Just a reminder to all of us who are dismayed at Pope Francis' off the cuff comments...our first rock, Simon Peter, was himself a bit wobbly at times, but was not rejected by Our Lord. He grew. He may well have been chosen precisely because he was impetuous and deeply flawed, to give the rest of us weak ones hope! We all err, grievously and often, and so he may just be perfect for our time. The Year of Mercy was chosen by Our Pope....he needs it as much as any of us do. Let us pray for him and one another!
Yes sir! And as I don't believe in coincidences, I found this morning's Gospel reading quite interesting as well "And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Interesting. I guess to me at the core of all these issues that Francis raises and even causes, I come back to that it was the action of the Holy Spirit that he was made our Pope. I then must conclude that the Pope is doing his best to fulfill what the Spirit is guiding him on. He's a man and yes he makes errors. He constantly asks everyone to okay for him so I assume he is quite self aware of his errors and even his sins. I guess what ultimately bothers me is that some appear to almost relish in his mistakes and hold them up against him. I've always appreciated my wife's approach with my own chikdren when I have made mistakes in how I speak or deal with them. She acknowledges my error, but with great force tells my kids they must still honor and respect me even in my mistakes. My position as father is what she wants the kids to honor even if I the man screw up. I'm quite blessed in this and I learn to be a better dad. I look at Pope Francis in much the same way. His position and to a great extent even his person commands honor and respect even when we are not pleased with him. Who knows, maybe this is what the Spirit is doing for all of us in preparing us for the challenges ahead. As someone else posted, Francis reminds me of Peter in many ways. Perhaps he doesn't think things all the way through and muddles up things.even the Gospel from this past Sunday illustrates Peter's weakness and Jesus' love for him. Peter and the others were asleep before awaking to see the Glorious and Transfigured Christ. I found it interesting he was asleep. I think the message here is not just physical sleep, but perhaps being drawn into worldly things which keep our eyes closed to the spiritual and eternal things. It's only when he wakes up that Peter see' s clearly. And again he bumbles about building tents for Jesus. He sought to do his own will, just as in the Garden when he cut off the ear of the slave. Of course, God intervenes and tells Peter to just be quiet and listen to a Jesus. So, like Peter maybe Francis is sometimes asleep and bungles things, but like Peter, he was chosen with all his weaknesses by God to lead us. And in the end, Peter went to his own Cross out of love for Christ. I absolutely sense that Francis will accept his cross as well when the tine comes.
I think Mike when we talk of God's will in something like an Election and indeed all things we have to distinguish between the active and passive Will: http://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/distinguishing-active-and-passive-wills-god/ So when we read of the Election of Alexander vi.. Borgia.. one of the most evil men in history to the Papacy I think we are talking of the passive rather than the active Will of God. Serveral Popes have been evil many of them bad some of them indifferent. 'When God is “passive,” He is, in a sense, actively passive. I do not mean to speak nonsense but merely to show that God is never totally passive. When He seems to be passive, He is actively choosing not to intercede directly. Augustine addressed the problem this way: “Man sometimes with a good will wishes something which God does not will, as when a good son wishes his father to live, while God wishes him to die. Again it may happen that man with a bad will wishes what God wills righteously, as when a bad son wishes his father to die, and God also wills it …For the things which God rightly wills, He accomplishes by the evil wills of bad men.”' I don't think there is a kind of special magic to the Election of a Pope were we can say for sure we always get the right guy. I think all we tell is the way Jesus taught us, 'By their fruits you shall know them.' I am afraid for me the verdict is still out in the case of our current Pontiff. But I try my hardest to think the best of him, I really, really do.
I don't think this article has been posted before: Pope takes the classic Vatican approach to birth control and Zika By John L. Allen Jr. Associate editor February 20, 2016 You know it was a scintillating papal press conference this week when, in reply to a question about Donald Trump, the pontiff described the GOP candidate’s stance on immigration as “not Christian,” and arguably it wasn’t even the most important thing the pope said. In the same news conference, Francis suggested he’s open to the idea of artificial birth control as a means of trying to combat the spread of the Zika virus in Latin America, while emphatically taking abortion off the table. That answer was more than political theater. While a pope can’t dictate the outcome of an American election, he certainly can control what the Catholic Church approves. To be clear, Francis did not say he was formally endorsing birth control to prevent infection. He also did not signal any shift in the Church’s negative stance on contraception as a means of preventing new life. But he definitely left the impression that he’s open to viewing birth control in some limited cases as a legitimate anti-infection tool, a point confirmed by a Vatican spokesman on Friday who said it could be “the object of discernment in a serious case of conscience.” While we wait for the debate that’s sure to follow, it’s worth noting that the pope’s answer provided a window into how the Vatican works that shouldn’t be overlooked. Speaking about birth control in the context of the Zika pandemic, Francis cited his predecessor, Pope Paul VI. Here’s what he said, translated from Italian: Paul VI — the great! — in a difficult situation, in Africa, permitted sisters to use birth control for cases of violence. It’s necessary not to confuse the evil of avoiding pregnancy, by itself, with abortion … avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil, and in certain cases, as in that I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear. The reference is to Congo in the late 1950s and early 60s, where Catholic nuns faced widespread sexual violence and the question was whether birth control could be used to avoid pregnancy after rape. Francis said Paul VI “permitted” birth control in that context, which, to Anglo-Saxon ears, implies a formal juridical act. The line sparked a frenzy of fruitless Internet searches, as people went looking for a Vatican edict or decree that just doesn’t exist. Here’s what happened: In December 1961, the influential Italian journal Studi Cattolici (“Catholic Studies”) published an issue in which three Catholic moral theologians agreed that in the Congo case, contraception could be justified. The future Paul VI, at that stage, was still the Archbishop of Milan, and close to the currents that shaped Studi Cattolici. It was assumed the conclusions reflected his thinking. That appeared to be confirmed later when Paul VI made one of the authors, Pietro Palazzini, a cardinal. Paul became pope in 1963, and never issued any edict writing that position into law. Thus, when pressed about it some years later, a Vatican spokesman could accurately say, “I am not aware of official documents from the Holy See in this regard.” Still, the Vatican never repudiated the 1961 position, so the takeaway was that it remained a legitimate option. To Italians — and remember, Francis’ ancestry is Italian, and he’s very wired into the country’s ecclesiastical scene — that meant Paul VI approved. All this is not terribly different from the way the Vatican has approached condom use in the context of a married couple where one partner is HIV-positive and the other isn’t, and the aim is to prevent the other partner from becoming infected. In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI asked the Pontifical Council for Health Care under Mexican Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, who has since retired, to examine the question. After polling doctors and other health care professionals, as well as theologians, Barragán presented the pope with a tentatively positive response. To date, that conclusion hasn’t been codified, but it also hasn’t been rejected. In 2010, Benedict said in an interview — note, an interview, not a formal dogmatic statement — that although the Church does not regard condoms as the solution to the AIDS crisis, there are cases in which they may be “a first step” toward responsible behavior. In both cases, the moral analysis shifts because birth control is being used not to block the transmission of life, but to prevent the infliction of a harm — either unwanted pregnancy as the result of violence, or infection by a deadly disease. John Grabowski, a moral theologian at the Catholic University of America, points out that the reasoning behind the 1960s-era position has been translated into Church practice. In the United States, Grabowski noted, Catholic hospitals are allowed to administer fast-acting oral contraceptives to rape victims if tests show ovulation has not yet occurred and the effect is not to induce an abortion. Germany’s bishops confirmed a similar stance in 2013. Often, the Vatican prefers to leave such delicate questions open, not issuing sweeping declarations that could be wrongly viewed as a sea change in Church teaching, but also not denying flexibility to pastors who have to help people make hard choices. Quite possibly, that’s what Francis was doing on the papal plane with regard to the Zika virus. Given Latin America’s large Catholic population, it could have important consequences. That’s not quite the formal decree some may want, or fear, but it also may be the only thing we’re likely to get. http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2016/...can-approach-to-birth-control-and-zika-virus/
Zika is not a deadly disease, for one thing. If a disease IS truly deadly, you really don't want to depend on a condom to save your life. Abstinence is the answer in those cases. It is only because our culture is sex-obsessed that this isn't obvious.
The Congo myth? I have searched high and low but have found no evidence that any nuns in the Congo actually used contraception. Nor can I find a shred of evidence that Pope Blessed Paul VI or Pope St John XXIII ever gave official approval to the use of contraception by nuns in danger of rape. The point of these distorted claims in the article is perhaps to suggest that there are exceptions to the teaching of the church in Humanae Vitae or that the Church is inconsistent in her teachings. This is not the case. The Church from ancient times has been consistent in her teachings and very often ridiculed by a sex obsessed, hedonistic culture.
Condom failure or Russian roulette? After the use of just 10 condoms, the probability of at least one failure is 52%, according to the authoritative Contraceptive Technology. http://www.hli.org/resources/condoms-little-known-scientific-facts/
This is no bigger then all the Bishops in Canada dissenting against Pope Paul' encyclical on Humane Vitae when it came out in 1968. If it were up to a vote, it would have been approved by the worlds Bishops nearly 50 years ago.
Mexican Woman with Zika Gives Birth to Healthy Child (Copyright iStock) Monday, 22 Feb 2016 08:00 AM A woman with a confirmed case of the Zika virus in the southern state of Chiapas gave birth to a "clinically healthy" baby boy, Mexico's health ministry said. The woman, from the town of Pijijiapan, delivered the six pound (2.8 kilo) boy in a hospital in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez on Friday. After an evaluation, the hospital's pediatric center "confirmed that [the infant] is clinically healthy," the health ministry said in a statement late Friday. The woman is one of six known to have contracted Zika while pregnant. Zika, which is spread by mosquitoes, has been linked to microcephaly -- a birth defect in which the infant is born with an abnormally small head. There is no cure for microcephaly and no vaccine against Zika. The other five women "are in good health, they are receiving specialized continuous care and are undergoing periodic ultrasound tests," the statement read. Two of the women are beyond their 28th week of pregnancy, and several tests show no sign that they are carrying a fetus with microcephaly. The other three have still not reached the 28 week mark, the statement read. Of the 80 registered Zika cases in Mexico, 45 are in the southern state of Chiapas, including three of the pregnant women. On average Mexico, population 122 million, has 600 cases of microcephaly per year. That figure has not change since the Zika virus outbreak in Latin America, officials said. Brazil said this week that it has registered 508 cases of microcephaly since October, a huge increase on the average annual number of 150. Read more: Mexican Woman with Zika Gives Birth to Healthy Child
Fr. Z's Blog It’s not an urban legend, it’s a LIE: Paul VI did NOT give permission to nuns to use contraceptives. Posted on 20 February 2016 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf http://wdtprs.com/blog/2016/02/its-...ive-permission-to-nuns-to-use-contraceptives/
Seriously? You can't see a big difference between a bishops conference dissenting from a pope's Magisterial teaching in Humanae Vitae, and a pope dissenting from Magisterial teaching in Humanae Vitae and leading a biships conference into dissent? It's really "no bigger"?!?
Point is Brian, Bishops and Priest have long dissented against Humanae Vitae incase you have not paid attention. The pope has not dissented against magisterial teachings, as he has made no definitive statement to the contrary. Surely with all your knowledge you know what it takes for a pope to dissent from magisterial teachings, right? Surely it does not come from an off the cuff conversation to a media person as you seem to perceive.
If it's being accepted and embraced by posters at MOG and an entire country's episcopal conference, apparently all it takes is an interview response on the papal plane to change praxis, if not doctrine.
That answer was more than political theater. While a pope can’t dictate the outcome of an American election, he certainly can control what the Catholic Church approves. To be clear, Francis did not say he was formally endorsing birth control to prevent infection. He also did not signal any shift in the Church’s negative stance on contraception as a means of preventing new life. But he definitely left the impression that he’s open to viewing birth control in some limited cases as a legitimate anti-infection tool, a point confirmed by a Vatican spokesman on Friday who said it could be “the object of discernment in a serious case of conscience.” I remember reading about another "choice" by this Pope when he was battling the programs intended by the ruling regime in Argentina....and literally put his life on the line in such times where people in dissent were "disappearing". He seemed to allow an opening for at least homosexual unions but for the purpose to fend off the greater official change to marriage itself, in the offing, that would install permanently a force of law that would effect all sections of society, esp. against the Church and citizens in general of good moral will as well as future generations learning to accept such as the norm. Obviously Francis had heard of this Zika scare, limited so far in numbers, already becoming the venue for all kinds of pro abortion forces, outside and inside, to initiate (for good purposes of course!!) their hard charging entrance into Latin America...with the usual scare tactics and Satanic terror where abortion, unless its forbiddance is emphasized, will become the means of "birth control" that is already the case in other countries. So, when the death mongers come their way the people would have to be made aware that abortion itself is "always immoral and a crime" as was emphasized by Francis. He probably had the sense to know that contraception has been accepted and regularly used in that territory as elsewhere but this new real opening for abortion to get its tentacles into the region as "acceptable", in certain circumstances, would become THE substitution for all types of contraception. As elsewhere too once abortion becomes an answer then even those who had not been using contraception would also be more tempted to think it not so bad in comparison to that other "choice" and choose the "lesser" of such evils themselves.
Pope’s Words on Contraception in Accord With Magisterium, Philosophers Say, but Context Is Key Doctrinal authorities stress that a more complete explanation of Church teaching is required in order to avoid confusion. by EDWARD PENTIN 02/19/2016 Pope Francis’ comments on the Zika virus Feb. 17, which many news outlets read as a softening of the Church’s definitive teaching on artificial contraception, were in accordance with the magisterium, Church philosophers say. However, they also noted, a knowledge of the depth of the Church’s teaching in this area was needed in order not to be misled or confused by the Pope’s words. During an in-flight press conference on his return home from Mexico, Pope Francis was asked by a reporter about the threat of Zika in many Latin-American countries. The Pope responded by emphatically stating that abortion is “a crime” and “absolute evil” that cannot be justified. He also spoke on the topic of avoiding pregnancy. “Paul VI, a great man, in a difficult situation in Africa, permitted nuns to use contraceptives in cases of rape,” he said. He warned against confusing “the evil of avoiding pregnancy” with “abortion,” which he said is against the Hippocratic Oath and is an evil “in and of itself.” But he added: “On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one, such as the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear.” He then urged doctors “to do their utmost” to find vaccines against the disease. “This needs to be worked on.” Various news outlets read his comments as a radical shift in the Church’s teaching, while Church leaders scrambled to stress this wasn’t the case. The Pope used strong language with respect to abortion, but the strength of his words “led some to think he was underplaying the importance of contraceptives,” said Opus Dei Father Robert Gahl, associate professor of moral philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. Media Misunderstanding This was coupled with the fact that the media doesn’t appreciate “the depths of the Church’s understanding, and the beauty of the Church’s proposal, regarding sexual morality,” Father Gahl said. He stressed that the Pope’s words were fully in accordance with Church teaching. With respect to Zika, he said if a couple plans to avoid pregnancy to avoid the negative effects of this infection, “that’s an application of traditional Church teaching” in line with the “responsibility of parents to decide when life would begin.” Of course, he added, that would involve natural forms of avoiding pregnancy, such as natural family planning. But the Pope was clearly referring to artificial contraception in the example he gave regarding nuns at risk of rape in Africa. Melissa Moschella, a philosophy professor at The Catholic University of America, told CNA that, in that case, the dispensation for the nuns was “not really an exception, if you understand the rule.” The case in question took place in the early 1960s, when the Vatican granted a dispensation to religious sisters living in the Belgian Congo who were in grave danger of rape due to civil unrest to use oral contraceptives. Moschella explained that, in cases of rape, from a moral perspective, the victim has not engaged in a sexual act, and so the act of violence is a “violation of the woman’s body without any free choice or acceptance on her part.” Birth control, she said, is immoral because it violates the very nature of sex by trying to engage in sex without the natural possibility of pregnancy. “But that doesn’t happen in the case of rape,” Moschella stressed, because there has been “no voluntary sex act on the part of the woman.” As a result, artificial birth control would be viewed not as an immoral contraceptive measure seeking to separate the unitive and procreative aspects of sex, but, rather, part of an act of self-defense, as the women seek to resist the act altogether. But Moschella said this certainly isn’t the case with the Zika virus, because it involves women who are voluntarily engaging in sexual relations and then using contraceptives to prevent those voluntary sexual acts from being fertile. “That does contradict the meaning of the sexual act, and so involves a kind of lack of integrity that’s harmful to the person and harmful to the relationship,” she said. Father Gahl said the Paul VI case in Africa was a “theological opinion” that was “generally accepted by theologians and, therefore, Paul VI seems to have tacitly approved of it.” But he added that “circumstances have changed, also in terms of developments of contraception, and that many of them are in fact abortifacients [cause abortions]; and there are better ways of protecting nuns from rape than contraception,” such as tackling the roots of the violence. The Main Point: Condemning Abortion The U.S. professor said he felt it was “understandable” that Pope Francis was “misunderstood because he presumed a thorough understanding of the Church’s Tradition in order to properly interpret his words, but for those who don’t have that understanding, they could have ended up being misled or even confused by what he said.” The Pope, he reminded, was speaking “very spontaneously, off the cuff and in a very personal way, and the main point was the condemnation of abortion, which came through forcefully.” He also said that his “surprising” reference to Pope Paul VI as “great” seemed to be an emphasis on the importance of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s encyclical that affirmed the Church’s ban on artificial birth control. “One should read that as saying that we should take Humanae Vitae seriously,” the priest said, “that it’s a prophetic document, and we should give it more attention.” Father Lombardi's Comments Since this article was first published on Friday, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi issued a clarification on what the Pope said with regards to the Zika virus and contraception. He told Vatican Radio the Pope spoke of “the possibility of taking recourse to contraception or condoms in cases of emergency or special situations" but was not saying that "this is accepted and this action can be taken without discernment." “Indeed he said clearly that it can be considered in cases of special urgency,” Father Lombardi said. He added that the example Francis gave, of Pope Paul VI’s alleged authorization of contraceptives for nuns in the Congo who were at very serious risk of rape, “suggests this would not be a normal situation in which this was taken into account.” He then referred to comments Benedict XVI made in the book "Light of the World", in which he spoke about the use of condoms in situations where there is a risk of infection, for example, AIDS. “Then the contraceptive or condom, especially in cases of emergency and severity, may also be the object of a serious discernment of conscience,” he said. In response to Father Lombardi’s words, Father Gahl said that if the Vatican spokesman’s words are to be considered as coming from the Pope, then Francis is considering “extreme scenarios” in which, for instance, a woman is threatened by a violent, Zika-infected husband to have sexual intercourse with her. The woman could use contraceptives, Father Gahl said, but a number of factors would have to have been taken into consideration, such as having tried to persuade her husband not to engage in sexual relations, at least for a period of time, but he insisting against her will and impeding her from fleeing the situation in which she may have an obligation to remain for the sake of her children. In such an instance, “some contraceptive pharmaceutical” would be legitimate, Father Gahl said. “It’s a question of conscience what she should do, and depends on the extent that it’s violence,” he said. “This would not be an exception to Humanae Vitae but an exception to the beauty of normal married love in which a husband and wife freely give themselves to one another in openness to life.” Father Gahl also added that he could see the point of a “temporary medical emergency”, such as a strong likelihood of disability, being a “grave reason to delay a pregnancy.” Continence during such a period is “entirely distinct” from any sort of “eugenic motivation” such as genetic screening, he said. “It's good and right for parents to desire healthy children,” Father Gahl explained, “and if there's a grave risk that, for instance, any children conceived over the next three weeks will be seriously ill, then the parents may decide with a well-formed conscience to delay their next pregnancy by abstaining from marital relations for three weeks or the duration of the temporary medical emergency.” But use of artificial contraceptives in such a scenario would be contrary to the Church's moral teaching, and so it remains unclear precisely why the Pope would recall the case of Paul VI and the Congolese nuns in this context. http://www.ncregister.com/daily-new...rs-say/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
The only problem with the article you cite is that nowhere does it explain how the Pope's comments on Zika are in line with the Magisterium. Father Gahl's example is more akin to rape than to the case of someone using contraception in the context of consensual sex in order to prevent their child from being born with Zika-related defects. The 1960's case involving Belgian-Congo nuns living under the threat of rape (assuming that this case really happened) is a totally different scenario than the case of allowing contraceptives for those with Zika. The Pope linked the two and Lombardi has doubled down on the link. But they ARE NOT morally equivalent cases. It is seriously time for someone like Cardinal Burke or even Pope Emeritus Benedict to make a statement. If the confusion and scandal surrounding the Pope's comments on Zika is not dealt with quickly, the damage is only going to spread and souls are going to continue to be at risk.
Totally agree with your analysis. I'm not sure what this David guy is all about. In another post he was congratulating and even offering papal approval for the grave violation of the Church's teaching on sexualityon to one named sparrow.
Just for any who might have been concerned, we should remember that the Holy Father was NOT speaking infallibly during this in-flight Press conference. From the Baltimore Catechism: Q. 530. When does the Church teach infallibly? A. The Church teaches infallibly when it speaks through the Pope and Bishops united in general council, or through the Pope alone when he proclaims to all the faithful a doctrine of faith or morals. Q. 531. What is necessary that the Pope may speak infallibly or ex-cathedra? A. That the Pope may speak infallibly, or ex-cathedra: 1. He must speak on a subject of faith or morals; 2. He must speak as the Vicar of Christ and to the whole Church; 3. He must indicate by certain words, such as, we define, we proclaim, etc., that he intends to speak infallibly. Q. 532. Is the Pope infallible in everything he says and does? A. The Pope is not infallible in everything he says and does, because the Holy Ghost was not promised to make him infallible in everything, but only in matters of faith and morals for the whole Church. Nevertheless, the Pope's opinion on any subject deserves our greatest respect on account of his learning, experience and dignity. Q. 533. Can the Pope commit sin? A. The Pope can commit sin and he must seek forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance as others do. Infallibility does not prevent him from sinning, but from teaching falsehood when he speaks ex-cathedra. Q. 534. What does ex-cathedra mean? A. "Cathedra" means a seat, and "ex" means out of. Therefore, ex-cathedra means speaking from the seat or official place held by St. Peter and his successors as the head of the whole Church. http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson12.htm
