Sorry I'm not into the Boston Globe sermons anymore, dear readers, and I am going to sleep through this one. I have my own church hoops to worship this morning. I'll be putting a ball or two into the collection basket (I hope), if you get my inference.
"Conservative US Catholics feeling abandoned by pope; Some say pontiff favors the left over the faithful" by Laurie Goodstein | New York Times, November 10, 2013
Is it just me, or does the idea of the Jew York Times telling me about the Catholic faith just a bit disjointed?
Not even past the headline yet and I'm already sour.
SMYRNA, Ga. — When Pope Francis was elected in March, Bridget Kurt received a small prayer card with his picture at her church and put it up on her refrigerator at home, next to pictures of her friends and her favorite saints.
She is a regular attender of Mass, a longtime stalwart in her church’s antiabortion movement, and a believer that all the Church’s doctrines are true and beautiful and should be obeyed. She loved the past two popes, and keeps a scrapbook with memorabilia from her road trip to Denver in 1993 to see Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day.
But Kurt recently took the Pope Francis prayer card down, and threw it away.
“It seems he’s focusing on bringing back the left that’s fallen away, but what about the conservatives?” said Kurt, a hospice community educator. “Even when it was discouraging working in prolife, you always felt like Mother Teresa was on your side and the popes were encouraging you. Now I feel kind of thrown under the bus.”
In the eight months since he became pope, Francis has won affection worldwide for his humble mien and common touch. His approval numbers are skyrocketing. Even atheists are applauding.
But not everyone is so enchanted. Some Catholics in the church’s conservative wing in the United States say that Francis has left them feeling abandoned and deeply unsettled. On the Internet and in conversations among themselves, they despair that after 35 years in which the previous popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, drew clear boundaries between right and wrong, Francis is muddying Catholic doctrine in order to appeal to the broadest possible audience.
They were particularly alarmed when he told a prominent Italian atheist in an interview published in October, and translated into English, that “everyone has his own idea of good and evil” and so everyone should “follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them” — a remark that many conservatives interpreted as appearing to condone relativism. He called proselytizing “solemn nonsense.”
They were stunned when they saw that Francis said in that interview that “the most serious of the evils” today are “youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old.”
It compounded the chagrin when he said in an earlier interview that he had intentionally “not spoken much” about abortion, gay marriage, and contraception because the church cannot be “obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines.”
Steve Skojec, vice president of a real estate firm in Virginia and a blogger who has written for several conservative Catholic websites, wrote of Francis’ statements, “Are they explicitly heretical? No. Are they dangerously close? Absolutely. What kind of a Christian tells an atheist he has no intention to convert him? That alone should disturb Catholics everywhere.”
In an interview Friday, Skojec said he was overwhelmed by the positive response to his blog from people who said they were thinking the same things but had not wanted to say it in public. He said he has come to suspect that Francis is a “self-styled revolutionary” who wants to change the church fundamentally.
“There have been bad popes in the history of the Church,” said Skojec, “Popes that murdered, popes that had mistresses. I’m not saying Pope Francis is terrible, but there’s no divine protection that keeps him from being the type of guy who with subtlety undermines the teachings of the Church to bring about a different vision.”
Most American Catholics do not share his objections. A poll taken soon after the interview by Quinnipiac University found that 2 in 3 agreed that the Church is too “obsessed” with a few issues.
In parsing Francis’ statements in recent weeks, other Catholic conservatives are concluding that nothing he has said contradicts the Catholic catechism, with some of his language even echoing Benedict’s.
But in interviews, the words conservatives used most often to characterize Francis were “naïve” and “imprudent” because he is saying things in ways that the news media and the church’s “enemies” are able to distort, and that there are consequences.
Some Catholic conservatives are sharing over the Internet prophecies that foretell of tribulations for the church.
In one, an Irish woman predicted that Benedict would be held hostage. Others cite the German mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich, who wrote of a “relationship between two popes,” one who “lives in a palace other than before,” which some now see as a reference to Benedict. During this time there arises a “false Church of darkness.”
But some Catholics initially alarmed by Francis’s remarks are now trying to calm others down.
Judie Brown, president and cofounder of the American Life League, a Catholic antiabortion group, said, “Prolifers are upset because they feel the pope is selling out the prolife movement. And that’s not at all correct. If you read everything he’s been saying, especially in his Wednesday sermons, there’s no question that where he stands is consistent with what the church has been teaching.”
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UPDATE: Cardinal O’Malley stresses work for the poor
I'm sure I could find the latest posts regarding Francis and the Catholic Church, but why bother? If you are interested in what I have written in the past you can search for yourself. This service is over.
Also see:
Religious leaders help collect signatures for initiatives
Va. church fears for survival on battlefield site
Renowned WWII airmen meet in Ohio for final toast
Obama won’t attend Gettysburg ceremony
Wow, what an antiwar president (despite Libya, the drone strikes, and special forces raids)!
First he backs down on Syria, now he's trying to cut a deal with Iran, and he won't even go worship at Gettysburg. No wonder Israel doesn't like the guy.
UPDATES:
"Military suicides down, officials say" Associated Press, November 12, 2013
WASHINGTON — Suicides across the military have dropped by more than 22 percent this year, defense officials said, amid an array of new programs targeting what the Defense Department calls an epidemic that took more service members’ lives last year than the war in Afghanistan did during that same period.
Military officials, however, were reluctant to pin the decline on the broad swath of detection and prevention efforts, acknowledging that they still do not fully understand why troops take their own lives.
And since many of those who have committed suicide in recent years had never served on the war front, officials also do not attribute the decrease to the end of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan.
Still, they offered some hope that after several years of studies, the escalating emphasis on prevention across all the services may finally be taking hold....
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Going AWOL
I suppose it helps when you change the metrics, too. (Blog editor sighs and frowns; the same government that waves militarism neglects them when they are no longer useful)
Last year the number of suicides in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines spiked to 349 for the full 12-month period, the highest since the Pentagon began closely tracking the numbers in 2001, and up from the 2011 total of 301. There were 295 Americans killed in Afghanistan last year, by the AP’s count.
Military suicides began rising in 2006 and soared to a then-record 310 in 2009 before leveling off for two years.
They leveled off but spiked just last year?
???????
??????!!
Alarmed defense officials launched an intensified campaign to isolate the causes that lead to suicide, and develop programs to eliminate the stigma associated with seeking help and encourage troops to act when their comrades appeared troubled.
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Also see:
Veterans at home, but still at war
Military sex assault reports increase 46 percent in year
WWII reunions poignant for dwindling veterans
Former Connecticut Army vet expelled from US fights deportation
Boston, courts coming to the aid of veterans
Veterans’ assistance in prisons is another way to honor their service
Veterans honored at Winthrop cafe
Mass. museum gets extensive collection of military vehicles
Officer wounded in Marathon manhunt speaks on Veterans Day
Military veterans feted in State House, at parades
Always nice to get the kiddies regimented early (frown).
Whatever you do, don't forget 9/11.
