#27 OF 45 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"

# 27 OF 45 - THIS UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE"

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM -

SATURDAY, DEC. 28, 2019

GEORGE NEUMAYR - "THE POLITICAL POPE" CENTER STREET, N.Y. 2017, EXCERPTS:

    Liberalizing Annulment Procedures p. 167 - 172

"Relations between Pope Francis and the canonical-legal community are strained," says canon lawyer Michael Dunnigan in an interview for this book. "Most of the Holy Father's references to law and lawyers are negative, and he seems to see law as almost the antithesis of mercy. Most canonists, by contrast, see the law itself as pastoral...." For all his talk of "collegiality," Pope Francis inserted these changes into canon law autocratically....

"Speaking to a group of priests and nuns at a pastoral conference in Rome in 2016, Pope Francis outraged Catholics by declaring that "the great majority" of Catholic marriages are invalid.... He mused that as Archbishop of Buenos Aires it was his practice to refuse to preside at "shotgun weddings." He didn't make it clear why the desire of a couple to provide an illegitimate child with a married mother and father constituted an unworthy motive for marriage....

   'The pope was also remarkably blase about couples living together before marriage. He said the majority of couples in Buenos Aires taking marriage preparation courses were living together but he didn't consider that too worrisome. He told the priests at the pastoral conference not to press such couples to marry. They prefer to cohabitate, and this is a challenge , a task....

    
"He even praised some of these premarital relationships and implied that it didn't matter whether these couples get married in Church. "I've seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitions, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity." To orthodox Catholics, the juxtaposition of these remarks with his claim that most sacramental marriages are invalid was deeply unsettling.... "I will be happy when this pontificate ends," says a priest interviewed for this book. "I have stopped paying attention to what he says. It is too painful." ...

The Liberalizing Synod on the Family

"The centerpiece of this permissive pontificate has been the pope's liberalizing Synod on the Family, which was a pretext to weaken the Church's sacramental discipline. Toward that end, he stacked the synod with proponents of situation ethics and dissenters from the pontificates of his predecessors.

A product of his team of ghostwriters and hand-picked delegates, the synod's preliminary report spoke of the "positive aspects" of premarital cohabitation and homosexual relationships. It passed the "precious support" homosexuals find in their relationships and condemned the Church for not turning "respectfully to those who participate in her life in an incomplete and imperfect way, appreciating the positive values they contain rather than their limitations and shortcomings." ...

"For the LGBT Catholics in the United States and around the world, this new document is a light in the darkness- a dramatic new tone from a church hierarchy that has long denied the very existence of committed and loving gay and lesbian partnerships" said Chad Griffin, President of Human Rights ...

"The controversial proposal at the heart of the Synod - the granting of Communion to the divorced and remarried - was also the shot down by the bishops. "Catholic bishops handed Pope Francis and embarrassing defeat Saturday by withholding support for one of his signature initiatives - a pathway for Catholics who have divorced and remarried to receive Communion - thus showing the strength of the conservative resistance to the pope's liberalizing agenda," reported The Wall Street Journal. ...

"Yet Kasper's proposal prevailed, shaping Pope Francis's post synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Using vague language Pope Francis endorsed the proposal writing that "divorced who have entered a new union, for example, can find themselves in a variety of situations, which should not be pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classification leaving no room for a suitable personal and pastoral discernment." ...  George H. Kubeck - "THIS BOOK REPORT WILL BE FINISHED IN 2020."