Silence implies Consent – We must Speak Up!
“Alone, the Pope cannot change the world. A Pope for the People needs a People for the Pope.” Gaston Roberge, S.J., India
Pope Francis is under attack by the right-winged conservative minority within our Church. Admittedly some of us are not happy with the speed of reform nor has our Holy Father adequately addressed the issues of clerical sexual abuse or the role of women. Nevertheless, he doesn’t deserve to be accused of heresy.
In Germany, several bishops, theologians, philosophers, spiritual leaders, and academicians have penned a letter to Pope Francis. If you wish to join in expressing to him “our gratitude for your courageous and theologically sound papal leadership,” we invite you to go now to www.WeSupportPopeFrancis.net and at the top left click Pro Pope Francis link to add your signature to the German letter.
While there, we also invite you to join a movement begun in Spain to “support the Pope and his reforms in search of a more evangelical Church” by clicking the Pro Pope Francis banner on the top right link to add your signature “to support him and follow him through the ecclesiastical ‘updating’ path.”
All are invited to create an account on www.WeSupportPopeFrancis.net to share your comments on the website. We welcome your views, favorite quotes, and articles that particularly speak to you. Please share other sites which discuss Pope Francis’s teaching in a constructive way. Positive criticism is also welcomed.
You are invited to join the Facebook group and follow these postings on Twitter. Go to www.WeSupportPopeFrancis.net and click on the icons in the top right hand corner to be taken to the pages.
I think it is really important that we are vocal in our support of Francis. I came across this rather unsettling article in yesterday’s Gaurdian which shows the extent of the opposition he faces from the right wing conservative minority.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/27/the-war-against-pope-francis?CMP=fb_gu
While some Catholics wish Pope Francis dead, according to that Gaurdian article, it is interesting to hear other prominent non-Catholic Christians speak about him.
The link below is to a BBC Radio Scotland program which I happened to catch the end of, on my way home from mass this morning.
At approx. 1hr and 25 min into the show, there is a piece on this important anniversary of the Reformation. Richard Holloway, former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church interviews Rt. Rev. Derek Browning, the present Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland who has just met Francis. Derek is somebody I know to be an ardent supporter of the ecumenical movement. It is interesting to hear his experience of meeting Francis. He certainly does not wish him dead.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09cc2dj#play
Oh, I might just have a thing or two to say on that website in favour of supporting Pope Francis in any way we can. I just hope I can do it in the appropriate language. Expressing my concerns in English doesn’t seem to be my strong suit so I can’t imagine what nightmares will await me elsewhere.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been brought to tears by some of the things spoken of on this website. It prepares you for doing good in the world. When you have Pope agenda by the hand and you start fishing off-shore for support, you are certainly glad to say that the whole of the intelligentsia of Catholic Ireland knows a winning game plan when they hear one. Who dares interpret modern day issues any better than Pope Francis right now. He put himself smack dab in the solutions department and now he awaits his teams to assemble around him in support. He inspires atheists, agnostics, and Christians alike.
He has brought forward the imperative to act, and willingly inverted the Church’s hierarchy in a move that encourages new items to be round-tabled.
Silence is never an option in these times. If there is silence, there is complicity. We are being called upon from all areas. I’m glad you gentlemen get that these days because not many do.
The Pope’s declared enemies are the greatest argument for supporting him. What a bunch.
Dissent and consensus in the era of Pope Francis: petitions are not the answer
From the link below
“A petition in favor of the pope risks giving the impression that the support for him is smaller, or more elitist or more geographically defined than what it actually is”
Also
“A healthy scepticism towards consensus-forming mechanisms is in line with the Church’s understanding of tradition, the formation and consolidation of which takes time. Forming consensus is, of course, part of the life of the Body of Christ. But when it resorts to petition campaigns it risks opening the gates to ecclesial populism, especially in this time when the relationship between consensus and leadership (political, but also ecclesial leadership) is in a vertical crisis”
https://international.la-croix.com/news/dissent-and-consensus-in-the-era-of-pope-francis-petitions-are-not-the-answer/6233
kevin your brother
In Christ
That Guardian article daftly argues that the difference between Pope Francis and his opponents is that the latter are ‘counter-cultural’ whereas Francis wants ‘the world’ to ‘set the agenda’ for ‘the church’. This is both entirely wrong and potentially damaging to Francis, by boosting those who argue that Francis is a heretic taken over by ‘the world’.
The core of the difference between these two camps is that Francis has realised what his opponents have not – that “We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them”. (Amoris Laetitia 37) The Burkian mistake on the formation of conscience is to suppose that mere legislation is sufficient – the mistake that ended dialogue between clergy and people in Ireland in the wake of Humanae Vitae. We are living amidst the detritus of the ecclesiastical slum that inevitably followed.
For Francis the true model for those who wish to form conscience is Jesus, followed by his 13th century namesake, Francis of Assisi. Conscience begins at the point we are touched by genuine compassion and companionship, not with a mere cold regulation imposed from above. This realisation requires of bishops the abandonment of the aloof prioritisation of mere regulation and of the social remoteness that goes with that – to become companioning teachers by way of understanding and compassion.
This is not a mere ‘change of style’ – it is a realisation of ‘a change of era’ and of what that change requires of the Christian leader – nothing less than an abandonment of the imperial style that overtook the bishop’s understanding of his role once he became an aristocrat. It is the pope who is truly counter-cultural.
I develop these points in a full article on the ACI site: ‘The ‘War against Pope Francis: where do Irish Bishops stand’ – at:
https://acireland.ie/war-pope-francis-irish-bishops-stand/
Well Sean @ 6, how would Rene Girard call us to act in this exact situation? I’m hoping everyone here at the ACP sees the nuggets of wisdom in your statements. Pope Francis is translating all this for us – scripture into modern times and some of our clergy are already on the same frequency. It is time to fully join him where he has put himself – 100% at service to the necessary changes that need to take place. I think humanity has been distracted from this work for some time. It’s time to get together again.
What is the urgency of our day, guarding institution first or guarding all lifeforms first? We guard the institution first but only if guarding all lifeforms is central to its core beliefs. If we have fallen out of time with protecting our own from exploitation, then there is truly nothing to guard. Planned obsolescence is the charge and exploits everyone involved and you can’t escape it because it is built in. It is a crime against humanity.
If that is the case, I guess it all must be burned to the ground and we start over but there is a way to make a seamless transition to something better without blaming anyone specifically. It is in our DNA, this mimetic desire stuff, to keep going until it burns down. It doesn’t have to be this way though.
So let me get this straight, you rise to power financially, you find a way to never fall, and accumulate more than you and your future generations will ever know what to do with, at a time when the needy are dying daily in the 10’s of thousands. People will look at you like you are a hero and not really put two and two together that your wealth is just exploited from worker sources and has nothing to do with how much work you are doing right now in terms of your wage/worth. 8 people own the same wealth as the bottom 50% of the population.
If you can trace your company back to off-shore holdings in tax free areas, there is a good chance that you are a member of that 0.1% that is ruining the planet before our eyes with passive acceptance of weapons, warfare, and a growing nuclear threat. Not to mention while we witness the exploitation of world wide resources that belong to the planet’s future generations and are not chips in this poker game that we call the stock/futures market.
Is that too difficult for people to understand? This is the basis of the “Our Children’s Trust” lawsuit in the United States coming to international media attention in February 2018.
We’ve been out of control for some time and the Pope is trying to reel us all in to something epic in proportions, but only if we want it for ourselves – it is a brand new mimetic we have on our horizons and in 7 years, it could be in full force worldwide, but only if religions can come together and support it. Clans will be the first to the table, in Catholic areas. Clans assembled will support the United States’ lengthy transition.
Opulence has its problems, so say we. Well within every problem is an opportunity for something to change for the better. Knowing we’ve lived cooperatively for long periods of time is comforting.
We go back to a non-destructive way of doing things, closely at one with nature through ultra-supportive social systems. If it is a necessity, it will be provided for through simple channels of distribution from volunteer run cooperatives. That will be a standard that will prevent us from getting in deep.