King Francis

Yesterday  in a Christmas catalog (I'm getting 2-3 a day) I saw a little statue of Pope Francis, solar powered, which will smile and wave through the window.  Keeping up with the culture, I suppose.  A tacky statue would be electric—coal fired, so yesterday. I wonder if the Pope spends much time on the internet and sees what is coming down the road in the sex culture wars.  Progressives in the U.S. don’t fret about the poor—they whine about their sexuality and who is sleeping with whom.  Will the church go from not recognizing marriage if either the man or woman is known to be sterile to recognizing those where everyone is sterile? This blogger for First Things has some serious charges against the Pope—covert operative and seditious authoritarian.  Wow. And that’s a loyal Catholic writing for a Catholic magazine.

"Set aside, if you can, the specific moral teachings that are in the dock. Suppress for a moment whatever conscientious sympathy you might have with Francis’ aims. What bewilders me here is the precipitous end-run being made around collegiality and subsidiarity, with scant regard for the trust of the faithful in the validity of the Church’s essential moral suasion on essential matters. If McGavin’s report is correct—what reason to think it is not?—Francis is more a covert operative than the shepherd we welcomed at the outset.

The law of unintended consequences is inexorable. And fearsome. We already have one seditious authoritarian in the White House. To think there could be another on the Chair of Peter breaks the heart." Maureen Mullarkey First Things   http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350910?eng=y