Casual does, belief follows, as sure as night the day.

A generation of pastors stripped the altars and passed out the Eucharist like a leaflet.

The latest Pew study shockingly states that only 31 per cent of Catholics in the United States believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”

Out of the 69 per cent of Catholics surveyed who believe that the bread and wine are mere “symbols,” only 22 per cent of those understand that they are dissenting from the Church’s actual teaching. The rest are accidental Zwinglians.

More here: Catholic Herald

Pope Francis speaks with forked tongue when he praises and aligns himself with the man whom he raised to sainthood.

If there was ever any doubt that Pope Francis’s Vatican regime is determined to subvert the doctrines of Pope John Paul II, the shameless conduct of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute’s new administration ought to stand as indisputable proof.

Followers of Saint John Paul II were apprehensive after the Institute fell into the hands of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who was appointed Grand Chancellor by Pope Francis.  Paglia is notorious for his elastic interpretations of moral theology along with the homoerotic art that sullies the walls of his former cathedral.

In 2017, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio changing the status of the Institute into a theological institute responsible for studying marriage and family from both a theological and scientific perspective. At the time, Paglia proclaimed that the exhortation Amoris Laetitia would become the “magna carta” for this re-conceived institution.

He gets a go-ahead from the man who would remake the church on the image of his controverted pronouncements.

Source: Crisis Magazine

If you’ll pardon the expression.

One would assume a radical pope like Francis would at least keep a few token conservatives in his entourage. On the contrary: many of his appointees are well to the Left of his own public image. Much can be gleaned about the Holy Father’s mind by studying the men he entrusts with power and authority.

Take the appointment of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia to head the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family. The regime-change took place two years ago; now, as expected, Paglia is conducting a Stalin-style purge of the Academy.

All the members of the Institute who subscribe to John Paul’s view of marriage and morality are being handed pink slips—a color which suggests the new direction that Paglia has in mind for the Institute.

Of course, this is the man now famous for having commissioned an enormous homoerotic fresco to “grace” an interior wall of his cathedral. In the picture, a semi-nude (his lower half is mercifully shielded by a sheet) Archbishop Paglia is seen clutching a nude man who returns his embrace.

The fresco:

Gulp.

Later:

From the commentariat for this article:

The suspicious side of me wonders whether Pope Francis chose to live in Santa Marta so that he could have night time visitors more easily. Other guests at the hotel could easily come visit him at night this way. It would have been much more noticeable at the Apostolic palace, and much harder to do. His living arrangements in Argentina were such that he arranged that no housekeepers, etc would be around his place at night. Maybe this humility was not humility at all.

Also, look who he appointed as head of the Santa Marta Hotel now – Ricca, the famous “Who am I to judge” homosexual prelate that was caught with rent boys. Ricca now has control over the hotel where all visiting cardinals stay. So if the pope has night time visitors, Ricca can arrange so that security is placed out of the way, etc. And if I allow myself to be suspicious, I wonder if Ricca could collect information, by electronic or other means, on the behavior of visiting cardinals, making them more pliable and amenable to doing exactly as they are told.

It’s a shame that we have gotten to the point where there is zero trust in the Pope, his appointees, etc. But that is where we are.

In a shameful place.

Read more at Crisis Magazine

Evangelical poverty the norm:

“How many times do I think of this when I see some parishes where it is thought that money is more important than the sacraments! Please! A poor Church: let us ask the Lord for this,” the pope said Aug. 7.

Forgetting how much $ it takes to run the church?

His love for the universal statement, as in the above, does what for his credibility?

More at True wealth etc.

A modern family.

Her admirers will be relieved to know that the Duchess’s reproductive processes will not be subjected to the strain of giving birth to somebody whose future labours and taxes might help to sustain financially the upper end of a top-heavy demographic.

Source: Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment

You won’t recognize the church they come up with, says Liberation Theology researcher:

In June, LifeSiteNews interviewed author Julio Loredo, who wrote Liberation Theology, a life jacket for the poor made of lead (Teologia della liberazione. Un salvagente di piombo per i poveri) (Cantagalli, 2014).

Loredo said the “untold” backstory of the Amazon synod is that it is intended to “change the whole Church” along the lines of “so-called indigenist and ecological theology” and from an “‘Amazonian’ point of view, which is nothing else than the culmination of liberation theology.”

While much of the media is focused on issues such as the ordination of women, Loredo said, “This Synod is being prepared and staffed by a well-organized network of ‘indigenist’ associations and movements.” He asserted that key persons involved in the synod are connected to liberation theology.

Indigenist? A remake on extremely untraditional lines?

A trifle bathetic, but hey, he means well (I think) . . .

. . . may we never fail to weep before [the] tragedies of our young. May we never become inured to them, for anyone incapable of tears cannot be a mother. [Emphasis added throughout]

Wow! A poet!

We want to weep so that society itself can be more of a mother, so that in place of killing it can learn to give birth, to become a promise of life.

Figure that one out, you get a cigar.

We weep [Hoo-boy, I sure do] when we think of all those young people who have already lost their lives due to poverty and violence, and we ask society to learn to be a caring mother.

Please, society, be a mother!

None of this pain goes away; it stays with us, because the harsh reality can no longer be concealed.

Is that it? Was wondering.

The worst thing we can do is adopt that worldly spirit whose solution is simply to anaesthetize young people with other messages, with other distractions, with trivial pursuits.

Trivial pursuits, yes. Get rid of them, let pain take over.

Thanks, Mr. Poet. You’re not Percy Shelley, but stay with it.

(Another way to win a cigar is to guess this man’s day job without clicking the link.)