I woke up in the middle of the night with some of the worst pain I’ve had since my health crisis began. I’ve been overall making progress towards a general recovery, but have had set back recently. Please pray for my recovery.
But in that moment I thought of my recent posts directly or indirectly critical of the pope, in his decision to allow homosexual blessings, and I realized in that moment some of my indiscriminate statements could be read to encourage rejecting the pope on some level, which was not my intention, but those certain statements were imprudently expressed. I will be more careful because at the end of the day when I examine my conscience I absolutely do not want any sin on my soul against the Church.
I am giving Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt he is not approving of actual heresy, that he has the intention of being orthodox. I recognize sincerity in him to minister to those most on the margins. I cannot read his soul so I can’t accuse him of being sinister. There are many aspects of his pontificate that I appreciate including his devotion to Mary. To what degree he may be a bad pope, I leave that to God and the Church itself to judge.
Also, re gay blessings, I accept it, reading the document in the orthodox way, there being nothing that explicitly contradicts doctrine. It must be approval of blessing the persons in the couple relationship not the couple per se as a relationship. I do hope they issue some formal clarification stating this.
The modernist coalition in charge of the deep church within the Church does have such sinister motives that we must oppose it openly, to defend Tradition and the TLM. If they push for public gay blessing events that technically aren’t weddings, but are similar to weddings, we must object to it as canon law 212 allows.
On one hand we can within certain limits offer criticisms of the pope and Holy See, including in how much the deep church has influence over both; on the other hand, as long as we have a pope and Holy See, we must believe in the Church’s own teachings about how the Holy Ghost protects both. God’s Providence is in control of Rome, so we should trust in that.
Going forward I continue as a traditional Catholic mindful both of the errors of Catholic modernism undermining Tradition and of some bad elements in the TLM movement. Both will always clash every time we hear something controversial in the Church news cycle, especially regarding Pope Francis.
It is said he may be dying, preparing next to change conclave laws, to prepare for a successor who will continue his reforms. It is also said the next major reform will be non-ordained female deacons, which like this new discipline, would be very controversial. I’m intellectually ready for that, so I keep my faith in the Church and not sin against it.
It will probably take mental gymnastics to see whatever the document says in an orthodox sense, while rejecting the modernist’s manipulation of it. If it allows women to be blessed as non ordained deaconesses, I would take that only to be in the doctrinal sense the early Church approved of this role, that anything beyond that would be an error in language or an abuse at the local level. The pope cannot formally teach formal heresy, even if Pope Francis or his successor should be privately heretics with bad intentions. The Holy Ghost will protect the Church, so there is no reason to fear how bad this Crisis might get.
Merry Christmas.