Pope Francis

Last updated on: August 16, 2014 at 5:42 pm by Dave Griffey

Pope Francis 2014-08-16T17:42:00-04:00 Dave Griffey

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From another perspective. We all know that Pope Francis is awesome. The media says so. Plus many around the world say so. And millions and millions of Catholics say so. In fact, many Catholics who once disparaged Popes Benedict XVI and St. JPII, are now all about fealty to and love for the Pope. And we all know all about the wicked hearts of those who would criticize or oppose Pope Francis in any way.

Often the assault against critics of Pope Francis is based on a snippet of an article or blog post criticizing Pope Francis, or expressing concern. The clips are sometimes out of context. The accusations brutal and the charges of ‘Francis Haters’ flies as much as the charge of ‘Harry Hater’ did years ago in the Great Harry Potter Debates.

So a reader sent this along, giving a viewpoint about Pope Francis barely heard without a cacophony of screams and charges of ‘evil reactionary Catholic!’. I’m not saying I agree. I’m not saying that charges of Francis wanting to liberalize the Church are accurate. Quite frankly, I can’t verify the facts or refute them. And even if the facts are all accurately portrayed, it’s impossible to judge motives at this point. I just thought I’d post a link. I’d also point out that this is on Fox News. Fox is no fan of Francis, particularly over his economic views. Though truth be told, I don’t think many actually are. If they were, I think we’d have already seen some major upheaval and shakeups across the Catholic world.

Anyhow, there’s the article. Take it for what it’s worth. The email my reader sent said, in part, this:

More to the point re: this heavy-handed hierarchy smacking down local Catholics:

Two further historical points from my own off-the-top memory that I can’t resist making: In 1560 the Catholics who had come to India — originally the Jesuits, as in St. Francis Xavier — in 1560 they established the Inquisition primarily, as David Bentley Hart noted in his Church history book, to force “Thomas Christians” there into the Tridentine Mass. The Inquisition burned a lot (almost all, says Hart) of the ancient Christian texts they found. The same kind of attempt to force the Western Mass on the Ethiopians resulted in rebellion and the overthrow of the king and the expulsion of all Catholic missionaries (early 1600s). If you are familiar with the history of the Jesuits in China and what happened there, you already know another profound example of this stupidity.

And not to just dump on Catholics, I think it was in the late 1600s that the Orthodox Church in Russia made liturgical changes and forced these on the people. The people revolted. Unfortunately for them, the Russian state got involved and the result was wide-spread slaughter. So “it’s a Church hierarchy thing” that afflicts both East and West.

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