
The War Against Pope Francis - dcow
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/27/the-war-against-pope-francis
======
jonah
There's a bit of imprecision near the beginning of the article of which
clarification is only hinted at by the end and might be missed by those not
familiar with the details.

"Last year, one cardinal, backed by a few retired colleagues, raised the
possibility of a formal declaration of heresy – the willful rejection of an
established doctrine of the church, a sin punishable by excommunication. Last
month, 62 disaffected Catholics, ...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."

Popes write and say a lot of things but only a special few are elevated to the
level of doctrine.

Pope Francis' footnotes on divorce aren't an official proclamation. (Though
the article hints that he's working in that direction.)

Infallible[0] statements defining doctrine are made Ex Cathedra - From the
Chair of St. Peter[1] which he hasn't done. So, in reality the conservative
faction are protesting something which hasn't yet happened.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Ex_cathedr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Ex_cathedra)

~~~
hydrox24
> The conservative faction are protesting something which hasn't yet happened.

This is a fact, but not really true in the sense you mean it.

The conservative faction were rubbed the wrong way by the footnote. The issue
is that while it is not a proclamation of doctrine, it has been pointed to as
justification for some German and Latin American bishops' administering of
communion to the divorced.

The real problem is that Francis has remained silent when asked for
clarification on the footnote, and whether or not it changed doctrine.
Clarification was first requested officially (though privately) by a couple of
bishops, and when no response was given for several months, those bishops
published the letter to put further pressure on Francis to issue a
clarification one way or the other[0]. The letter reads as a very polite
request for clarification.

This went without response. In addition, there is some evidence that bishops
have been privately directed to interpret the footnote in the 'heretical'
sense. The evidence for this is laid out in the filial correction itself (see
[1]).

The most recent document, referenced in the Guardian article as accusing
Francis of spreading heresies, can be read here[1]. I would encourage anyone
reading this to do so.

The document, along with the rest of the 'protesting' happening across the
conservative side of the spectrum, isn't so much in response to a change in
doctrine via dictum, but instead a response to the lack of clarification, and
Francis' allowing (or even encouraging) a de facto change in doctrine.

[0]: [http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/11/14/full-text-
ca...](http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/11/14/full-text-cardinals-
letter-to-pope-francis-on-amoris-laetitia/)

[1]: [http://www.correctiofilialis.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/...](http://www.correctiofilialis.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/Correctio-filialis_English_1.pdf)

~~~
erikb
But then, by implied results, OP is also correct. The reason they are pissed
by getting no clarification is because they don't want the "heretical"
interpretation to get any foothold. And the reason the pope doesn't answer
that request is because he wants the "heretical" interpretation to succeed
without himself being excommunicated. If he says "yep, that's what I mean" he
starts to have a big problem. But nobody can punish him for not clarifying a
footnote. But if there wouldn't be the underlying conflict of interest the
request and non-answer for clarification wouldn't be a topic people would
think about.

The difference between you and OP is merely the question of which layer is
discussed. The layer of facts or the layer of meaning.

------
mathw
A Catholic friend of mine really does not like what Pope Francis is doing.
Really, really does not like it.

I haven't asked him for details, because we have to work together in a music
group and if we fall out the chances are the whole thing stops happening (it's
a very small group playing instruments very few people can play). But it
worries me, because as far as I can tell Pope Francis is quite keen on being
nice to people, and showing mercy and forgiveness. I thought those were
central tenets of Christian teaching.

Of course, as an atheist, I can't really comment, other than the slightly
surreal nature of all these people worrying about interpretations of a
fictional document and inspirations from a non-existent entity.

In fact, this kind of thing could be taken as further evidence that God is a
fiction.

~~~
zakk
> I haven't asked him for details, because we have to work together in a music
> group and if we fall out the chances are the whole thing stops happening

If you ask respectfully, I see now reason why you won't get a polite reply.
Maybe you should avoid the following smug remarks, after age 16 they don't
sound as good:

> other than the slightly surreal nature of all these people worrying about
> interpretations of a fictional document and inspirations from a non-existent
> entity

Anyway, since we are at it and you seem genuinely interested in details, I
will give you my personal details. They may not match what you friend
believes, but many Catholics have similar feelings.

As someone who left the Catholic Church because of Bergoglio, I must remind
you that the Catholic faith is not just about mercy, forgiveness, kindness. I
know many merciful and kind people who are not Catholic. So, when establishing
a link between mercy and kindness and the Catholic faith, you have to keep in
mind a few points:

\- The behavior of a Christian is a consequence of some metaphysical beliefs,
of following Christ's teaching and the Holy Bible. It would be an error to
consider these consequences as the main trait of a Christian. As the name
implies, main trait of a Christian is the belief in Christ.

\- It has been reaffirmed many times by the Church that mercy and kindness
alone are not enough to save your soul, believing in Jesus Christ is also
required.

\- Also, the Gospel (Matthew 6,1) advises Christian as follows: “Be careful
not to do good deeds in front of other people. Don’t do those deeds to be seen
by others. If you do, your Father in heaven will not reward you."

This said, let me come to why I don't like Pope Francis. He's kind, and he's
merciful, but he's way too vague about the pillars of the faith.

For instance, in one of the first interviews after he was elected Pope, when
asked: "Is there a unique vision of what is the Good?", he replied "Everyone
has its own vision of what is Good and what is Bad. And we must encourage him
to follows whatever he believes is Good".

This is not Christian. Christianity is about a guy, Jesus Christ, who came to
say what is the Good. (John 14,6 "I am the way, the truth and the life")

Pope Francis also repeatedly stated that "there is no Catholic God, there is
just one God". Again, this is in contrast with two millennia of teachings, and
in particular with the Church dogma that there cannot be salvation outside the
Christian faith.

One of the most sacred Christian texts, the Athanasian Creed, begins with the
following sentence: "Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is
necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do
keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly."

I could show you many other example of Pope Francis's sloppy statements about
the pillars of the Christian faith, but I hope you understand a bit better why
many Christian, genuinely, do not like him.

~~~
dctoedt
> _This is not Christian. Christianity is about a guy, Jesus Christ, who came
> to say what is the Good. (John 14,6 "I am the way, the truth and the life")_

That's the view of Jesus' later followers, not of the man himself.

The John passage isn't especially reliable. [0]

Also, you're forgetting what Matthew and Luke both reported that _Jesus_ said
about just what's needed for salvation:

<blockquote>

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he
asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your
neighbor as yourself.’”

28 _“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will
live.”_

</blockquote>

(From Luke 10:25-37, emphasis added, footnotes omitted [1].)

[0]
[http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/05/synoptic_christ....](http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/05/synoptic_christ.html)
(self-cite) Scroll down to "Problem: The Passage of Time." Tl;dr: From what's
known about the author of the Fourth Gospel, his self-promoting account,
decades after the facts and at odds with other accounts, simply isn't
credible.

[1]
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A25-37](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10%3A25-37)
(the parable of the Good Samaritan)

~~~
zakk
> That's the view of Jesus' later followers

You are absolutely right. But the Catholic faith is not about a literal
interpretation of the Bible, is about the so-called depositum fidei, i.e. how
the Catholic Church holds and transmits the teachings of Jesus Christ.

You may say that all Catholicism is the interpretation given by "Jesus' later
followers".

Of course, when discussing Catholicism, I was implicitly using the Catholic
Church's interpretation of Jesus's sayings. It would interesting to discuss if
what he meant is what the Church now means.

> 27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
> your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love
> your neighbor as yourself.’”

Sure. My point there was that faith in God is needed for salvation. It's not
just mercy and kindness.

------
Void_
Please keep in mind that this article is full of inaccurate information torn
out of context.

The gay situation is a good example.

Pope Francis has shown love and understanding towards LGBT group, just like
shows towards any other group of people experiencing hardship.

He genuinely loves others, like most of Catholic priests and nuns do - that’s
why they chose the carreer path of serving others.

I’m saying most, because there are exceptions and sadly we only read about the
exceptions.

Pope Francis never said anything that wouldn’t be 100% aligned with the
teaching of church. Never. He has shown sympathy and love, nothing more.

------
jacquesm
Pope Francis is a good guy leading an utterly corrupt institution. In the US
there are many voices about the 'deep state' trying hard to subvert Trump (in
my opinion a good thing). Within the Catholic Church the same phenomenon at
work is doing everything it can to halt progress and to stay firmly stuck in
the past.

Francis probably won't live long enough to cement his legacy in such a way
that it can not be undone. I have mixed feelings about this, on the one hand
I'd like for the Church to take a more modern approach to their interaction
with their subjects because they are causing a tremendous amount of grief in
people's lives.

At the same time I can't wait to see their end (most likely not within my
lifetime) and the harder the line they draw the more people will come to their
senses and abandon this group of lying, disconnected old men.

~~~
gaius
_Pope Francis is a good guy leading an utterly corrupt institution_

How does a "good guy" reach the top of a "corrupt institution", passing all
the gates along the way, presumably guarded by utterly corrupt people?

~~~
jonah
Because the majority of his electors (the College of Cardinals) are also good
guys.

(The article places conservative dissenters at the recent synods at 1/4 -
1/3.)

~~~
pavlov
Curiously that 25-34% range is the same as the support enjoyed by populist
political groups in many European countries, and also the same as Trump's
approval rating in the US.

It seems like there's a conservative third of populations that increasingly
seeks to isolate itself from the mainstream (or political center, or whatever
you want to call it).

------
brian-armstrong
The wider issue, of course, is that the entire dogma is a fiction without any
basis in reality. Arguing over direction to preserve attendance may be
pointless if you've built an organization around a fairy tale.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Arguing over direction to preserve attendance may be pointless if you 've
> built an organization around a fairy tale._

Doesn't matter. What other commenters here try to point out as well, a lot -
if not most - organizations are built around one fiction or another. Some
examples:

\- Fanclubs, fandoms, convent attendees - those are literally communities
built around fairy tales.

\- Programming language communities - built around ever-changing artifacts of
human imagination, they too have to deal with possible change of direction
impacting attendance.

\- Political parties - organized around some people's understanding of some
ideas, + shitton of meaningless slogans that everyone interprets how they
like. Exist mostly to self-perpetuate, as evidenced whenever any established
party has anything meaningful to say or do; suddenly the official program
takes second place towards what helps electability.

\- Companies - the ultimate bubbles of meaninglessness, they in principle -
and often in practice - exist as an ever charging group of people bound
together by will to make money on ever changing product for ever changing
market, lead by ever changing board.

I'd add nationalities, as there's plenty of crazy fiction going on in there,
but they're at least usually bound geographically, so there's that.

\--

The point being, many if not most organizations are built around some fairy
tale or other, and what an organization is built around rarely matters to
anything. What matters is how strong the community is, and that's pretty much
purely social factor, without any actual dependence on objective reality.

~~~
brian-armstrong
The difference being that religions lack the comfortable layer of detached
irony that a modern fandom has. Star Trek fandoms don't insist that Star Trek
is the genesis of human life and the only source of truth.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah. But I feel that's just because that belief is not the part of their
fandom.

When I look at people from $largeMainstreamReligion, I see people who will
defend it as "the genesis of human life and the only source of truth" as a
fact of the community you're supposed to accept. But then looking at their
lives, they pay at best a lip service to the actual contents of that "source
of truth", and instead only participate in the accepted traditions.

Basically, I feel that religions, fandoms, school associations ("I'm a Harvard
Alumni"), etc. all work pretty much in the very same way.

------
72deluxe
"In the years immediately after the council, nuns discarded their habits,
priests discovered women (more than 100,000 left the priesthood to marry)"

This position on marriage for priests is intriguing. Even Peter was married -
see Matthew 8:14 (why would Peter have a mother-in-law if he wasn't
married...?). And why does Paul warn about people who will say that you cannot
marry? (1 Timothy 4:3) ???

"in this struggle it has been forced into the defence of an untenable
absolutist position, whereby ..... all sex outside one lifelong marriage" is
banned. "As Francis recognises, that’s not how people actually behave."

This is not true. Just because many people do not stick to their beliefs does
not make the beliefs invalid, nor does it mean you should adopt the common
mis-practice.

Like the Oxford versus Collins dictionary - Oxford tells you what the word
means and how it should be used; Collins tells you how people typically use it
(which might be an abuse of the word or incorrect usage). I'd rather go with
Oxford.

Who of us likes ignoring our programming language specs and then argue that
the compiler is wrong?

BTW I am not Catholic.

------
pavlov
It's kind of interesting to read Breitbart comments on any article related to
Pope Francis. A few posters are convinced he is literally the Antichrist. Many
others feel the Pope is not Catholic (which of course is impossible by
definition).

In 1998, a small group of American Catholic separatists elected one of their
own as Pope Pius XIII:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Pulvermacher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Pulvermacher)

I wonder if something similar is around the corner. The mood in America
certainly has long been towards creation of shadow structures that ensure you
don't have to meet with anyone who disagrees politically.

~~~
riffraff
> Many others feel the Pope is not Catholic (which of course is impossible by
> definition).

interestingly enough this could make sense (although quite likely not in the
case of Breitbart commenters).

For example, the eastern orthodox church, like the roman church, defines
itself as "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic", so an eastern orthodox
christian may well refer to itself as "catholic" while denying the Pope is.

This seem to be the reason that in some places people often refer to
"catholic" as "roman catholic".

~~~
Aqwis
> This seem to be the reason that in some places people often refer to
> "catholic" as "roman catholic".

That's not really why, is it -- it's because there are also the _Eastern
Catholic_ (as opposed to Eastern Orthodox) churches that recognize the Pope as
the leader of the Church while using different rites (including allowing
married men to be priests).

~~~
Gupie
There are also Anglican Catholics that believe basically the same doctrine as
Roman Catholics but have the Queen of England as head instead of the Pope.

------
__BrianDGLS__
As a Catholic this is news to me. I like the Pope, thought he was good. In
fact I haven't heard any other Catholics I know criticize him.

I feel this article is trying to "Stir up a storm" with sensational language.
There is little behind this in my opinion.

~~~
labster
I can only assume you're in a bubble, then. Perhaps me too. But Francis'
actions only make sense in the context of meeting stiff resistance from some
parts of the church, therefore by Occam's razor someone must be doing the
resisting. Any institution as large and old as the Church (and there are very
few peers) has a huge amount of institutional inertia, and being brought in
specifically to be a reformer was bound to earn him some enemies.

------
labster
As a Lutheran celebrating the quinicentennial of the 95 Theses this week, it
always surprises me how far behind the times the Roman Catholic leadership can
be. They're still dealing with some of the original causes of the Reformation,
including celibacy, divorce, favoritism to the rich, and worship in the
vernacular.

Jorge Bergoglio is a good person. I feel like he hears the Holy Spirit, unlike
the members of the curia from the "no new rules" camp. But I'm okay with new
rules, being a member of the original revolutionary church. My group still has
a lot of the old rules, but the rules should never get in the way of bringing
a person into the grace of God.

Latin mass is pretty neat, and makes for some great canting opportunities, but
if you give it to a group of people who can't understand, how does that open a
person's heart? How does excluding people who sin make sense in the context of
everyone being a sinner? Denying reality is like denying a part of Creation;
denying access to the community drives people into the ranks of the atheists.
And hey, at least they don't use faith as a cudgel against reality.

So, I wish Pope Francis the best of luck, and I hope that he can bring his
branch of the church into a more loving, contemporary group.

~~~
b0rsuk
It shouldn't surprise you. Catholic branch is the most orthodox branch of
Christianity. It's the one that resisted Reformation and all other attempts at
change. Times change, so at least some teachings of a religion should change
with them.

------
NiklasMort
Pope Francis is what Bernie Sanders would be as US President.

------
jonah
Another point of clarity is that Annulments are easier to get than is implied
by the article. It's a process, but you don't have to be wealthy or powerful.

(As an aside, the whole concept of declaring a previous marriage invalid - for
various reasons - seems like it's a hack in the HN sense of the word.)

------
singularity2001
Interesting, in my circles he is regarded almost as a hero.

------
_Codemonkeyism
[Removed]

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Why would you possibly want to stay with him, given that the defining goal of
the institution is to keep you stuck in a broken epistemology regardless?

------
sigi45
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Live will continue on our world whatever Pope Francis is doing or anyone else
in the catholic church.

~~~
erikb
Not 100% false, but you could put that argument under any HN discussion, which
makes it rather pointless in itself. If that's a strong opinion of yours
consider not reading HN. ;-)

~~~
sigi45
Perhaps but most of those topics i read here, are not about some Pope.

------
YouAreGreat
> his support for migrants, his attacks on global capitalism

As only one of these can be sincere given the other, the commenters who
suspect that the Pope is just very good at looking like the good guy are
probably right.

------
jlebrech
Pope Francis shits all over Catholicism yet in the same breath defends Islam.

If you follow the Bible to the letter you get Hasidic Jews or Catholics, if
you follow the Quran to the letter you get radical islam.

~~~
ssijak
If you follow bible to the letter (including old testament) you get Hitler.

~~~
jlebrech
that's not true, if you follow Martin Luther you do.

