# 42 OF 45 "THE POLITICAL POPE" & "THE WAYWARD SHEPHERD" NATIONAL REVIEW

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH, BLOGGER, George H. Kubeck, TUES. MARCH 3, 2020

 

George Neumayer, The Political Pope, Center Street. N.Y. 2017, Excerpt p. 215 -

(MY BLOGGER ACCESS HAS BEEN ASSAULTED AND RUPTURED.) 

FRANCIS FATIGUE

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken of "two-sided, deep crisis": in the Church since Vatican II, which was triggered by  a modernist theology that rejected the centrality of Catholicism by a modernist theology to the salvation of souls:... that crisis has only deepened under Pope Francis, as its identity becomes increasingly politicized and non-theological....

 

That crisis has only deepened under Pope Francis, as its identity becomes increasingly political and non-theology. "Right up0 to this day, many people have been trying to determine Francis' true intentions. If you ask cardinal and bishops, or the pope's advisers and colleagues, or veteran Vatican observers about his possible strategy these days - the Pope's overarching plan - they seem to agree on one point. The man who sits on the Chair of St. Peter is a notorious troublemaker," says Der Spiegel....

 

Catholics feel that his popularity with the liberal elite comes "at the expense of the Church," and that his "snazzy sayings" means nothing, said German novelist Martin Mosebach....

    The late Chicago cardinal Francis George, who was an early supporter of the pope, nevertheless found the pope's ambiguity irritating, "Why doesn't he himself clarify these things? Why is it necessary that apologist have to bear that burden of trying to put the best possible face on it? Does he not realize the repercussions? Perhaps he doesn't. I don't know whether he is conscious of all the consequences of some of the things he's said and done that raise these doubts in people's minds.

 

That's one of the things I'd to have the chances to ask him, if I ever get over there. Do you realize what has happened, just by that very phrase. "Who am I to judge?" How it's been used and misused? It's very misused, because he was talking about someone who had already asked for mercy and been given absolution whom he knows well. That's entirely different than talking to somebody who demands acceptance rather than asking for forgiveness. It's constantly misused."

 

The pope appears unfazed by these criticisms. Asked during a 1016 interview about the complaints of conservative Catholics, he replied defiantly, "They say no to everything. I go ahead, without looking over my shoulder....Journalist Rod Dreher, "... The spirit of Pope Francis will replace the 'spirit of Vatican II" as the rationalization people will use to ignore the difficult teaching of the faith."

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Ref. National Review, "The Wayward Shepherd" Daniel Mahony, Feb. 24, 2020, p. 25

 

    "Political correctness - a hostility to the West as the West- pervades a good deal of what the papacy says and does. This is a papacy that has been largely silent about the decimation of ancient Christian communities in the Arab and Islamic Middle East.The Koran, Pope Francis insists, is incompatible with "every form of violence." This is false. [a lie] and everyone knows it.                                                   

    Where Bishop Sanchez Sorondo sees social justice and Catholic social teaching at work in China, others, as Robert Royal has noted, see intensified persecution of Catholics and other religious believers, environmental damage that is unprecedented in the East or West, a cruel forced abortion policy, Orwellian surveillance of dissidents and of every expression of independence in civil society, and the rounding up in concentration camps of over 1 million Muslim Uighurs in the northwest.

 

    As Royal, president of Faith & Reason Institute and editor of The Catholic Thing, aptly observes, the Vatican's misjudgments are all to commonplace: "The Vatican currently pursues a steady line of anti-Western criticism, against the alleged xenophobia, rapacious economies, and environmental 'sins' of both Europe and North America" Ref.  p.25. National Review, National Review, Feb. 24,2020 By Daniel Mahony...."                                                                            George H. Kubeck