#10 OF 12 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"

# 10 OF 12 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"
IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - SAT. AUG. 4/18

George Neumayer, "The Political Pope"

Chapter Four - The Liberal Jesuit from Latin America 58-64

 

    "The Society has been moving Left ever since Arrupe," says a Jesuit interviewed for this book. "Arrupe liked to promote young liberals to be provincials. The more traditional Jesuits were pushed aside and the progressives were promoted.

    In 1975, Arrupe summoned Jesuits worldwide to a meeting in Rome. The purpose of the event was to consolidate the Jesuit's order liberal direction after Vatican II, "At the 1975 General Congregation, a worldwide gathering of Jesuits, Fr. Arrupe managed to refashion the Society's identity so that it was dominated by social justice concerns," according to the Catholic Herald. ...

 

    Bergoglio has made a point of emphasizing that he was "never" a conservative and that he didn't care for traditional Jesuits who viewed St. Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises in a way "that emphasizes, silence, and penance. ... The order embraced an unprecedented understanding of itself. "We can no longer pretend that the inequalities and injustices of our world must be borne as part of the inevitable order of things." ... Critics regarded the turn as a betrayal of transcendent values in favor of an overemphasis on the secular world.  ... According to Argentine criminal prosecutor Jack Tollers, a long time observer of Beregoglio as an opportunist willing to work both side of the political street when  ecclesiastical advancement required it....

 

    The circumspect quality of Bergoglio's liberalism at the time, motivated by his need to navigate the pressures and opportunities of Church politics, explains his supportive but cautious approach to liberation theology. "As head of the Jesuits in Argentina and then as a bishop, Francis never joined in the attack on liberation theology - but was never a forceful defender of it either," Harvard Divinity School professor Harvey Cox has written, "As a bishop, he claimed that he favored it, but not in an ideological way. When  debates about the movement split both the Church and the Jesuits, Francis tried to patch up the division. He has subsequently that he often did it with a heavy hand, which he now regrets." In 2016, with the blessing of Pope Francis, the Jesuits made their general superior a Venezuelan, Fr. Arturo Sosa, whose communist sympathies have long been known. He has written about the "Marxist mediation of the Christian Faith," arguing that the Church should "understand the existence of Christians who simultaneously call themselves Marxists and commit themselves to the transformation of the capitalist society into a socialist society."

 

A Champlain of the Spirit of Vatican II

    Bergoglio is not only the first Jesuit pope in the history of the Church but also the first pope to have been ordained after Vatican II... During an interview in which he randomly declared that Buddhists go to heaven, he lampooned the pre-Vatican II Church for its dim view of ecumenism.

    "I remember my first experience of ecumenism: I was four or five years old and and I was walking along with my grandmother.... On the other pavement there were two women from the Salvation Army... 'Are those nuns, granny?" To which she replied: 'No, they are Protestants, but they are good!" That was the first time I heard someone speaking well of people who belonged to different religious religions....The Church's respect for other religions has grown a great deal..."

     As pope, Bergoglio's reliance on such caricatures of the pre-Vatican II Church has been constant. He shares none of the sympathy that his two immediate predecessors felt for the pre-Vatican II Church...

In a characteristic comment, he criticized the pre-Vatican II Church for taking too hard a line on suicide, whereas "I still respect the one who commits suicide; he is a person who could not overcome the contradictions in his life."... 

    In an interview with the Vatican-approved Jesuit publication La Civila Catholica, Pope Francis made a plea for politically correct Catholicism inspired by the spirit of Vatican II. ...

 

George H. Kubeck

P.S. Political correctness & Religious correctness aren't in the pursuit of the truth.