City in the year 2002. He also had a long line of other liturgical abuses and banality (which harms the faithful and Catholic doctrine) AND he did not try to stop it from his beloved Papal Master of Ceremonies for well over a decade mind you.
JPII gave cardinal hats to infamous men whose theology helped harmed the Church like Congar, De Lubac, and Balthasar (Balthasar died before he could get his cardinal hat). This was even AFTER Balthasar gave JPII a book on Tarot Cards that Balthasar wrote a forward to (Balthasar also denied that Christ had knowledge that he was the Messiah until some later point and that Christ suffered the pains of hell when he descend to the dead).
ALL of these scandalous actions of JPII went uncorrected and are against the Catholic faith.
So there you go. It’s people like you (abnormal Catholics) that have to live with this – that have to call this sad Pope a saint. It’s YOU that has to defend all of this garbage later on when a generation from now Catholics, who have no emotional attachment to John Paul the Small, will read about these events and be scandalized. So go ahead and try to defend of all of this. The “BUT SAINTS MAKE MISTAKES LOL” argument is moot because the whole reason for canonization is for someone to be propped up for imitation, making sure they are safe to emulate. Mistakes that go against the faith itself AND were uncorrected are not the simple mistakes of other Saints, they are events that should have barred him from canonization.
Search for my disqus comments that respond to what are oft repeated canards heard in the circles of those who call themselves “Trads” that do untold damage to the faithful.
I searched through you disqus and found nothing. Why not just copy and paste them for me? Why not take the time and type up a rebuttal for the lurkers? After all, you claim I am doing the damage but you won’t come to the defense of the faithful now?
Here’s a canard for you:
“May Saint John Baptist protect Islam and all the people of Jordan, and all who participated in this celebration, a memorable celebration.”
https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/travels/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20000321_wadi-al-kharrar.html
Not such a “canard” now is it?
See, this is why I don’t belive you have any defense for this, because these events actually did happen and they are contrary to the faith.
Also, there is no such thing as a “trad” when it comes to normal Catholicism, only radicals who accuse Popes of heresies and the like, they are faux-trads.
1) On the canonizations of Popes Saints Pope John Paul II and John XXIII
a) My comment under The Remnant’s About that Canonization of John XXIII: Just a Minute, Now by Christopher A. Ferrara
b) Cf. This article Are Canonizations Based on Papal Infallibility? | Crisis magazine and my comments there.
c) Cf. https://disqus.com/home/discussion/onepeterfive/can_a_catholic_criticize_the_pope_st_thomas_answers/#comment-2045531365
2) Pictures which appear to show Pope St. John Paul II kissing the Qur’an
a) Cf. Has the Vatican issued clarification for pictures which appear to show Pope St John Paul II kissing the Qur’an? and the selected Dick Harfield’s answer. If I recall correctly, Dick Harfield is not even a Catholic.
b) My comment over at The American Catholic.
3) “God bless you all! God bless Jordan! May Saint John Baptist protect Islam and all the people of Jordan, and all who participated in this celebration, a memorable celebration.”
Cf. My comment over at The American Catholic.
4) Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in all their perceived “postconciliar ecumenical enthusiasms” distinguish between true and false ecumenism.
1. The Remnant article/Crisis/ your comments:
I never quoted the The Remnant and I am not arguing for what they are trying to say in that article. This is irrelevant to our discussion as I do not deny the infallibility of canonizations. What I question is their prudence in relation to the actions and writings of John Paul II.
2a. Quran:
As the link admits, Catholic World News cites Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid as confirming that the book was the Quran.
Next, the excuses always given is that “kissing is appropriate when receiving a gift from that culture.” But here’s the thing: The Pope kissing the Quran is going to confuse people worldwide as not everyone is from said middle-eastern cultural. No clarification was issued from the Vatican and no clarification or repentance from JPII whose picture was taken for this event. And further, it is still contrary to the Franciscan proto-martyrs.
And this is the point all along: John Paul II does an action that is contrary to the faith that helps to cultivate indifferentism, whether it was out of courtesy or not, onlookers are generally not going to be able to decipher what is going on. AND that action went uncorrected. In fact, it would be more prudent to reject the gift as the book is from a false religion, form a murderous tyrant, a religion that does not lead people salvation. Rejecting the gift would be a clear sign that salvation is only from Christ.
So in regards to this issue, my point still remains, in addition to the new ones I provided.
2 b. See above. The issue is not what JPII believes personally, but how his actions and writings come off as harmful to the faith. And once again, that is the reason for canonization: to make sure the person can be emulated AND that there is nothing in their life that can serve as a danger to the faith.
3.
You wrote:
“A definition of protect protect is to keep safe from harm or injury. Therefore using this definition, the saintly Pope’s prayer becomes May Saint John Baptist keep Islam from harm or injury. The players in drama of the History of Creation are God and God in his angels and in his saints, and the primeval serpent – the devil or Satan – and his angels, and men who give themselves over to him. It is the war of the good guys and the bad guys.
Therefore we may now interpret the Pope’s prayer as Islam be kept from being harmed or injured by the Good or the evil. I would say the ones capable of doing harm or injury are the evil ones since every action of God even when he punishes or brings disaster is good. For this prayer to be good, the Pope might have been praying that May Saint John Baptist protect Islam and all the people of Jordan from being the instruments of evil/the evil ones. To me this is a good prayer.”
The issue, once again, is not how you can do mental gymnastics and come up with strange interpretations. The issue is how, at face value, this prayer will be taken by multitudes of people if it starts to be known. THAT is the issue. It’s NOT his intentions, it’s how what he does and says is highly problematic and can do damage – recent examples of this can be seen in Pope Francis.
Second, one should indeed want harm to come to Islam – the religion itself should be weakened and eliminated. “Harm” can mean something good, you are interpreting “harm” as always an intrinsic evil and hence you assume JPII must be praying to protect it from an intrinsic evil. But in reality “harm” can mean something good: e.g., “I wish harm would befall the abortion industry.”
You wrote:
“I gave the example of the good thief, first Pope Peter and 10 Apostles who are now saints – they have now been forgiven and he is now beholding the face of the One who in his mercy and Power made him Shepherd over all of his flock and made him saint. Pope St. John Paul II, pray for us.”
This reduces canonization down to a level of minimalism without pastoral regard and prudence towards the actions and writings of a candidate. JPII was a mixed-bag; good and bad mixed together – you should not canonize mixed-bags. By this logic a public blasphemer can become a canonized Saint without a public or even private repentance and correction for his actions because he somehow made it to heaven in the end. The good thief and Saint Peter had public corrections and repentance for what they did; a conversion to not make those mistakes again. JPII did not have this and continued to act strangely in similar themes, especially with regards to non-Catholics.
4. “John Paul II urged bishops to foster a “healthy ecumenism,” an authentic dialogue that does not make concessions to truth with Christian denominations. – Real Ecumenism Doesn’t Compromise the Truth, Says Pope, September 30, 2002 | ZENIT “
Again, the issue here is how his ecumenical activities can be interpreted. If you are not explicitly communicating to your non-Catholic party that Catholicism is necessary for salvation, as well as the sacraments, then the statement above can be easily manipulated. Couple this with JPII’s inter-religious and ecumenical actions/visits which are easily misinterpreted into heresy.
JPII further says:
“this must not lead to a certain indifferentism that, by a false irenicism, puts all opinions on the same level,”
So, what does he mean? Where is the direction for which truths that are to be kept and which thrown away? Where is the explicit statement that in ecumenical dialogue you must somehow communicate the need to convert to Catholicism and adhere to her doctrines in order to be saved? What if they also read Ut Unum Sint? Remember that one?
To put it another way, I have personally seen people citing John Paul II in order to justify false ecumenism. How can they possibly do that if he is so clear and safe?
Example:
“Well, JPII says we must not back down from Christian truth and must not generate indifferentism. I am not indifferent to our unity, we should talk our differences out. Some of the things my Church teaches are true and some are not. Likewise I think some of the things your denomination teaches are true and some are false. We need to work together to find that common ground – to maintain the truths that are authentic, and to be truly unified instead of being indifferent towards our separated state. For example, I believe the sacrament of confirmation should be eliminated as it is not of Apostolic origin and because your denomination does not practice it either. At the same time, I believe infants should be baptized but your denomination does not; let’s work together to find and understanding so that you realize infant baptize is true and at the same time we can help each other to come to an agreement on several issues in order to achieve are unity.”
If you can do mental gymnastics to make JPII’s “protect Islam” thing work, then this interpretation can work too – in fact even more so because JPII lacks explicit direction. AND I have run into this many times, even from people who have PhDs.
But once again, it’s NOT about what JPII believes, it’s about how his actions and writings are harmful. You pulled an ambiguous passage about ecumenism that liberals can easily twist all day long. It’s also easily twisted because they can couple it with JPII’s ecumenical activities as a WHOLE; suddenly that direction about ecumenism, which does not mention the necessity of Catholicism for salvation, can be interpreted in light of inter-religious events such as Assisi or ecumenical events such as visiting Lutherans and giving them praise. It is a maelstrom of confusion for the ordinary Catholic.
Since you do not deny that canonizations are infallible, you concede that the great pope is now a saint. Go therefore up to the heavens, demand from God that he hand Pope St. John Paul II The Great over to you so that you can bring him down to the earth to give account to you for his actions.
When the Vatican did away with The Devil’s Advocate the canonization process became corrupted. There is much more to raising a person to the Altars as a Saint than whether the result is infallible. The person has to be worthy, there has to be a complete look at the good and bad, and the person must have lived a life of HEROIC VIRTUE. This would include the virtue of PRUDENCE, a virtue which John Paul II did NOT practice. He also did not exhibit FORTITUDE because he did NOT preach the whole Catholic Faith – like all moderns he preached the feel good stuff, but not the harsh truth. But never fear. When YOU are in heaven you will be able to look down 100 years from now and see a new Pope and a new Council sweep Vatican II and all the Modernist heresies away.
There is much more to raising a person to the Altars as a Saint than whether the result is infallible. ???
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The dance continues …
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And God did not foresee this to ensure that his entire Church was not led into damnable error [Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas]?
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Pope St. Paul II the Great whose sanctity was confirmed by heaven by two remarkable miracles is either a saint or he is not and if the latter, God
has allowedis complicit in there being a damnable error in his Church, therefore the gates of hell have prevailed, therefore our faith and hope in Jesus is misplaced as he could not keep his promise, and also the God we believe in is therefore not omnipotent or all-seeing. Take your pick.*
Er … who wrote this?
Once you have answered, please judge whether the writer has written feel good stuff (e.g. Buddhism and Islam can save someone/lead them to heaven) and whether he/she has proclaimed the harsh truth with fortitude and charity.
blah blah blah, and everyone loves Ronald Regan and he never went to church on Sundays and Nancy used astro-spiritual readers and what not to protect him after the shooting.
FMShyanguya wrote:
“Since you do not deny that canonizations are infallible, you concede that the great pope is now a saint. Go therefore up to the heavens, demand from God that he hand Pope St. John Paul II The Great over to you so that you can bring him down to the earth to give account to you for his actions.”
It appears you neglected to engage my rebuttal as well as half of my original points, and instead choose to jump on one issue without thinking, because I already answered it previously, all the while throwing in a bizarre troll-like response.
This is not a very good defense for the poor faithful now is it?
Let me show you what I wrote again so you can keep up properly:
“This reduces canonization down to a level of minimalism without pastoral regard and prudence towards the actions and writings of a candidate. JPII was a mixed-bag; good and bad mixed together – you should not canonize mixed-bags. By this logic a public blasphemer can become a canonized Saint without a public or even private repentance and correction for his actions because he somehow made it to heaven in the end. The good thief and Saint Peter had public corrections and repentance for what they did; a conversion to not make those mistakes again. JPII did not have this and continued to act strangely in similar themes, especially with regards to non-Catholics.”
Just because a person is in heaven doesn’t mean that person is worthy of imitation and should be canonized. Does that make sense?
Also, you did not engage in anything else I wrote. You never touched the Assisi events, Rowan Williams, scantily clad women appearing before him, bad theologians he made cardinals, Ut Unum Sint, liturgical abuses, and his ambiguous and damaging way of ecumenism; never explicitly mentioning the Catholic Church and her sacraments as necessary for salvation.
Where is the rest of your defense? You ignored half of my points and when I rebutted your response you replied simply with, “Oh, you think canonizations are infallible well I guess I’ll just stop reading everything you gave me.”
Again: Just because someone is in heaven doesn’t mean they should be propped up for imitation. This is painfully clear in what the canonization process should be about. And again, you have a walking contradiction in JPII: He did very good things and turned around and gave very scandalous examples for the faithful. THAT is why he should have not been canonized – it has NOTHING to do if he is in heaven or not. Get past the faux-traditionalists with their stupidly and vile accusations against the Holy Father John Paul II and look at the real substance of this debate.
So you discount the miracles attributed to his canonization?? ..I mean that’s all canonization is, the public recognition that a particular person is both in Heaven and has been granted intercessory powers by God the Father. And after two miracles are confirmed to be authentic, and that no other complications exist, like the teaching or participation in heresy, then all things are a go for sainthood.
Everyone in heaven is a saint.
…did it ever occur to you that St. JPII didn’t know or expect someone would take ONE photo of this simple gesture of appreciation? and that that photo would lurk around forever on the interwebs, lol.. How lowly we might think of many of our beloved saints if we had photos and video of them doing this or that. Compare what we DO know and have seen and heard from St. JPII, to what few ‘controversies’ exist, and can those controversies be explained charitably? If so, then we should lay off SAINT John Paul II.
Nick wrote:
“…did it ever occur to you that St. JPII didn’t know or expect someone would take ONE photo of this simple gesture of appreciation? and that that photo would lurk around forever on the interwebs, lol.. How lowly we might think of many of our beloved saints if we had photos and video of them doing this or that. Compare what we DO know and have seen and heard from St. JPII, to what few ‘controversies’ exist, and can those controversies be explained charitably? If so, then we should lay off SAINT John Paul II.”
A gesture of appreciate for a religion that was founded by a warmongering tyrant, most likely form his own insanity or an apparition form Satan, and that forced itself through Christian lands spreading apostasy?
If it was an “opps” mistake, without bad intentions (which we should assume), then clarification, apology, and/or correction should have followed. But none did.
“But it was simply a gesture of appreciation for a gift!!!”
Right, and it would have been a better gesture to charitably reject the gift. Or at least accept the gift in private and not kiss it.
Also, you did not address anything I stated. Simply put: canonization is chiefly a process to determine who is safe to emulate, if someone has many instances of actions and writings against the faith (regardless of intention) then the most prudential path to follow would be to not canonization said person in order to protect the faithful from confusion.
Look, I’m a convert to the faith, attend Latin Mass and have studied Islam extensively in both college and in the Army..I have no love for the false religion and hate almost everything about it. But I’m not stupid, I know how to put things into context as any student of history does or should do.
So I look at someone like JPII and say, what got him to that place? What are his motivations? Most of know JPII’s background in Poland during WWII and then the Communist take over. So is it really hard to imagine that THAT kind of life experience would lead him to a life and vocation of peace and charity and humility?
I can agree with what some have suggested that what he’s kissing isn’t even the damn Quaran at all. All we have is a photo..and ONE source ‘who was there’ and ‘said’ it was a Quaran. Everyone knows that when the Holy Father receives any gift he says thank you and hands it off to one of his handlers to put somewhere safe. And honestly, I couldn’t imagine a more OFFENSIVE gift to give to the Holy Father than a holy book from another religion. And to my knowledge, neither Benedict XVI or Francis have received similar gifts from anyone in the Middle East.
I have no problem fighting the good fight as Michael Voris does at Church Militant, but I see no point in bitching about the past of a pope who is now a Saint. He’ll never be UN-Canonized so why complain? He was never as bad as Pope Francis is now, and he never wavered on Church teaching like Pope Francis. Whatever mistakes in taste or poor judgement he maid during his epic long pontificate, he paid for in the long dark years where he became a prisoner to his health, trapped inside a body too ravaged for his young mind.
He did help bring down communism in Poland, survive an assassination attempt and gave all the thanks to the Blessed Mother, dedicate his entire pontificate to the Blessed Mother during a time when she was shunned at the parish level almost everywhere in the U.S. …He did what he thought he HAD to do at THAT time in history. All you have is him trying to reach out to the world in a missionary manner and spread the Good News and re-introduce’ the Catholic Church to the 20th Century which was weary after WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, the Cold War, and other small conflicts through out the world including the terrorism war between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland and England.
He tried and did his best. And in the end, he was mocked and made fun of by a world who thought he was just a senile old man. And behind his back, his own Church was becoming corrupt with homosexuality, child abuse, liturgical abuse, banking scandals, etc, etc…
But our Lord Jesus Christ had the final word when He called JPII home on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, a devotion JPII himself helped to validate and make known to the world through the canonization of St. Faustina. JPII’s funeral was marked by a solar eclipse, the same as when he was born. He also dies two days after Teri Schiavo, both him and her icons of the ‘Culture of Life’ movement.
And, when one of the top exorcists at the Vatican say that demons fear JPII in particular..hey, I don’t doubt it ; )
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1378923/posts
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/romes-exorcist-finding-bl.-john-paul-ii-effective-against-satan/
Pray for your enemies.
The prayer is to protect Islam. Islam is a religion. Hence, a prayer to protect a religion. I have no issues with praying for people’s protection. But even in this case, where is a prayer for their conversion? Where is an explicit prayer that they convert to the Catholic faith for salvation? Where is the charitable conviction of engaging Muslims in the explicit way St. Francis of Assisi did? That is just another problem with this homily.
John the Baptist is the preparatory saint for accepting the Gospel.
I am Polish by all accounts and was brought up to admire him as a great leader and strong defender of the Church. I always thought that JPII was the ‘bees knees’ of popes until I discovered Traditional Catholicism (I don’t particularly like labelling it as such but labels become necessary in this time of confusion and division) by attendance at the “mass of all ages” (TLM of course) and, with further study and prayer, the scales fell off my eyes! I discovered that I had been, for the most part, lied to all my life; in some cases ignorantly and in others maliciously! I had been lied to as regards what Catholicism really is and what true Catholic worship is. In addition, I had been lied to about JPII. These abuses by and around JPII were kept from all regular weekly mass goers and so the façade continued (and still continues). Being a Pol I should be one of those chanting ‘Santo Subito’ but I cannot bring myself to do so. I’m not judging JPII’s intentions, that’s God’s job. I’m judging JPII objectively and facts cannot be ignored. You cannot proclaim Christ one day and deny him the next! When I do bring up these facts I am scoffed at, ridiculed and sentenced to hell by “good and faithful” Catholics. If JPII repented of these before he died then we all forgive him but to our knowledge he never did so. In this time of Church crisis, in my honest opinion, the process of canonisation should be tightened and made more scrupulous. Instead it gets more and more streamlined. We’re told “this is not required, that no longer applies” and the standards keep dropping to the point where the process no longer matters.
Thank you and all the Poles and Poland for such a wonderful son of the Church and a great Saint.
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Evident corruption by “the Trads”. As I said before, they do untold harm to the Church and to the faithful.
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Since you mention the Liturgy [not sure what “mass of all ages” means] may I present to you:
1) How John Paul II Restored Liturgical Sanity, by Jeffrey Tucker, July 8, 2013 | Crisis Magazine
2) Vatican II, Pope John Paul IIi, Pope Benedict XVI and the Traditional Latin Mass | FAQ, Sancta Missa
3) QUATTUOR ABHINC ANNOS Indult for Use of Roman Missal of 1962 Congregation for Divine Worship
4) Apostolic Letter “Ecclesia Dei” and Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”.
Since thanks to Popes St. John Paul II the Great and Emeritus Benedict XVI you now can attend a TLM, perhaps it will move you to be grateful and appreciative of the great and saintly pope, pray for his intercession, and give thanks to God for him.
I don’t agree with you for the most part. The only reason JPII allowed the indult mass in 1988 was because of the SSPX consecrations and a breakaway group that became FSSP. Makes one wonder why it took a pope 20 years to allow that which cannot be disallowed (referring to St Pius v declaration). Even then, JPII allowed limited availability, which for the most part, was no availability. He didn’t actually want more Latin masses otherwise he would have done a great deal more. It is true that BXVI gave it more freedom by releasing SP and that is what I attend now, but seriously, for a pope to allow the true mass that stretches back to the Apostles to suddenly be released from its bonds is no great papal feat. It’s actually an embarrassment. What was more shameful was the letter to the bishops that accompanied Summorum. It’s all part of the revolution and only those who ask Our Lord for the grace to see will actually see it.
Upvoted on the parts we agree.
The really big news will be when they start expurgating the Bible itself of politically incorrect statements. Anybody watching this?
They have already done that in the N.O. lectionary. Have you ever noticed how many of the readings are edited with bits in the middle removed rather than presenting the whole passage to the faithful? If I ever have to preach on those passages from Scripture I always consider it my first job to fill them in on the missing bits.
Thanks Deacon. I have not noticed the removal of “bits in the middle”. I have observed the so called ‘short version’ of Sunday readings leaving out politically incorrect statements such as let wives be subject your husbands. Ephesians 5:22. These liturgy guys at the Vatican are pretty slippery.
It might be good idea, I think, if such a thing could even be imagined, that a highly orthodox statement from the Vatican explaining what the readings meant and how we should respond would be mandatory reading from the pulpit. However, given our present circumstances, such an idea would do much more harm than good.
The New American Bible is not Catholic, it is Protestant. Check out Genesis 3:15.
Having readings like: 1 Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18, Psalm 34:2-3, 17-18, 19, 23, or 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 is dishonest and a watering down of Scripture. Why does “Do not trust in sacrifice of the fruits of extortion,for he is a God of justice, who shows no partiality” need to be cut out of the readings?
I’ve noticed that and it is incredibly frustrating
Lol….go to Sirach 25,second half….then read the footnote disparaging the whole section. It’s done through footnotes in the NAB.
The chapter speaks of good and wicked women but longer on the latter….that don’t roll with the new exegetical crowd. Here’s the footnote involved: ” * [25:13–26] The harsh statements Ben Sira makes about women reflect the kind of instruction young Jewish males were exposed to in the early second century B.C. His patriarchal perspective is as unfair as it is one-sided.”
Note…it’s Ben Sira not God as the origen of the verses….yet Dei Verbum in Vat.II said that ” both testaments in all their parts have God as their author.”
“The harsh statements Ben Sira makes about women reflect the kind of
instruction young Jewish males were exposed to in the early second
century B.C. His patriarchal perspective is as unfair as it is
one-sided.”
This is a false statement for two reasons:
—Ben Sira was inspired to say it by God.
—To anyone with much experience in life it is a true statement despite being politically incorrect.
Much can be learned from reading Sirach 25 and much heartache avoided.
Exactly…the footnote world is rife with over educated somewhat soft males who think scripture is not much different than reading Hemingway. Plato, Bk. III of the Republic….if men are all culture and no sports, they will become feminized.
Welcome to high level Catholic thinkers. Throw them a football.
Cf. USCCB: God, the author of Sacred Scripture borrowed the plot of Gn 2–11 (creation, the flood, renewed creation) from creation-flood stories in Mesopotamian literature
Why cannot people accept that it was the other way round.
They want to appear smart – O just ubiquitous myths – but not only do they come across as foolish, they are actually quite foolish.
Perhaps the sinister finger behind these mysterious disappearances was thinking of the Russian saying, ‘It was a long time ago and it never happened anyway.’ Or he may have been merely channelling the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men and had come to the conclusion that most 21st Century Catholics can’t handle the Truth.
On the other hand, I’m quite prepared to accept that these electronic surgical strikes were wholly accidental…..just so long as in the near future (within the next 12 months will do), every papal statement/document originating after March 2013 is expunged from the Vatican website and only reappears much later to be used as a teaching aid for future generations to demonstrate the degradation of the papacy under Francis.
Looks like they’re there now:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en.html
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations.index.html
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html
Trial balloons, Steve.
They want to see how much of a ruckus is raised if they trash this stuff. If folks start hollerin’, you just re-post the missing material and pretend it was all a technical glitch.
Of all the writings of previous Popes on the Vatican website, it’s an amazing coincidence that both Casti Connubii and JPII’s warnings on easy annulments should vanish, no?