First, Fr. Z. writes: Here is something that I never thought I would writeNext, no better way to cut to the chase than to visit Michael Voris' enthusiastic account below:
Fr. Z kudos to Jamie Manson of the National Schismatic Reporter.
One of Fishwrap‘s headliners, a darling of LCWR, the openly-lesbian, Margaret Farley-mentored Jamie Manson has sobered up about Pope Francis.
She has a piece in the Fishwrap today in which she tosses Francis under the bus. Be clear about this: she is wrong in her positions, but she is honest enough to state her case clearly and she sees accurately what is going on.
Context: she starts with the high hopes which the liberal, dissenting LCWR-ers had for Pope Francis, how jazzed they were at the odd comments João Card. Braz de Aviz (Prefect of Religious) made to the plenary meeting in Rome of the UISG. Then she gets into it: Read more here >>
This leaves unaddressed other questions about Catholic tradition, the New Evangelization, Vatican II, liturgy, and so forth; but the response of dissenters now turning against the Holy Father for these points of orthodoxy speaks well for clarity of these points of dogma and doctrine.
Let me dissent from Pope Francis from the get go. He opposed the death penalty prior to office saying we are more "refined" now. I think he noticed that word "refined" in section 40 of Evangelium Vitae where John Paul said the identical thing about Biblical death penalties...(and we don't have a mimetic problem do we as Toynbee mentioned of us in A Study of History).
ReplyDeleteRefinement? I give you the 2nd largest Catholic population which has no death penalty...Mexico...with 50 anti cartel journalist and 45,000 others murdered in 6 years. Long live life sentences...they're working splendidly in Malta but not at all in Latin America north.
But Francis is from Latin America south.
Hello Bill,
ReplyDeletePope JPII's position on the death penalty does not rise, I believe, above the level of a prudential admonition and judgment -- as is clear from the fact that capital punishment has been traditionally accepted by the Church (as even attested in CCC #2267).
While there may be room for skepticism about mistaken identity in rare cases, I'm with you in thinking that a 'soft' position on capital punishment is detrimental to the common good of the social order. I think a case could be made, in fact, for the position that it is in effect inadequate in its respect for human life, by failing to uphold commutative justice against criminals who murder the innocent and failing to deter those who might otherwise be intent on it.
PP,
ReplyDeleteIt's sold at multiple blogs like Shea's as "Church teaching" and with multiple Bishops out in society like Chaput saying "we are better than that"....it's against human dignity.
Lol... we are better than the Holy Spirit in Romans 13:4 and In Genesis 9:5-6 where He said human dignity of the victim was the reason He was giving it annexed to the Noachic covenant:
" If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man will his blood be shed for in the image of God has man been made.
Read EV. John Paul cites that emboldened last part four times and never shows the reader the dp part right before it. It's great to be Pope...no peer review.
Check wiki on world homicide rates. Six predominant Catholic countries with no dp are in the top 20 worst countries of the world. China and Japan are exponentially lower by about a multiple of 14....and both have the dp. How do you evangelize them toward Catholicism when neither wants to be Mexico or Brazil, our two largest countries both with awful murder rates.
As Samwise would say to Frodo, We're a long way from home, my friend.
ReplyDeleteI leave you with the zen koan we have become in this area: God's reason for the death penalty in Gen.9:6 has become the hierachy's reason to be against the death penalty because none of them looked up the rest of the biblical verse as they read Evangelium Vitae.
ReplyDelete