GORGEOUS / PUCK ORDINATIONS

DIARMUID MARTIN HAS ANNOUNCED IN THIS WEEK'S DUBLIN PRO-CATHEDRAL NEWSLETTER THAT HE WILL ORDAIN TWO TRANSITIONAL DEACONS AS PRIESTS OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF DUBLIN.

On several occasions recently clerical and other readers of this Blog had claimed that Deacon Michael Jack "Gorgeous" Byrne would be ordained at the same time - the Feast of the patron saint of Dublin - Laurence O'Toole.

But this week's Pro-Cathedral newsletter says two will be ordained - and never mentions Gorgeous!

This means that Gorgeous WILL NOT be ordained next Tuesday - OR - that he will be slipped into the Pro-Cathedral at the last minute and be ordained with the other two?

Knowing the way the RC Church works - ANYTHING could happen???

Catholic apologists - and maybe Diarmuid Martin himself (?) may claim that this is a private internal matter for Dublin and Deacon Byrne himself?

Not true!

Maynooth seminary is in a state of national and international scandal and this scandal is very much in the public arena and therefore a genuine matter of public interest.

It is also of grave concern to the ordinary Catholics of Dublin who financially support DM and his church.

It is also of public interest as the RC church in Ireland benefits from public funds in various ways - including as a collection of charities with tax reliefs.

It is also of interest to other public charities - like THE ST JOSEPH'S YOUNG PRIEST'S SOCIETY who give the RC Church authorities a great deal of publicly collected money towards the training of priests.

This same charity, according to reports, gave Gorgeous himself some annual financial grants - money that was apparently spent on at least one occasion, to finance a trip for drinks at The George gay venue in Dublin.

KING PUCK:

The rumor is that the RC bishop of Kerry - Ray Browne will ordain Deacon Sean "King Puck" Jones to the priesthood next Sunday, November 12th. 

The same arguments about Gorgeous apply in the Puck case.

The Irish Catholic bishops have always acted as if it is the duty of theor lay church members to:

PAY UP!

PRAY UP!

SHUT UP!

From that perspective, the possible ordinations of Gorgeous and Puck - in the minds of Diarmuid Martin and Ray Brown are NOT ANYONE'S BUSINESS!

That is not the case anymore in a very changed Ireland in which the people are no longer episcopal serfs.

They must be held publicly accountable for all their actions - and they will be!

The RC Church in Ireland is on a fast downward spiral.

Much of this is down to episcopal and clerical arrogance.

Much of it is down to other establishments co-operating with the RC establishment.

Much of it is down to church members failing to challenge all the abuse and wrongdoing.

It's time all this stuff was out in the open - instead of being hidden in episcopal archives, in papal nunciatures and of documents being sent to Rome in diplomatic pouches so that they will not be capable of being made public under a civil court discovery order. 

At long last the Irish People and the people of other nations are screaming:

STOP!


NOT IN MY NAME !

NOT IN OUR NAME!

NOT IN GOD'S NAME!

TUAM BABIES - TIP OF ICEBERG

James M. Smith
@IrishCentral
October 31, 2017

When will Ireland discover the full truth of the Tuam Mother and Baby home?

Dan Barry’s “The Lost Children of Tuam” published in the New York Times last week draws a searing portrait of Irish society; the society in which the Tuam Baby Home operated (1925-1961) and the society in which Catherine Corless fights to dignify infant remains interred on the grounds of the former institution (2012-2017).

Ireland seems no closer to the truth of what happened to these and other children born to the nation’s institutional care system.

“The Lost Children of Tuam” foregrounds the need for a truth telling mechanism to cultivate understanding and thereby help survivors come to terms with the system’s legacy of pain and suffering.

The response to Barry’s story on social media is unequivocal. The litany of tweets signal dismay as readers from around the globe struggle to comprehend: “devastating-incredible-shocking-heartbreaking-State sanctioned genocide-harrowing-powerful-haunting-sad-extraordinary-lost for words-powerful-wrenching-stunning-moving-shameful-brutal.

Irish readers, perhaps, are somewhat immune, saturated after twenty years of reports detailing “endemic sexual abuse” of children, of women enslaved behind convent walls, of infants exploited by pharmaceutical companies, trafficked for profit, discarded in death, experimented on in universities.

Some in Ireland plead “enough already.” “Its time to move on!” They ignore stories of Artane, Ireland’s largest Industrial School where abuse was rampant. They pass by High Park where 155 Magdalene women were exhumed in 1993, forgetting that the nuns only expected to uncover 133 human remains. Twenty-two additional bodies dicovered but no police investigation came. The remains were cremated and interred in a “communal plot” at Glasnevin Cemetery.

They evade discussion of Sean Ross Abbey, from which Michael Hess, Philomena Lee’s son, was forcibly adopted to America, growing up to become the RNC’s Chief Legal Counsel and working in President Reagan and President Bush’s administrations.

These names, like Tuam, map a landscape of national self-delusion, whereby the Irish deliberately un-know what was always and already known.

But for the victims, survivors, and family-members of these institutions, the past remains deeply traumatic, unfinished, and not so easily forgotten.  Silence is no longer an option. They demand truth. And, they recognize in Catherine Corless a woman who speaks their language. Dan Barry’s essay captures the essence of this indomitable woman—dignified, determined, and self-effacing. She speaks truth to power, quietly but effectively. She informs on Ireland and thereby subversively reclaims that most pejorative of Irish epithets.

Tuam is but one institution, the tip of a much larger iceberg yet to be navigated.

Other Mother and Baby Homes, and County Homes, where unmarried women also went to give birth to their so-called “illegitimate” children, have “angel” plots, as infant burial grounds are called. Some locations also have graves of women who died in childbirth. No one knows the exact number or their names, and no State body has yet produced the requisite death certificates, a precondition to burial in twentieth-century Ireland. Some graves are marked. Others are not. Similar end-of-life anomalies persist for women who died in the Magdalene Laundries.

The Tuam Home is distinct in one respect: The Bon Secours inexplicably interred infant remains in a series of underground chambers, part of a disused septic tank system. There was a town cemetery directly across the road from the institution. The nuns opted, apparently, to avoid paying the fee.

Tuam had high infant mortality rates, but so did Bessboro in Cork and St. Patrick’s in Dublin. Infant morbidity across all these institutions looked much the same—congenital conditions, contagious diseases, and “marasmus,” otherwise known as malnutrition or, to put it more bluntly, starvation.

The children who survived beyond childhood—some “boarded out,” others adopted at home or abroad, still others growing up in an industrial school—are looking to understand a past constructed to remain abstract and opaque.

For example, the ongoing Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation has yet to advertise in the US, despite the fact that 2,000 plus children were adopted here between the 1940s and 1970s.

Countless hundreds more were likely trafficked illegally to America. A government memorandum from 2012 suggests that as many as 1,000 infants were trafficked from the Tuam institution alone. How can the investigation achieve understanding or arrive at the truth when it ignores such a significant constituency?

Survivors seek to ascertain their birth identity, to know what became of their mothers, and to learn something of their family medical histories. The institutions fractured connections to place, separated siblings, and oftentimes deliberately falsified official documents. And, Ireland’s system of closed adoption, still in 2017, perpetuates a culture of secrecy, shame and stigma about the past.

Understanding is hindered by lack of access to records in the possession of the religious congregations—private actors formerly providing services on the State’s behalf, to Church and State policy archives that are invariably embargoed in accordance with the Commissions of Investigations Act, 2004—the very legislation that purports to facilitate justice, and by the destruction of files mysteriously wrought by “fire” and “flood.”

Many of the mothers and children in these institutions were poor and vulnerable. They did not count for enough in the Ireland of the time to have their constitutional rights protected nor their human rights safeguarded. And, many assert that they are treated little better today.

PAT SAYS:

I believe that Tuam is only the tip of the iceberg and there is A LOT MORE TO COME.

At present, there is a big row happening in Ireland about the repeal of the 8th amendment and abortion.

It seems to me that Irish Catholicism seems to care a lot about UNBORN BABIES>

But it has had less concern about the treatment of BORN BABIES - especially when those babies were the result of non-Catholic sex outside marriage.

There has been - and maybe still a HUGE HYPOCRISY about sex in Ireland.

Babies are at least as important AFTER THE WOMB as they are IN THE WOMB.

Irish Catholicism is hypocritical.


There is the anti-abortion catch cry.

But when they are born - especially to the poor and unmarried mothers somehow the babies do not matter as much!

We look after the babies of DUBLIN 4.

But what about the babies of Ballymun, Ballyfermot and the rough estates of Limerick - STAB CITY!

Hyprocisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy!

HUMANS - HEAVEN AND HELL

By: Mathhew Parris - The Times.

I belong to an excellent institution called the London Library. To mark the 500th anniversary this week of the publication of Martin Luther’s 95 theses, the library has had on display its copy of one of the books produced by Luther in 1517 after (it’s said) the young monk nailed his propositions to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg. The furore then was immediate. The books reproducing his theses appeared within weeks.

A stone had been thrown into the lake and five hundred years later the ripples are still spreading. We oversimplify but do not traduce history to say that 1517 was the birth of the Reformation and (though Luther never intended it) the birth of Protestant Christianity. It also (as Luther did intend) spurred the reform of Roman Catholic thinking, though at the time he was greeted with a persecuting fury.

I look at that philosophical atom bomb of a book: at pages, his hand may have touched. I look at the coarse, pudgy, disobliging features of the man who wrote it. And I reflect — an atheist myself — that Martin Luther lifted Christianity to a higher place but failed, as Christianity is still failing, to make the final leap.

As (one hopes) every schoolchild learns, close to the centre of the German theologian’s objections was his complaint against the sale of indulgences by the Church. An indulgence was a get-out-of-Hell-free card, explained by one contemporary in the verse: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings/ The soul from purgatory springs.”

I say “close” to the centre because the patently corrupt practice of selling indulgences for the living and the dead was really only a caricature of a perfectly defensible doctrine. Many Christians still subscribe to it: the hope that we may improve our chances of eternal life by doing good. Giving money to the Church was, after all, doing good. Luther was not against doing good. But he held that for personal salvation, deep, inner faith in God was what counted, and all that counted. Without faith in your heart, no amount of good works, no amount of money given to the Church, the poor, or other worthy causes, could rescue you from Hell. “Good works” might be a consequence of that personal faith, but the faith alone, not the good works, was the key to Heaven.

This, Luther’s great, central inspiration to succeeding ages, was therefore not really about reform of Church corruptions: it was the doctrine that, in the end, it’s between you and God, and a private affair. The nonconformist conscience to which his ideas led holds that God knows you directly, and you must know him. There are only two of you in this relationship and no intermediaries. No rites, no priests, no practices, no incense, no images, no tithes, no blessings, cursings, permissions or prohibitions by other human beings, can bring you to salvation or lock you from it.

This, of course, represented a direct challenge to the authority, worldly as well as spiritual, of the Catholic Church: hence the fury Luther provoked.

The philosophical and theological step Luther made has been of untold benefit to modern civilization. It frees people from fear. It elevates the individual as against the herd, the private conscience as against official or conventional morality.

Reward, if it exists, is surely unnecessary as a reason to be good

In Africa, in particular, I can testify to the work of missionaries in releasing people, particularly in traditionalist rural areas, from feeling cowed by the shades of the dead and the hierarchies of the living; and by the imagined powers of inanimate objects, of witch-doctors, and the pronouncement of curses.

Even as a confirmed non-believer I can sense the liberating effect for modern western civilization of a God who is your private friend, and to whom, in the end, you are finally and only responsible. It gives each person an autonomy, and in their eyes disempowers the mob. It can inspire acts of great courage. And — Luther was right here — it is far closer to any idea of Jesus’s teaching that we gain from actual study (which Luther advocated) of the New Testament than was the development after Christ of Roman Catholic teaching. So as an atheist I’m a Protestant atheist.

However, the leap Luther made points to, and cries out for, a second leap. “Why bring good works into it?” he asked. Maybe so. But why bring salvation into it, either? Why the need for any reward at all? Is virtue not its own reward?

In asking this question may I put to one side the issue of whether God, or Heaven, or Hell, exist? I don’t think so but let’s assume they do: it makes no difference to my argument. What Luther failed to question was the need for any selfish reason to lead a moral life or to love God. God, if there is a God, is surely intrinsically and overwhelmingly loveable? Reward, if such reward exists, is surely unnecessary as a reason to be good. If we have a moral sense at all, and we do, being good feels good. Even if this life were all, what further incentive is needed?

Religion should elevate and priests should leave deterrence to the police

On Monday morning I listened on BBC radio to the Rev Dr Michael Banner: a clear and intelligent Thought for the Day in which the dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, came close to saying that salvation cannot be sought, but may arrive (he said) as an “unmerited” gift of God. Twenty minutes later I listened to the always-thoughtful Dr. Rowan Williams. The former Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t mention Heaven or Hell, reward or punishment, at all.

Compare these two theologians to the vicar who wrote to me after I’d questioned the role of damnation in the Christian life. How (he protested) could he discourage his parishioners from shoplifting if Heaven and Hell were absent from the furniture of their imaginations? What a low view this man took of his congregation.

Of course, punishment deters vice. Of course, reward may encourage virtue. But both appeal to the lower side of human nature. Religion should elevate, and priests should leave deterrence to the police. The epistemology of salvation and damnation degrades the moral life, cheapens what motivates us, and ignores what stares any sociologist in the face: that from infancy mankind is imbued with a strong grasp of moral reasoning and an instinctive desire to find and cleave to what is right.

It is good to be alive and people, mostly, live to be good. Enough of original sin. If Christianity is to live another 500 years, how about original virtue?

PAT SAYS:

I always find what Matthew Parris interesting - whether I read his newspaper articles or hear him speaking on radio and TV.

He is a very bright man.

Obviously, I do not agree with everything he says. He is an atheist and I am a believing Christian.

I think he makes a very good point in the contribution above.

He is basically saying that we should love for the sake of loving - and refrain from doing wrong - not for the sake of reward or lack of reward - but for the sake of love and goodness itself.

Like many others, I learned this at school when the Christian Brothers and nuns taught me the difference between PERFECT CONTRITION and IMPERFECT CONTRITION.

Perfect contrition was when you were sorry for your sins because you were so upset at hurting God - who is love.

Imperfect contrition was when you were sorry for your sins because you might go to Hell.

As Christians, we believe in the teachings of Jesus and that means that we must accept the ideas of Hell and Heaven because Jesus clearly spoke of both states/places.

Personally, I believe that human WEAKNESS will not bring someone to hell. God understands and forgives WEAKNESS.

That which has the capacity to take someone to hell is EVIL.

Most of us are weak, very weak. Hopefully, not too many of us are EVIL.

I summed out my ideas about goodness, badness, weakness and evil in a PERSONAL CREDO I composed in 1994:

A PERSONAL CREED

Bishop Pat Buckley

I believe that in this world it is impossible to understand God.

I believe that God made this wonderful universe and all that exists.

I can find God in nature, in animals, in birds and the environment.

I believe that God made all men and women,

That He made them all equal,

And that He loves and cherishes them all equally.

I believe that the whole human race is the family of God.

I believe that there may be intelligent life on other planets

And if so, they too are part of God’s family.

I hold that religion and faith are two different things,

That religion can be both good and bad

And that it is spirituality that counts.

For me your religion is an accident of your birth

Or a gift of God’s great providential diversity.

There is no one true church.

All churches and all religions contain aspects of the truth.

But only God is truth.

No man is infallible.

A Buddhist or a good atheist is as acceptable to God as a good Catholic.

I believe that sex is good and so is the body.

The only sexual act that is sinful is the one that uses or abuses.

I believe in people, especially suffering people.

I believe in the power of weakness.

I believe that all men and women will be saved.

I believe in a packed Heaven and an empty Hell.

And even Satan might get another chance.

I believe in the freedom of God’s sons and daughters.

I believe that dogma is often evil.

I believe that life is a journey towards God

And that no one has the right to insist that you go a certain road.

I believe that God and reality are too big for my poor words.

I believe therefore that I am only at a beginning.

Only knocking at a door.

And I believe that the best is yet to come.

(1994)

CROHN'S DISEASE

CROHN'S DISEASE is a serious, potentially fatal disease that is very common in the Western World.

I was diagnosed with it in 1987/88 but thankfully have been in a good remission for a very long time.

Some of the young people who were diagnosed with it when I was are now dead!

---

WHAT IS CROHN'S DISEASE?

Crohn’s Disease is a condition that causes inflammation of the digestive system or gut. Crohn’s can affect any part of the gut, though the most common area affected  is the end of the ileum (the last part of the small intestine), or the colon.

The areas of inflammation are often patchy with sections of normal gut in between. A patch of inflammation may be small, only a few centimetres, or extend quite a distance along part of the gut. As well as affecting the lining of the bowel, Crohn’s may also go deeper into the bowel wall. It’s one of the two main forms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The other is Ulcerative Colitis.

Crohn’s is a chronic condition. This means that it is ongoing and life-long, although you may have periods of good health (remission), as well as times when symptoms are more active (relapses or flare-ups).

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS?

Crohn’s is a very individual condition – the symptoms vary from person to person, and may depend on where in the gut the disease is active.

The symptoms range from mild to severe and can change over time, too. However, the most common are:

• Abdominal pain and diarrhoea
• Tiredness and fatigue
• Feeling generally unwell or feverish
• Mouth ulcers
• Loss of appetite and weight loss
• Anaemia (a reduced level of red blood cells)

Find out more about the symptoms of Crohn’s Disease.

WHO GETS CROHN’S DISEASE?

We think Crohn’s Disease affects at least 115,000 people in the UK and millions more worldwide.

The condition is more common in urban areas and in northern developed countries – although it’s on the increase in developing nations.

Crohn’s is also more likely to appear in white people of European descent, especially those descended from Ashkenazi Jews (who lived in Eastern Europe and Russia).

The disease can start at any age, but usually appears for the first time between 10 and 40. Surveys suggest that new cases of Crohn’s are being diagnosed more often, particularly among teenagers and children.

It’s slightly more common in women than in men, and also in smokers.

WHAT CAUSES IT & IS THERE A CURE?

Despite a lot of research, we still don’t know exactly what causes Crohn’s Disease.

However, over the past few years major advances have been made, particularly in genetics. We now believe that Crohn’s is caused by a combination of factors;

• the genes you are born with,
• plus an abnormal reaction of your immune system to certain bacteria in your intestines,
• along with an unknown trigger that could include viruses, bacteria, diet, smoking, stress or something else in the environment.

There isn’t a cure at the moment, but drug treatment and sometimes surgery can do a lot to give long periods of relief from symptoms.

Read about the research we’re funding into the causes and treatment of Crohn’s Disease

WHAT TREATMENTS ARE THERE FOR CROHN’S?

Treatments may be medical, surgical or a combination of both. If your condition is mild, not having any treatment might even be an option. Some people may also find relief from their symptoms by altering their diet or going on a special liquid diet.

But your treatment will ultimately depend on the type of Crohn’s you have and the choices you make in discussion with your doctor.

Find out what treatments are available for Crohn’s Disease

CAN CROHN’S HAVE COMPLICATIONS?

Crohn’s sometimes causes additional health problems, which may be in the gut itself or can involve other parts of the body.

Complications in the gut may include strictures, perforations and fistulas

A variety of other health conditions can be associated with Crohn’s Disease, including:

• skin problems, such as mouth ulcers, blisters and ulcers on the skin, and painful red swellings, usually on the legs
• inflammation of the eyes
• thinner and weaker bones
• liver inflammation
• blood clots (including deep vein thrombosis)
• anaemia (a reduced level of red blood cells)

Around one in three people with IBD experience inflammation of the joints, usually their elbows, wrists, knees and ankles.  More rarely, the joints in the spine and pelvis become inflamed – a condition called ankylosing spondylitis.  This can cause stiffness and pain of the spine.  Drugs and physiotherapy are used to treat these symptoms.

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES OF LIVING WITH CROHN’S?

Living with a chronic condition like Crohn’s can have both an emotional and practical impact on your life.  There may be times when you have to make adjustments and take time to recuperate, for example, if you are having a flare-up.  On the other hand, when you are well you may be able to live life to the full. 

Most obviously, you are likely to see your GP and perhaps also your hospital IBD team quite regularly. It’s good to build up a good relationship with them, as that can make seeking and receiving treatment a less stressful process.  My Crohn’s and Colitis Care has more information about how to work with your IBD team to get the best out of your care.

Flare-ups can be disruptive to relationships and work – sometimes you may need to cancel engagements and take time off when you are feeling unwell.   It can be very helpful if you feel you can open up about your condition to those around you – your family, friends, work colleagues and employers.  Telling particularly family and friends at least something about your illness may make them feel reassured and more able to give you the support you need.

Diet is considered a factor in Crohn’s Disease by many people with the condition. Although there’s no clear evidence that any food directly causes or improves Crohn’s, some people have found that certain foods seem to trigger symptoms or make them worse.

Generally, the most important thing is to eat a nutritious and balanced diet to maintain your weight and strength, and to drink sufficient fluids to stop you getting dehydrated. 

Women with inactive Crohn’s usually have no more difficulty becoming pregnant than women without IBD. Also, for most women, having a baby does not make their Crohn’s worse.

If your Crohn’s is active, there is a slightly lower chance of conceiving.  Your doctor should be able to help you to control your symptoms as much as possible, so it is important that you discuss your options with them if you are thinking of having a baby.

Crohn’s Disease can start at any age, including childhood.  As many as one in three people with Crohn’s were under 21 when first diagnosed. Inflammation in the bowel can affect growth patterns and can lead to delayed puberty.  Growth may also be affected by poor nutrition and prolonged use of steroids.

PAT SAYS:

I believe that there is a BIG connection between stress and CD. I developed mine within 18 months of my big row and separation with Cahal Daly and the institutional Catholic Church.

I struggled along from 1987/88 to 1991 and then had to have surgery - a bowel resection.

It looked like I was going to have to have regular surgery and eventually end up with a stoma.

To avoid that I looked around the world for an alternative and found Professor John Hermon Taylor in London. He believes that CD is caused by a small TB bug that is common in milk and water. He blasted me with very heavy TB drugs and put me into remission for nearly 30 years.  

Recently I have begun to have bother again and am back with the medics. Thankfully at present, my bother is on the medium scale.

I'm back on the research trail again and hope to blast CD out of my life again.

Nearly everyone I meet knows someone with CD. Anybody who wants more info is welcome to contact me on 0044 7488 374364 or bishopbuckley1@outlook.com

POPE FRANCIS - LOVED OR HATED?

P

ope Francis is one of the most hated men in the world today. Those who hate him most are not atheists, or protestants, or Muslims, but some of his own followers. Outside the church he is hugely popular as a figure of almost ostentatious modesty and humility. From the moment that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became pope in 2013, his gestures caught the world’s imagination: the new pope drove a Fiat, carried his own bags and settled his own bills in hotels; he asked, of gay people, “Who am I to judge?” and washed the feet of Muslim women refugees.

But within the church, Francis has provoked a ferocious backlash from conservatives who fear that this spirit will divide the church, and could even shatter it. This summer, one prominent English priest said to me: “We can’t wait for him to die. It’s unprintable what we say in private. Whenever two priests meet, they talk about how awful Bergoglio is … he’s like Caligula: if he had a horse, he’d make him cardinal.” Of course, after 10 minutes of fluent complaint, he added: “You mustn’t print any of this, or I’ll be sacked.”

This mixture of hatred and fear is common among the pope’s adversaries. Francis, the first non-European pope in modern times, and the first ever Jesuit pope, was elected as an outsider to the Vatican establishment, and expected to make enemies. But no one foresaw just how many he would make. From his swift renunciation of the pomp of the Vatican, which served notice to the church’s 3,000-strong civil service that he meant to be its master, to his support for migrants, his attacks on global capitalism and, most of all, his moves to re-examine the church’s teachings about sex, he has scandalised reactionaries and conservatives. To judge by the voting figures at the last worldwide meeting of bishops, almost a quarter of the college of Cardinals – the most senior clergy in the church – believe that the pope is flirting with heresy.

The crunch point has come in a fight over his views on divorce. Breaking with centuries, if not millennia, of Catholic theory, Pope Francis has tried to encourage Catholic priests to give communion to some divorced and remarried couples, or to families where unmarried parents are cohabiting. His enemies are trying to force him to abandon and renounce this effort.

Since he won’t, and has quietly persevered in the face of mounting discontent, they are now preparing for battle. Last year, one cardinal, backed by a few retired colleagues, raised the possibility of a formal declaration of heresy – the wilful rejection of an established doctrine of the church, a sin punishable by excommunication. Last month, 62 disaffected Catholics, including one retired bishop and a former head of the Vatican bank, published an open letter that accused Francis of seven specific counts of heretical teaching.

To accuse a sitting pope of heresy is the nuclear option in Catholic arguments. Doctrine holds that the pope cannot be wrong when he speaks on the central questions of the faith; so if he is wrong, he can’t be pope. On the other hand, if this pope is right, all his predecessors must have been wrong.

The question is particularly poisonous because it is almost entirely theoretical. In practice, in most of the world, divorced and remarried couples are routinely offered communion. Pope Francis is not proposing a revolution, but the bureaucratic recognition of a system that already exists, and might even be essential to the survival of the church. If the rules were literally applied, no one whose marriage had failed could ever have sex again. This is not a practical way to ensure there are future generations of Catholics.

But Francis’s cautious reforms seem to his opponents to threaten the belief that the church teaches timeless truths. And if the Catholic church does not teach eternal truths, conservatives ask, what is the point of it? The battle over divorce and remarriage has brought to a point two profoundly opposed ideas of what the church is for. The pope’s insignia are two crossed keys. They represent those Jesus is supposed to have given St Peter, which symbolise the powers to bind and to loose: to proclaim what is sin, and what is permitted. But which power is more important, and more urgent.

The Catholic church has spent much of the past century fighting against the sexual revolution, much as it fought against the democratic revolutions of the 19th century, and in this struggle it has been forced into the defence of an untenable absolutist position, whereby all artificial contraception is banned, along with all sex outside one lifelong marriage. As Francis recognises, that’s not how people actually behave. The clergy know this, but are expected to pretend they don’t. The official teaching may not be questioned, but neither can it be obeyed. Something has to give, and when it does, the resulting explosion could fracture the church.

Appropriately enough, the sometimes bitter hatreds within the church – whether over climate change, migration or capitalism – have come to a head in a gigantic struggle over the implications of a single footnote in a document entitled The Joy of Love (or, in its proper, Latin name, Amoris Laetitia). The document, written by Francis, is a summary of the current debate over divorce, and it is in this footnote that he makes an apparently mild assertion that divorced and remarried couples may sometimes receive communion.

With more than a billion followers, the Catholic church is the largest global organisation the world has ever seen, and many of its followers are divorced, or unmarried parents. To carry out its work all over the world, it depends on voluntary labour. If the ordinary worshippers stop believing in what they are doing, the whole thing collapses. Francis knows this. If he cannot reconcile theory and practice, the church might be emptied out everywhere. His opponents also believe the church faces a crisis, but their prescription is the opposite. For them, the gap between theory and practice is exactly what gives the church worth and meaning. If all the church offers people is something they can manage without, Francis’s opponents believe, then it will surely collapse.

READ FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/27/the-war-against-pope-francis

PAT SAYS:

I can't make up my mind about Francis.

On the one hand, I like a lot of what he says and what he stands for. On the other hand, I worry is he just a PR man?

Maybe I am expecting too much of him?

He may want to do and say a lot more - but he is restrained not only by certain cardinals but by the whole Vatican curia that surrounds him.

If he went too far, too quickly, I am quite certain that they could easily arrange his death by a heart attack!

But serious issues need to be addressed:

1. Compulsory celibacy for the clergy.

2. Divorce, remarriage and Holy Communion.

3. Vatican and Church corruption.

4. Family planning and contraception.

5. The place of women in the Church.

6. A new Theology of Sexuality.

7. The decentralization of power and authority.

One thing is certain. I do prefer Francis to that dictator John Paul 11.