On this post yesterday, I admired Fr. Zs serenity while we are all discussing the almost daily assaults upon the holy family and the Sacraments coming from the Chair of Peter.
My post received this response from a reader:
Yes, Fr. Z is indeed a 'cool cucumber', but the way I see it, whether or not he is 'teaching from the Chair', he is still 'teaching'...
I completely agree.
This is probably going to sound sexist, but I think the reason why ordained men without children do not comprehend the unprecedented disaster of a pope who publicly contradicts Church teaching and instructs others to do so is, their intimacy is the Church and ours is our family members.
To a man married to the Church, his vocation finds consolation in the perpetual outcome of teaching - which we all know is preserved. They tend to see things as a soul count in a wider community in the context of perpetuity.
I don't exactly see eye-to-eye with his rosy outlook for vocations. The coup working in Rome will significantly change how priests are changed to practice theology and the Sacraments in seminaries. As this cancer matures and grows, bishops make it difficult for priests to teach and practice our religion. As he well knows.
IMO, the damage being done to the priesthood by Pope Francis, intentional or unintentional, is catastrophic.
For those of us who chose the vocation of marriage, of course the perpetual outcome of Church teaching is important to us, but the Holy Father is persuading people in our home to practice contradiction to Church teaching when making judgments.
This has two consequences:
In the holy family it's causing great harm to the people in our homes, families, friends and community.
Our vocation thinks in terms of the people right in front of us.
If the people right in front of us get lured into practicing contradiction to Church teaching, we have lost our own unborn descendants in perpetuity. Our children, children's children and so on.
For this reason, laity is much more distraught about what the Holy Father is doing to the people we love and the inheritance he is robbing from our unborn descendants.
The reader also said:
For the life of me, I cannot understand why NO ONE in the hierarchy of the Church is solidly confronting him with his nonsensical yet devastatingly damaging off the cuff remarks.
We know, with absolute certainty, he has been told.
He is not a stupid man and he understands that teaching requires oversight of how your audience understood what you were trying to convey. He has the duty to observe this himself, without others having to tell him.
On top of this duty, there is public knowledge that Cardinals and Bishops have articulated what he already can see and hear.
In some cases, this places him into the position of being forced to dial something back - such as the case of changing the 'majority of Catholic Marriages are living in a perpetual state of adultery' to 'some'.
We further have the confessions of Cardinal Kasper who has reported his confidential discussions with Pope Francis to the press and some direct confessions from the Pope himself. While I don't have the quote in front of me, the Holy Father said something like We know what we are doing will receive opposition and it will not deter us from proceeding.
As he continues to do it ad nauseum, it is impossible to believe it's unintentional.
His credo is 'make a mess' and as one Bishop said, mission accomplished.
Off the cuff remarks are very difficult to manage. This is why 2000 years of Pope's before Pope Francis did not engage in off the cuff remarks. He obviously believes the wisdom of 2000 years of his predecessors inferior to his intellect.
John Henry Weston suggested fasting for the Pope yesterday, saying 'the hour is late'. It is a message I constantly need to hear. I was reminded of the time in Christ's ministry when somebody was acting up and the Apostles asked Christ why He wasn't responding to it. He told them some demons can only be driven out with fasting.
The daily ridiculousness tends to keep us focused on the catastrophic consequences in our families and the righteous anger of being robbed blind.
It doesn't have to be a complete fast from food. Even fasting from daily pleasures can be fruitful when coupled with prayer. Tea, coffee, sugar. I love, love, love my morning tea.
I'm going to do a 30 day fast from these pleasures starting July 1 for the intention of spiritual protection for our Holy Father and the people being affected by it.
A driving the demons out fast.
It doesn't have to be that dramatic. It could be as simple as fasting from one thing when you he says something off of the reservation. God knows we have plenty of reminders in that realm.
Some food for thought.
4 comments:
Oakes Spalding at Mahound's Paradise also takes Fr. Z to task:
"I Feel Inexorably Drawn to Bash Father Z Again" http://mahoundsparadise.blogspot.com/2016/06/i-feel-inexorably-drawn-to-bash-father.html
I'm in with the fasting & prayer starting July 1, a cry for Independence from demons everywhere but most importantly ROME!
Maybe I'll make the St. Michael prayer part of a 30 day Novena. Thanks Carol, excellent idea.
I like your idea about the fasting. At least my young adult children are NOT following what happens in the Church and our local priests seem to be continuing on in faithfulness as usual. One pastor did say that he now gets calls from sodomites wanting approval and so forth.
The damage to marriage and families still is incalculable with fast, easy, and mostly free "annulments"--you know of the majority of marriages and so on.
So my one son who lives with his fiancée might be in a better position before God than his father and I with our decades long marriage? NO NO NO
God is not mocked; we shall see how long He allows this damage to souls to go on. It might not be pretty when the chastisements fall.
Fr. Z's serenity is nothing but a facade. He is afraid to look at the truth because, if he does, then his entire world view will shatter, and that shattering will destroy him.
It's really no different than Obama and the libs doubling down on "discrimination" toward the "transgendered." They avoid looking at truth for the same reason, even though their world view is radically different from Fr. Z's.
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