Those familiar with Jorge Bergoglio in Argentina before he became Pope Francis say it is a “classic” move of his to provide “mercy” to clergy who are sexual predators while asking everybody else to simply “move on,” said attorney and child advocate Elizabeth Yore on an EWTN show last week. “I think this is a misplaced mercy. It is mercy for the predator priests,” she told EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on the February 8 episode of World Over. Yore, who has handled child abuse investigations and clergy abuse investigations throughout her legal career, was commenting on the latest sexual abuse case to touch the Francis papacy, in this case where the Pope appointed a bishop with a history of complicity in child sex abuse. (READ MORE)
Here is the dubium I’d like to put to Mr. O’Regan: Does he now feel bound to give his religious assent of mind and will to the non-infallible, ordinary magisterial teaching of Pope Francis that capital punishment in itself is and always has been – or at least since the coming of Christ – mortally sinful, since it is “in itself contrary to the Gospel”? If he answers “No”, then how does he reconcile that answer with his own thesis that the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit always protects even the non-infallible, ordinary magisterial teaching of Peter’s Successors from error, so that such teaching always requires our religious assent of mind and will? If he answers “Yes”, then how does he escape the conclusion that his aforesaid thesis regarding the non-infallible ordinary papal magisterium is false? (READ MORE)
Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy, a former chief of staff for the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine and a current member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, has written Pope Francis to say the pontiff is causing “chronic confusion,” appointing bishops who “scandalize” the faithful, and prompting ordinary Catholics to “lose confidence in their supreme shepherd.” He further says the current pontificate “has given those who hold harmful theological and pastoral views the license and confidence to come into the light and expose their previously hidden darkness,” which, one day, will have to be corrected. Father Weinandy also comes close to charging the leader of the Catholic faith with the unpardonable sin when he says, “To teach with such an intentional lack of clarity inevitably risks sinning against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.” Weinandy also complains that Francis seems “to censor and even mock” those with traditional positions on marriage, styling them as “Pharisaic stone-throwers who embody a merciless rigorism… (READ MORE)
Pope 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. Within the church, Francis has provoked a ferocious backlash from conservatives who fear that his 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. (READ MORE)
In the important newspaper “la Repubblica” of which he is the founder, Eugenio Scalfari, an undisputed authority of Italian secular thought, last October 9 returned to speaking in the following terms about what he sees as a “revolution” of this pontificate, in comments by Francis that are derived from his frequents conversations with him: “Pope Francis has abolished the places where souls were supposed to go after death: hell, purgatory, heaven. The idea he holds is that souls dominated by evil and unrepentant cease to exist, while those that have been redeemed from evil will be taken up into beatitude, contemplating God.” Observing immediately afterward: “The universal judgment that is in the tradition of the Church therefore becomes devoid of meaning. It remains a simple pretext that has given rise to splendid paintings in the history of art. Nothing other than this.” On Wednesday, October 11, at the general audience in Saint Peter’s Square, Francis said that such a judgment is not to be feared, because “at the end of our history there is the merciful Jesus,” and therefore “everything will be saved. Everything.” In the text distributed to the journalists accredited to the Holy See, this last word, “everything,” was emphasized in boldface. At another general audience a few months ago, on Wednesday, August 23, Francis gave for the end of history an image that is entirely and only comforting: that of “an immense tent, where God will welcome all mankind so as to dwell with them definitively.” (READ MORE)
In the 6-minute video, author Tom Horn explains why Pope Francis might not be the one who fulfills St. Malachy’s 878-year-old prophecy, which foretold specific details of each of the final 112 Popes, concluding with Petrus Romanus, which means Peter the Roman, who will be serving as Pope when Rome is destroyed and God judges His people. Malachy wrote the following prophecy about the 112th Pope. “In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.” In 2011, Tom Horn accurately predicted the 2012 resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the 265th Pope. Pope Francis replaced him, taking office on March 13, 2013. Everyone agrees Pope Benedict XVI was the 111th Pope since Malachy’s prophecy. So, Pope Francis appears to be the 112th, the one who must fulfill the prophecy. However, Tom Horn believes Pope Francis is not the one. (READ MORE & WATCH CLIP)
