"Francis has been totally orthodox..can only be faulted by faulty reading"

Take care of nature

Sounds like a corporal work of mercy to me. Especially from a guy called Francis.

Too much

 

I think the point that the article addressed is that corporal and spiritual works of mercy have always refered to people, to souls, as both subject and recipient, not non-soul (such as our earth) as a recipient. At least that has always been my understanding of the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy..... I was raised on the Baltimore Catechism and the books of Fr John Laux though

I'm completely for a simple, non-materialistic and non-consumer driven lifestyle to help the planet. I am usually picking up litter with my kids every time we walk to the park. I really enjoyed Laudato Si and did defend it to many of its detractors. In fact I've been teased that I'm a Catholic hippie

However, I am unconvinced that it should be labeled as a corporal/spiritual work of mercy since I feel it in a way degrades the importance of the human soul to soul experience. I value our planet and preserving it very much, but I don't believe that we are called to place it in the same categorical importance as our eternal souls. Jesus came and died for us, for people. He must still place our value above all other creation (even though we don't deserve it). I think our holy father is a bit mistaken in placing care of the planet in the same category as our care for the body and souls of our fellow human beings.

 

Global warming a sin. Sounds to me like diabolical disorientation. Maybe somebody made the pope an offer he can't refuse.

 

Psychiatrist: Archbishop behind Vatican sex-ed should be evaluated by sex abuse review board


September 2, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — A renowned psychiatrist who has worked with victims of priestly sexual abuse and priest abusers has strongly condemned the Vatican’s new sex education program as abusive and “the most dangerous threat to Catholic youth” he has seen in the past 40 years.

The gravely concerned psychiatrist is Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons, a counseling center director who has been a consultant to the Congregation for the Clergy at the Vatican and has served as adjunct professor at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America. In an essay published today by LifeSiteNews, Fitzgibbons warns that the material found in the Vatican’snewly-released sex ed program The Meeting Point “constitutes sexual abuse of Catholic adolescents” and contains pornographic images “similar to those used by adult sexual predators of adolescents.”

“In a culture in which youth are bombarded by pornography, I was particularly shocked by the images contained in this new sex education program, some of which are clearly pornographic,” Fitzgibbons wrote. “My immediate professional reaction was that this obscene or pornographic approach abuses youth psychologically and spiritually. … As a professional who has treated both priest perpetrators and the victims of the abuse crisis in the Church, what I found particularly troubling was that the pornographic images in this program are similar to those used by adult sexual predators of adolescents.”

Fitzgibbons called for Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who oversaw the development and release of the program when he was head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, to be evaluated according to norms adopted by the United States Catholic Bishops in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.

Paglia “should be required in justice to go through an evaluation by a review board as described in the Dallas Charter norms for placing youth at risk,” Fitzgibbons wrote. “Such a review is particularly important as he is now been put in charge of further teaching regarding sexuality and marriage at the John Paul II Institute for Family Studies.”

Fitzgibbons called on Bishop Kevin Farrell, the Prefect of the newly-established Vatican Dicastery for Laity, the Family, and Life, to rescind the program “as soon as possible” and introduce a replacement that follows “the outstanding teaching of St. John Paul II on marriage, youth, family and sexuality from the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World.”

The Meeting Point “reveals an ignorance of the enormous sexual pressure upon youth today and will result in their subsequent confusion in accepting the Church’s teaching,” Fitzgibbons wrote. “It represents a grave future crisis in the Church and particularly for Catholic youth and families in far greater proportions than the scandalous sexual abuse crisis of youth recently so widely reported in the press.”

Fitzgibbons’ criticism of the program joins that of other international pro-family leaders who have called it “thoroughly immoral,” “entirely inappropriate,” and “quite tragic.”

Dr. Fitzgibbons' full article is published here


https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/p...ogram-abuses-youth-psychologically-and-spirit

 

This sickness comes from within the Church.





Pope Benedict 2010



''As for the new things which we can find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church, and that the Church thus has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness on the one hand, but also the need for justice.''

 

As a mother I found that from time to time a child needed direction about kindness in regards to how they were treating a younger sibling. At times directly speaking about the unkindness, did not have the required impact for change that I hoped for but if I addressed the same problem from a different angle and trusting that their God given intelligence would do the rest, usually worked!


I remember a time that my eldest daughter was being mean to my second eldest daughter and no amount of harping about how disappointed I was or demanding that she change, made a difference. One day I noticed that my eldest daughter had borrowed her sisters good shoes but had brought them back in a sorry state [she must have walked through water]

My eldest daughter realised this was a bad thing. I said to her..... you know your sister is generous and kind to you, and really the shoes are nothing but your sister is someone who loves you and theres a bigger issue don’t you think?


By focusing on something other than the unkind treatment towards her sister, in this case by focusing on shoes, I was hoping God could activate her intelligence to calculate the gravity of what was really important.

Sometimes a well placed statement about something that is not as significant as something else is a wise way to get the mind of people to rethink their position on the more important. I think Our Holy Father is speaking volumes about abortion in the above article on creation.
He is holding up the reality of Gods love for even lesser creatures than man! and in a profound way is speaking of greater realities and surley it is pricking consciences .


In the article above,
The Pope is pointing out that to sin against creation is a sin, even if it is just to pollute, therefore he is pointing out to modern man the seriousness of the sin of abortion; and by trusting that even modern man has the ability to use his lineal progression of intellegence to deduce the blantantly obvious.
'For anyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see'


“courageously and prophetically continued to point out our sins against creation,”


Summing up, the Pope stated that “to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.”


“We must not be indifferent or resigned to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behavior,” Francis said. “Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.”

The Pope said that the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation was instituted in order to give believers an opportunity to “reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation.” It also furnishes an occasion to thank God for the gift of creation, to implore his help for its protection and to beg “his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.”

During this Jubilee Year, “let us learn to implore God’s mercy for those sins against creation that we have not hitherto acknowledged and confessed,” Francis said, while proposing that Christians need to undergo an “ecological conversion.”

Now is the time to “acknowledge our sins against creation,” the Pope said. “Inasmuch as we all generate small ecological damage,” we are called to acknowledge “our contribution, smaller or greater, to the disfigurement and destruction of creation.”

“Let us repent of the harm we are doing to our common home,” he added.

If our ecological conversion is real, Francis said, it will lead to concrete ways of thinking and acting that are more respectful of creation.

 

It keeps getting better.... Papal apologists are pathetic.


Vatican affirms Pope was speaking about contraceptives for Zika
ROME, February 19, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi has affirmed that the Holy Father was indeed speaking of “condoms and contraceptives” when on the flight back from Mexico, Pope Francis said couples could rightly “avoid pregnancy” in the wake of the Zika virus scare.

Fr. Lombardi told Vatican Radio today, “The contraceptive or condom, in particular cases of emergency or gravity, could be the object of discernment in a serious case of conscience. This is what the Pope said.”

According to Lombardi, the pope spoke of “the possibility of taking recourse to contraception or condoms in cases of emergency or special situations. He is not saying that this possibility is accepted without discernment, indeed, he said clearly that it can be considered in cases of special urgency.”

Lombardi reiterated the example that Pope Francis made of Pope Paul VI’s supposed “authorization of the use of the pill for the religious who were at very serious risk” of rape. This, said Lombardi, “makes us understand that it is not that it was a normal situation in which this was taken into account.”

On the plane Thursday, the pope was asked by one reporter whether the Church can “take into consideration the concept of ‘the lesser of two evils?’” when it comes to the question of preventing pregnancy to avoid transmission of the virus.

The pope opened his answer by categorically condemning abortion as a solution to the Zika virus, but on the question of avoiding pregnancy, he added: “We are speaking in terms of the conflict between the fifth and sixth commandment.”

"The great Paul VI in a difficult situation in Africa permitted sisters to use contraception for cases of rape,” he told reporters.

"Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil," the pope added. "In certain cases, as in this one, such as the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear.”

The pope’s answer, in particular the apparent parallel he drew between the case of the nuns’ use of contraception and the case of the Zika virus, has widely led to the interpretation that the pope was approving the use of contraception in some cases.

(Find a full transcript of the pope’s remarks on the plane here.)

In his famous 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI reiterated the Church’s long-standing and definitive teaching that artificial contraception is "intrinsically wrong," namely that it is always and in every instance evil, because it contradicts the procreative purpose of sex.

Some moral theologians have said that non-abortifacient contraceptives could be used in cases of rape as a means of self-defense against an aggressor. This distinction would not apply in the case of voluntary intercourse between couples concerned about Zika.

In addition to referencing the Congo nuns, Lombardi pointed today to Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on condoms in his 2010 book-length interview The Light of the World. Therein, Lombardi said, Benedict “spoke about the use of condoms in the case of risk of contagion by AIDS.”

In the book, Pope Benedict told journalist Peter Seewald that in some cases, such as that of a male prostitute, the use of a condom “can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.” Pope Benedict followed the comments by saying that the Church “does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.”

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith corrected mainstream media misinterpretations of those statements that falsely presented them as justifying contraception. In its statement, the CDF said, “A number of erroneous interpretations have emerged” that have “caused confusion concerning the position of the Catholic Church regarding certain questions of sexual morality.”

“The idea that anyone could deduce from the words of Benedict XVI that it is somehow legitimate, in certain situations, to use condoms to avoid an unwanted pregnancy is completely arbitrary and is in no way justified either by his words or in his thought,” the statement added.

The CDF statement also dismissed the suggestion that the use of a condom by HIV-infected prostitutes could constitute a “lesser evil.” This interpretation, it says, is erroneous since, “An action which is objectively evil, even if a lesser evil, can never be licitly willed.”

The CDF summarized the intention of the pope’s comments: “The Church teaches that prostitution is immoral and should be shunned. However, those involved in prostitution who are HIV positive and who seek to diminish the risk of contagion by the use of a condom may be taking the first step in respecting the life of another – even if the evil of prostitution remains in all its gravity.”

 

You are wasting your time Frodo. With all due respect to Janet, she usually replies with sound-bites and rarely engages in serious discussion on the rubrics of the Catholic faith.

 

"Perhaps instead of spamming quotes from... well all over - without sourcing them, you can address just this one:"

Oh yes I am addressing them Frodo. Ask yourself why is it vital for you to be right? Why do you want the Holy Father to be a heretic? Examine your conscience....do a little research and trust the Holy Spirit.

"Did the pope not condone condoms in the case of Zika? Yes or no?"

He just said what the Church has always said.. Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. And there are ways of avoiding pregnancy, that are moral, as Pope Paul VI said.

 

Hi Janet,
I have really appreciated your comments in regard to our Holy Father, as I have been able to clarify much of what has been really stated by Our Holy Father. Thank you.
From your posts I can tell that you are very knowledgable, very much like Dolours and a few other peolpe who post here on the MOG site.
I, on the other hand, am way out of my depth in regards to what the truth is, when considering Our Dear Pope and his actual words!

People who are bagging the Pope, tend to refer to prophesy about a pope who is questionable and the inference is that it could be our Pope Francis! or they present media reports about what the Pope said, that make ones blood boil! and its only after sourcing the said report that one can get a handle on the truth of what he actually said and then again there are some reports that have me scratching my head because it seems he actually said these things.


I feel like a YoYo in my understanding of what the Pope is saying! I find I bounce from shock, then to understanding, then to bewilderment, then to loyalty then to confusion and now repeat again.

You seem to know the truths of these reports...so I would like to ask you this and I trust you know the truth.
Did Our Holy Father say 'Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. And there are ways of avoiding pregnancy, that are moral, as Pope Paul VI said'. Or did Pope Francis condone the use of contraception, I think this one question has me really bewilded?

I don't know the answer, as its all so muddled and so many reports state that he actually said this! If of course he didn't say this then these so called Catholics [that is: these news reports sites and reporters for these sites that are distorting the truth] need to be called out for what they are, which is Pope haters and in my book that equates to protestants.

 

Good. So what about the use contraception with regard to preventing the spread of the Zika virus?

 

Even though, the three members continue to try to destroy Our faith in the church and Our faith in the Holy Father. Nothing will change. Using 5 second snippets, of what Our Holy Father says and then jumping on the media bandwagon...is actually helping some of the faithful. I can honestly say I have read more and followed up on more things Our Holy Father has said... then any other previous Pope.

Once you delve into Our Holy Fathers homilies...one will be pleasently surprised of what a holy man, we have on earth.

When evil grows, God sends His rockstar saints. Our Holy Father is the chosen one for this time of evil.

Brother al

 

How many people hear or read his homilies? Very,very few. But the entire planet hears over and over again the outrageous, seemingly off the cuff comments made on occasions like his ad hoc press conferences on planes. It is as if he has two voices ,an orthodox whisper at these homilies and a heterodox row at occasions such as these press conferences. In private orthodox, in the full glare of publicity heterodox. I can well see why the secular media , long the bitter enemy of the Church adores him .

I think there used to be a Roman God who had two faces, now what was his name? A yes it was Janus who should be patron God of disambiguation; the God of Transitions, very apt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus

 

How true:

Saturday, September 3, 2016
Prominent Catholic Psychiatrist: Church in Severe Sex Crisis
Written by Michael Matt | Editor



Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri (L) and Cardinal Christoph Schonborn pose with a copy of the Pope's Amoris Laetitia--the blueprint of the new Vatican Sex-ed Program

This just in from LifeSiteNews —

In recent years, the Catholic Church has been going through one of her most severe crises as a result of the priestly abuse of youth. The primary victims have been adolescent males.1 This worldwide scandal was enabled by the irresponsible and permissive behaviors of members of the hierarchy who made the mistake of “winking” at homosexuality in their priests, according to a Bishop on an EWTN show on the crisis in which I participated.

This scandal was also enabled by no small number of spiritual directors, who were ignorant of psychological science and told the priests suffering same-sex attractions that they were directing that they were “born that way” rather than referring them to competent mental health professionals, which could have prevented many a youth from being abused.

In order to restore the severely damaged trust and faith in the laity, it is incumbent upon the members of the Hierarchy and priests that they never again act as permissive leaders/shepherds when serious threats are posed to the moral, intellectual, psychological, and sexual well-being of youth.

As a psychiatrist, I have worked extensively with Catholic youth severely harmed psychologically by the divorce of their parents,2 frequently enabled by 'easy’ annulments of their parents’ sacramental marriages, in disregard for justice, mercy and psychological science,3 and by the epidemics of narcissism,4 marijuana,5 pornography,6 and sexual hooking up7 (using others as sexual objects), and the enormous peer pressure to be sexually active, and suffering the psychological conflicts in their parents, siblings, and peers.8

However, in my professional opinion, the most dangerous threat to Catholic youth that I have seen over the past 40 years is the Vatican’s new sexual education program, The Meeting Point: Course of Affective Sexual Education for Young People. READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: The Remnant's reaction to this massive scandal can be read HERE. The Vatican's sex-ed program really is the last straw. They have created a hierarchical menace so predatory that they're coming after our kids now, and calling it a "good and positive" thing.

In other words, George Orwell's nightmare has become our reality, where even the Vatican has compromised itself so thoroughly and for so long with "doublethink” that they have developed the ability to "believe that black is white" and to, as Orwell puts it, "forget that one has ever believed the contrary."

To get to this point, everything in the past (read: Catholic) had to be changed--the Mass, the Rosary, the sanctuary, the priesthood, the songs, the prayers (even the Act of Contrition) -- right down to the place where the pope lives. Why? Because tradition reminds us of who we are and what we need to be, and such reminders have a way of underming revolutions. The success of this revolution "demands a continuous alteration of the past". And that, writes Orwell, is “made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known as Newspeak."

Sound familiar? A New Mass, New Rosary, New Evangelization, New Orientation--it's all there, right in front of our eyes. It's called the Novus Ordo -- the New Order, the ecclesial branch, if you will, of the New World Order.

Buckle up because this isn’t going away, and make no mistake about it: Pope Francis is nothing more than the Revolution of Vatican II's coming out party.


Pope Francis wears a saffron-coloured robe as he attends the
Interreligious Encounter at the Bmich in Colombo, Sri Lanka on January 13, 2015.

 

In Nov 2013 Pope Francis named the head of the secretariat of state's Italian section of the Holy See, Monsignor Paulo Luca Braida, as coordinator of the preparation of his speeches and homilies. He now acts as the Pope's ghost-writer.

 

Kindly provide evidence of that. That he acts as the Pope's ghost-writer.

 

No. This is not about me. No straw men arguments please.

The fact is You are wrong:

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/n...n-flight-interview-from-mexico-to-rome-85821/

Read it for yourself, or if you like watch it... I am sure you know where to find the video since you seem to know where to find information, no?

He was clearly making reference to contraception. He also tried to make reference to Paul VI doing so, but the only problem is that it has been thoroughly debunked as having no merit.

So, no - the pope is not saying what the church and previous popes have always said. In fact he has become the only pope in history to advocate married couples use of contraception.

Father Lombardi, who acting in the capacity of official spokesperson, confirmed it as well.
http://www.catholicnews.com/service...ntraceptives-may-be-lesser-evil-pope-says.cfm

Fr. Lombardi told Vatican Radio today, “The contraceptive or condom, in particular cases of emergency or gravity, could be the object of discernment in a serious case of conscience. This is what the Pope said.”

Do you have the intellectual honesty to admit the truth?

Or do you have a different agenda here?

I have a feeling I already know the answer...

 

For those who actually want to try to listen to Pope Francis and understand his guidance, I copy here a short response on the Zika virus topic taken from quite a good religious news site. They show here an interest in understanding what the Pope was saying that is not always apparent on this forum!

Actually, it isn’t clear exactly what he said about contraception. Catholic theology in this area is complex, and Pope Francis was speaking in generalities, off the cuff, as he often does during his papal plane press interviews.

He seemed to imply Thursday (Feb. 18) that using contraception could, if trying to stop the spread of Zika, be the lesser of two evils. As an apparent analogy, he cited Pope Paul VI’s views on the use of contraception by African nuns who were victims of sexual violence.

But “use of contraception” isn’t precise enough to know what the pope meant — at least not from the perspective of Catholic moral theology.

The church teaches that use of contraception, which separates sex from its natural openness to procreation — either as the end goal of one’s action (“I don’t want a pregnancy”), or as the means by which one accomplishes something else (“I don’t want a pregnancy because it will lead to X”) — is never permitted. It isn’t even permitted if it is the lesser of two evils.

Church teaching would seem to mean use of contraception in response to Zika is out. In such a case, shutting off sex’s natural openness to procreation looks like the means by which one is getting to one’s goal — not getting pregnant.

But not so fast. Perhaps the pope was relying on the principle of double effect here? This may allow him to say that what is really going on (in Catholic moral theology, this is called “the object of the act”) is stopping of transmission of the Zika virus — while the closing off of sex from producing new life is foreseen but unintended.

Double effect is invoked all the time in Catholic theology. For example, in cases of abortion, Catholic hospitals may remove a cancerous uterus with the baby inside if the death of the child is foreseen but unintended; in war one may drop a bomb that kills an innocent person as long as the death of the person is foreseen but unintended. One may also take a patient off life support — their death must be — you guessed it — foreseen but unintended.

Does the principle of double effect work in the case of using contraception to avoid transmission of a disease?

Several years ago, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI spoke in a very similar way about the use of condoms in response to the spread of AIDS. “He wanted to kickstart a debate,” Vatican officials said.

Boy did he ever. Benedict spoke with enough generalities that it wasn’t immediately clear what, if anything, justifies the use of condoms in response to AIDS, leaving much room for debate. Francis has also spoken with enough generalities that it wasn’t immediately clear what, if anything, justifies the use of condoms in response to Zika, leaving much room for debate.

We’ve seen this before. And from a “conservative” pope, no less.

http://religionnews.com/2016/02/19/the-real-surprise-in-pope-francis-zika-virus-remarks-commentary/


​

 

Do you really think the Pope writes all of his homilies and encyclicals on his own? He wouldn't have time to do so.

It is probable that Popes John Paul II and Benedict had help also so it is not a big surprise that they got help having such busy schedules.

http://www.lastampa.it/2013/11/06/v...ost-writer-LotF0Gt2Fm8peFMTV6yTmM/pagina.html

 

Condoms were created to prevent pregnancy and can be only used as contraceptives.

They were not invented to prevent the spread of disease.

After the use of just 10 condoms, the probability of at least one failure is 52%, according to the authoritative Contraceptive Technology.

So it is not even a very good contraceptive.

Therefore, it is not very good at disease prevention.

Pope Benedict admitted that himself. In a visit to Africa in 2009 the pontiff said condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse.

Humane Vitae (HV) clearly teaches that contraception is intrinsically evil and HV leaves no room for 'double effect'.

Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one. . . . Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it—in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. (HV, n. 14)