Category: Blithe Spirit

The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times

Climate changeability denier finds Pope Francis in a pickle

It’s something he said and something a revered predecessor said:

The Vatican’s biggest carbon emitter, “Pope” Francis, warns: “Time is running out! …We do not have the luxury of waiting for others to step forward” to save the planet!

Here we must quote the words of “Saint” John XXIII at the Vatican II opening address: “We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand”!

Dirty trick played here, catching the (alleged, he says) Holy Father in his speech. Go shoot him down, Francis.

(He won’t.)

Francis to fellow Jesuits: When I do not respond to questioners and nay-sayers, I follow example of an early Jesuit

Among likenesses to St. Peter Faber SJ, one of the earliest Jesuits, whom Pope Francis claims as his ideal, is to be a “man of dialogue.”

With whom?

Not with bishops and cardinals who ask first privately then publicly for clarification of his statements and writings about faith and morals, whom he has ignored for months and years.

Holy Father, please. Do you know what you are saying (to Romanian Jesuits on a recent trip) when you claim to be an imitator of this saint?

I’m beginning to think you don’t, as in many other instances.

Cardinal Cupich might brush up on his knowledge of canon law . . .

He talks around the issue . . .

via Cdl. Cupich’s rationales for not taking canonical action against prominent pro-abortion Catholic politicos are as unconvincing as ever | In the Light of the Law

“Sanctions” are not the issue. Rather, the issues are preventing scandal and sacrilege.

Neither is “Changing people’s minds” the issue. He can’t let it go at that, “as if that satisfies his duty in the matter . . .  any more than a father can excuse sitting by while members of his household act against the common good, by saying, “Well, I told them what was right and wrong.”

California Democrats’ war on exposer of Planned Parenthood as body-parts purveyor

via Pro Life Warrior Fined $195,000 | Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Among the Dems, Kamala Harris involved in unprecedented prosecution:

In a recent statement [hidden camera producer David] Daleiden points out, “Not a single other undercover journalist has ever been prosecuted under the California video recording law, and they record and publish hidden camera stings on a weekly basis. My case is the first and only one, because it is Kamala Harris’s politically-motivated attack on my First Amendment rights to benefit her friends and donors at Planned Parenthood.”

Lots more here on the situation, plus at his Center for Medical Progress site.

Francis as fishwife, giving it to the disagreeables . . .

via The Pope Francis Little Book of Insults

He has a way with words. No doubt about it. For instance:

 
 
 

Such a mouth on him.

Cupich: ‘Counterproductive’ to deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians

The Chicago cardinal agrees that the abortion legislation is a hellish thing — “it says that the unborn child has absolutely no claim on rights” — but is considerably less clear as to what he thinks of Communion, saying

. . . he thought it would be “counterproductive” to deny Holy Communion in his archdiocese to the legislators who championed the law.

“I think it would be counterproductive to impose sanctions, simply because they don’t change anybody’s minds, but it also takes away from the fact that an elected official has to deal with the judgment seat of God, not just the judgment seat of a bishop. I think that’s much more powerful,” Cupich told CNA.

“I have always approached the issue saying that the bishop’s primary responsibility is to teach, and I will continue to do that.”

Well teach what in this case? Not, apparently, what Bishop Paprocki of Springfield said:

He added that “to be clear and say ‘no, you can’t be promoting abortion legislation and be a Catholic in good standing,’ it also protects the integrity of the sacraments, saying that receiving Holy Communion is a very sacred thing to do.”

Cupich talks as if he were a prominent lecturer with points to make, Paprocki as if he has a cause to promote that goes far beyond persuading people, namely to protecting “the integrity of the sacraments,” whose reality hovers over the whole controversy.

via Cupich: ‘Counterproductive’ to deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians | Catholic Herald

RORATE CÆLI: The Spectator: “Is the Pope a Catholic? . . .

via RORATE CÆLI: The Spectator: “. . . You have to wonder.”

. . .  In the old days, a pope’s remit was modest: infallible, but only in the vanishingly rare cases when he pronounced on matters of faith and morals concerning the whole Church.

But even at their most bombastic and badly behaved, earlier popes would have hesitated to do what nice Pope Francis has done, which is to approve changes in the liturgy which amount to rewriting the Lord’s Prayer.

Howzat?

That bit that says ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’ is, for Pope Francis, a bad translation. ‘It speaks of a God who induces temptation,’ he told Italian TV. ‘I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. A father doesn’t do that; A father helps you to get up immediately.’

Homespun wisdom. Stuff you might hear at the 19th hole, quaffing a cold one. But

. . . [it] sounds as if it’s not the translation he doesn’t like, it’s the sentiment — Christ not being Christian enough. And so, he’s approved changes by the Italian bishops to the Italian translation of the Roman Missal.

The original Latin Vulgate version reads: ‘et ne nos inducas in tentationem’ which is pretty well exactly the same as the familiar English one. The Italian translation, ‘e non ci indurre in tentazione’, is now being replaced with ‘e non abbandonarci alla tentazione’, or ‘and do not abandon us to temptation’.

That’s nice. But, but but . . .

. . .  the Lord’s Prayer is common to Christians of all denominations. It’s part of our languages and our culture. We say it at weddings, funerals [find it in movie titles]; the unreligious remember it from school. It’s a common prayer which binds us together. Why change the words? Especially since, as Greek scholars will tell you that the root verb, eisphero means bring or carry in, and hence, lead; nothing about ‘allow’.

Well, too bad for the (original) Greek, apparently. Henry VIII had the same idea. The two “don’t have much in common but they did see eye to eye on this. Henry wanted ‘lead us not…’ to be translated as ‘Suffer us not to be led into temptation’, only to be seen off [resisted in the matter] by Archbishop Cranmer…”

Blog author differs in one point:

Actually, Francis and Henry share exactly the same kind of personality, and, except for the womanizing, Francis only differs from Henry in the great restraints posed by current mores on how to get rid of adversaries…

But he has destroyed orders (Franciscans of the Immaculate, and others), organized coups (Knights of Malta), changed teachings of immemorial Tradition (on marriage and adultery, and others), acting exactly as the “Renaissance Prince” he is, even though he loathes the title…

Well said.

 

 

Sri Lankan cardinal carries the ball in Vatican and national matters . . .

via Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith on the Liturgy and its Abuses

Can’t say enough for this long, extended collection of commentary and critique by the one-time Vatican hand,

. . . a Sri Lankan . . .  ninth and current Archbishop of Colombo, serving since 2009. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 2010. He previously served as Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (2001–2004), and Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (2005–2009).

. . . and no mean leader of his people in his native land:

. . . the Sri Lankan cardinal has been unusually blunt in the aftermath of the Easter bombings which hit two Catholic churches on the South Asian island, as well as an Evangelical church and three hotels.

Ranjith has complained about the government’s response to the attack, and closing the churches to Sunday worship drives the point home that he doesn’t think the security forces are up to the task of protecting the country’s Christian minority.

So he’s a plain speaker in re: both liturgy and political foot-dragging.

Social justice warriors lead college down garden path. Crash!

Oberlin College hit with maximum PUNITIVE DAMAGES (capped at $22 million by law) in Gibson’s Bakery case

 for Legal Insurrection:

“Oberlin College tried to sacrifice a beloved 5th-generation bakery, its owners, and its employees, at the alter of political correctness in order to appease the campus ‘social justice warfare’ mob.

The jury sent a clear message that the truth matters, and so do the reputations and lives of people targeted by false accusations, particularly when those false accusations are spread by powerful institutions.

Throughout the trial the Oberlin College defense was tone-deaf and demeaning towards the bakery and its owners, calling the bakery nearly worthless. The jury sent a message that all lives matter, including the lives of ordinary working people who did nothing wrong other than stop people from stealing.”

Black students had been caught stealing, warriors demanded college overlook it.

Final from the defense lawyer, Lee Plakas ended by reading to the jury the poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by John Donne.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Defense attorney Rachelle Kuznicki argued:

“We cannot change the past, we can learn from it.”

“This will impact people who had nothing to do with the protest …, it also means less students who are not able to afford a college education will be able to do so.”

Legal Insurrection was alone in covering the trial, missing not any of it.