www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Is Pope Francis a Heretic?

I assume the Bishop of Rome is a topic of relevance to most people here.

A patristics scholar has come out with this new interview strongly suggesting that Amoris Laetitia is very close to heresy and the whole scenario as "unprecedented" and "apocalyptic."

https://gloria.tv/video/zYDLfafjvndC4DNFsQpMLKieo

Freedom is a right of every person: each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept;

My fall back is this. My father, a Lutheran and a very good Christian and good man--God rest his soul--gave me a piece of advice decades ago that I remember when things like Pope Francis' teachings come to my attention.

Dad said that "a man is a success (in his pilgrim walk) if, when he meets the Lord, he can say 'I have not compromised Your Teaching.'" In other words, I am responsible for keeping and living out what I have been taught. I am not responsible for others who may stray away from the Faith. I am not responsible for my pastor, my bishop, the Pope. Now we all fall short of this, but I think the idea is linked to another thought I was given by one of my spiritual fathers. The Lord blesses the struggle. He may or may not provide success, but He asks us to struggle to stay faithful.

Later I learned of St. John Chrysostom's admonition to clergy he ordained. He said that "the floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of priests." They have a greater responsibility because they are officially charged with teaching the Faith so we pray for them not to falter or get off on a tangent. But we are not responsible except to point out to them, in love, what we believe to be their error.

I wouldn't call him a heretic. However, he does reflect the socialistic South American culture from whence he came. I would be surprised if the ambiguity prevalent in the world did not affect even the pope since it has gotten into nearly everything else. Maybe Jesuits should be seen and not heard.

Pope Francis, a kind, great and holy pastor, has done in written and spoken words, what Jesuit missionaries and educators have done for centuries in bringing the compelling Word of God to a largely nonChristian world by finding in the cultures, traditions and religious beliefs of such people elements that, if they don’t conform to that Word, at least aspire to It. How can you fault his call to universal brotherhood in Frateli Tutti? It is Jesuit evangelism at its best.

Joshua McElwee:

Thank you, Holy Father. In that same speech yesterday in Georgia, as in many other countries, you spoke of “gender” theory, saying that it is the great enemy, a threat to marriage. I would like to ask what would you say to a person who has suffered for years with his or her sexuality and truly feels that it is a biological problem, that his or her physical makeup does not correspond to what he or she considers his or her sexual identity? As a pastor and minister, how would you accompany these people?

Pope Francis:

First of all, in my life as a priest, as a bishop – and also as Pope – I have accompanied many people with homosexual tendencies and also homosexual activity. I have accompanied them, I have brought them closer to the Lord; some cannot do it, but I have always accompanied them and never abandoned anyone. This is what has to be done. Individuals have to be accompanied, as Jesus accompanies them. When a person who has this condition comes before Jesus, Jesus certainly does not say: “Go away because you are homosexual.”

No. What I was talking about has to do with the mischief going on these days with the indoctrination of gender theory. A French father told me that he was at the table speaking to his children – he is Catholic, his wife is Catholic, the children are Catholic, lukewarm Catholics, but Catholics – and he asked his ten-year old son: “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” – “A girl.” And his father realized that the schoolbooks were teaching gender theory. This is against the realities of nature. It is one thing if a person has this tendency, this option; some people even change sex. But it is another thing to teach this in schools, in order to change people’s way of thinking. I call this “ideological colonization.”

Last year I received a letter from a Spanish man who told me his story from the time when he was a child. He was born a female, a girl, and he suffered greatly because he felt that he was a boy but physically was a girl. He told his mother, when he was in his twenties, at 22, that he wanted to have an operation and so forth. His mother asked him not to do so as long as she was alive. She was elderly, and died soon after. He had the operation. He is a municipal employee in a town in Spain. He went to the bishop. The bishop helped him a great deal, he is a good bishop and he “wasted” time to accompany this man. Then he got married. He changed his civil identity, he got married and he wrote me a letter saying that it would bring comfort to him to come see and me with his bride: [b]he, who had been she, but is he[/b]. I received them. They were pleased. And in the neighbourhood where he lived there was an elderly priest, over 80 years old, the former parish priest who assisted the nuns, there, in the parish… Then a new [parish priest] came. When the new priest would see him, he would yell at him from the sidewalk: “You’ll go to hell!” When he went to the old priest, the old priest said to him: “How long has it been since you made your confession? Come now, I will hear your confession so you can receive Communion”.

Do you see what I am saying? Life is life, and things have to be taken as they come. Sin is sin. Tendencies or hormonal imbalances create many problems and we have to take care not to say: “It doesn’t make any difference, let’s live it up.” No, not at all. But for every case welcome it, accompany it, look into it, discern and integrate it. This is what Jesus would do today. Please, do not say: “The Pope blesses transsexuals!” Please! Because I can already see the newspaper headlines… No, no. Are there any doubts about what I said? I want to be clear. It is a moral problem. It is a problem. It is a human problem. And it must be resolved as best we can, always with the mercy of God, with the truth, as we said in the case of marriage, reading the entire Amoris Laetitia, but always this way, with our hearts open.

Is this such an example?

APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
TO GEORGIA AND AZERBAIJAN
(30 SEPTEMBER - 2 OCTOBER 2016)
IN-FLIGHT PRESS CONFERENCE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS [vatican.va] FROM AZERBAIJAN TO ROME
Papal Flight
Sunday, 2 October 2016

I give the Holy Father the benefit of the doubt but he seems to be, as it were, hedging his bets -- "avoid committing oneself when faced with a difficult choice." -- with the result that the words in the title that are telling is "Papal Flight."

Come on, ajk, you could give the man a little more than the benefit of the doubt. Pope Francis was 80 in 2016. An arduous schedule in and around Tbilisi might exhaust anyone let alone an octogenerian. Add a long plane flight, a painful siatic nerve, journalists, anxious to get the scoop, and you'll have an old bishop who might be prone to have an ad lib stumble and ramble or two at these in-flight press conferences that I would like to see ended in any case. Since he generally speaks in Italian, it's possible that the English transcription misses the nuances of the language in use. Press conferenes are not Encyclicals, dogmatic statements, or Moto Proprios for that matter - give the Holy Father a break. I think he faces this modern and chaotic world quite bravely, and has done wonders in spreading good will throughout it.

a painful sciatic nerve

... I can forgive any off-the-cuff remarks that may cause confusion because when I have this pain--and until I work it out--I am not fit company to talk to anyone.

I think Pope Francis doesn't seem to care that he is used by a media that is hostile to the faith, and who will turn on him when his words can't be manipulated to their purpose. Faithful Catholics are paying the price for his "ad lib stumble and ramble." Does Pope Francis hear their anguish? Does their anguish also touch his heart?

Better then that he speaks less but speaks clearly and carefully. The English translation is --official? -- on the Vatican website.

Faithful Catholics are also paying a price when they hear some of the sarcastic and negative editorializing that's done on Mother Angelica's network regarding this pope. Like the in-flight papal press conferences and Vatican interviews, I wish it would stop.