Tedious, childish and exhausted: officially sanctioned transgression worth no more than an eye-roll
What the “it’s just stickers” crowd couldn’t grasp and what the people shouting online were trying to articulate: some things belong to God, and not to us.
us.
This week social media denizens were treated to photos of an “art installation” at perhaps the most sacred site of all English-speaking Christianity, consisting of inner-city-style “graffiti” apparently painted on the interior walls and columns.
It appeared without widespread public warning or consultation, turning a holy place, created in the 6th century for the divine worship, the site of centuries of prayer, martyrdom and pilgrimage, into a stage for a bit of tawdry protest art.
The obvious falsehood, often used against proponents of orthodoxy during Francis' pontificate, must go if Leo XIV's stated wish to end polarisation within the Church is to be achieved.
Now that some time has passed to calmly reflect on the Francis pontificate, one aspect urgently needing examination is the nature of the internal disunity, discord and disorder of those years.
In previous pontificates, polarisation and division were widely seen to have come from dissenters – modernist cardinals, bishops and theologians who promoted teaching that ran contrary to the Magisterium.
Popes up until Francis had corrected them, perhaps not as firmly or frequently as many would have liked, but it was always clear that the Holy Father, despite occasional questionable words or actions of his own, was the focus of unity, the custodian of sound doctrine, and that the dissenters were the protagonists of division.
But when Cardinal Bergoglio was elected, that all changed. Suddenly the dissenters were in charge as Francis quickly set about implementing the modernist revolution, unleashing great unrest and what many view as a diabolical disorientation within the institutional Church that has caused great harm to souls and the Church’s evangelical witness.
There are too many examples of this discord to mention, but Cardinal Walter Kasper’s 2014 proposal to allow, in some cases, civilly remarried divorcees to receive Holy Communion was arguably the touchpaper, igniting bitter internal and very public infighting that up until then I’d never witnessed in my time covering the Vatican.
The “Kasper Proposal” became, as many had predicted, a Trojan Horse. It led to Amoris Laetitia and the promotion of a so-called “paradigm shift” that ushered in other heterodox and heretical ideas, and sparked further acrimony and bitterness that lasted throughout Francis’ pontificate.
We can easily forget just how grave the situation was: seven filial corrections signed by bishops, priests, prominent laity and respected scholars; the famous five dubia from four cardinals followed by a second dubia eight years later; a cardinal calling for a “profession of faith on the part of the Pope;” and a leading theologian warning of what he called an “internal papal schism.”
More: https://edwardpentin.substack.com/p/time-to-bury-the-old-lie-that-being?triedRedirect=true
'This was not a Jubilee pilgrimage (where believers renew baptismal vows, repent sins, and commit to reform),' said the emeritus bishop of Hong Kong.
