Provincial Francis at Congress: A Bitter Disappointment. Updated.

I truly believe Pope Francis has good intentions , but I admit to being bitterly disappointed by his address to the American Congress this week.

While some are saying that his statement that we have a “responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development” are a reference to the evil of abortion, I don’t think they are. They can be taken to refer to abortion, but in that he immediately went on to explicitly mention the death penalty he failed. He failed to mention the slaughter of innocents in the very arena (politics) that defends abortion as a human right for women. Supporters of abortion are thus entitled to say “Francis said to protect and defend human life but he did not mention abortion; he mentioned the death penalty; therefore his remarks are about the death penalty”. Can we really argue with that? Had he meant to include abortion he would have named it, surely, as he did with the death penalty?

At first I thought Francis was simply being a coward; that he is too afraid of offending the USA (or of losing his credibility with the political left) to tackle the supreme humanitarian crime in which the USA and other Western powers such as the UK engage. But it suddenly occurred to me: this is not cowardice. Why Francis does not mention abortion but seems obsessed with the environment and subsidiarity is nothing to do with cowardice, it is that he is simply too provincial to be a world leader; he is still preaching and leading in accord with the problems he saw in Argentina. Annulments there take several years; he has presumed it is the same the world over and imposed laws for rapid declarations of nullity; the condition of the poor in the shantytowns of Buenos Aires is extreme; he has assumed it is the same the world over.

It is not then that the Pope is a coward. Rather, it is that Francis is a provincial guy with a provincial view unsuited to global responsibilities. His mind-set is still in Argentina and he is preaching to Argentina and its problems. He has not progressed to seeing the whole view from his window at the Domus Sanctae Marthae; he still looks out and imagines he sees shantytowns everywhere. Undoubtedly there is poverty the world over, and it certainly needs to be addressed. Only the cold-hearted could say otherwise. But today’s spiritually poverty; the loss of the sense of sin and of grace-  has led to the slaughter of millions of innocent lives by dismemberment while alive in the womb; the killing of the sick rather than the care of the sick, and the destruction of the natural family to which every child has a right. As such some of us see the greatest poverty as poverty of the spirit: until we change minds and hearts by the Gospel we will not end abortion, euthanasia or protect the family. So while we want to feed the hungry, clothe the naked; shelter the harbourless and visit the sick & imprisoned, we know that we must first instinct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful and admonish the sinner -without which hearts and minds will not change. Uninstructed by the Gospel the human person, predisposed by concupiscence, follows sin and darkness, not grace and light. Global leaders cannot afford to make important speeches on huge public stages and fail to mention the gravest evils of the day.  
UP-DATE FOLLOWING CARDINAL DANNEELS REVELATIONS

Revelations (see RorateCaelie here) that several Cardinals banded together in what one of them (Cardinal Danneels) described as a Mafia Club to actively canvas for Jorge Bergoglio so as to get a more modern Church, leaves a bitter taste of subversion. If these Cardinal-electors wanted and canvassed for their man so as to get a ‘modern Church’ (in fact, departure from the constant teaching of the Church), they must have known before hand what kind of catholic Bergoglio was/is, or they would not be seeking to elect him. This puts his actions at last year’s Extraordinary Synod, his nominations for this year’s Synod (and the exclusions he made), very disturbing and a picture of manipulation arising that is hard to avoid. It also puts his trip to the USA in a new light: he appears a willing puppet of men who seek to abandon the Faith of the Gospel for the ideologies of the world. I do hope he turns out to be another Pio Nono and come in liberal but go out strictly orthodox.

While we may yet be in for a period of great turbulence and division within the Church, but she will emerge even stronger than she was after Trent and before Vatican II, for Truth is Christ and Christ has conquered the world they are so enamoured by. Can we off any advice to the Cardinals involved? Yes, the advice of Christ Himself:  “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers treated the false prophets in the same way”. To us Christ advises, “But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you”, (Luke 6v26-27). In all honesty. if Christ’s words do not worry them, they have lost The Faith.