Analysing contemporary Catholicism requires a bit more knowledge than merely quoting a couple of reactionary Catholics – as does a recent New Statesman article.

Eighty-seven-year-old Pope Francis has recently been in trouble over LGBTQ+ issues. Late-last year he faced an outright revolt from African Catholics after approving the blessing of same sex couples and individuals.

Speaking on behalf of the continental hierarchy, Kinshasa archbishop, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, said: ‘The African bishops do not consider it appropriate for Africa to bless homosexual unions or same-sex couples, because … this … would be in direct contradiction to the cultural ethos of African communities.’ Approving such blessings ‘has caused a shockwave, it has sown misconceptions and unrest in the minds of many … and has aroused strong reactions.’

Many African countries, like Uganda, have severe laws against gay people, reflecting the erroneous notion that homosexuality only came to Africa with European colonisation.

Then, last week in a closed session of the Italian Bishops Conference, Francis said that there were too many “faggots” in Italian seminaries. He was forced to apologise.

This is an illustration of the difficulty of governing a world-wide, multicultural church. What makes Western progressives happy, horrifies Africans and vice versa. The complexity of Catholicism is often misunderstood as a recent article the New Statesman (May 21, 2024) illustrated.

Finn McRedmond in ‘The myth of progressive Catholicism’ assures us that Pope Francis election ‘was a symbolic victory for the liberal wing of a beleaguered church.’ I was in Rome for Francis’ election and Francis is not a ‘progressive’ in the Western sense. He’s focused on pastoral care, not theological purity like his predecessors. For him the church is a field hospital, not a dogmatic think tank.

He’s from Argentina, a country on the periphery of the West. In fact, he has much more sympathy with the developing world than he does with Gringo Westerners. And he’s an old-style Jesuit which means he listens to advice, but in the end makes up his own mind. He’s certainly not, as McRedmond says, ‘in lockstep with the [progressive] trajectory of the decade.’

She goes on to argue that ‘Francis and his allies will find that their revolution … was built on sand’ and that ‘a conservative takeover has been fomenting,’ which is a pretty simplified understanding of what’s been happening in Catholicism for the last decade. Her authorities for that view are Ross Douthat of the New York Times and former-editor of London’s Catholic Herald, Damian Thompson, and the so-called traditionalists ‘spiritual leader,’ Cardinal Raymond Burke.

She quotes these gentlemen as though they were objective observers. However, if I were looking for people who understood the papacy I wouldn’t go to Messrs. Douthat and Thompson who’ve been endlessly grinding anti-Francis axes. Their whole perspective is narrowly Western, capitalist and reactionary.

She then turns to Burke, quoting him as saying that ‘the pope has no power to change doctrine,’ adding her own view that you can’t ‘launder Catholicism of its inherent conservatism without entirely disrupting its nature’ and that ‘liberal Catholicism is a theologically inconsistent proposition.’

This is a complete misunderstanding of the theological meaning of tradition. Essentially, it’s saying the church cannot change; it must always remain the same, constantly returning to some idealised past age that suits the reactionary mindset.

I’d prefer the views of another cardinal to those of Burke, Saint John Henry Newman. Belief and doctrine, Newman says, are not rigid, they develop, evolve and change. The church, he says, ‘changes in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often’ (Essay on the Development of Doctrine). For Newman tradition means embracing all of the best from the past, using it as a foundation to act in the present and to imagine and create the future.

Sure, McRedmond is right that Western Catholicism is in trouble, but her diagnosis of the malaise is wrong. A far more insightful analysis is offered by John Warhurst in Eureka Street (May 29, 2024). John has the distinct advantage of real experience in dealing with living Catholicism and actual church authorities.

His view is that the institutional church (i.e. bishops) in the West ‘treat [Catholic] reform groups with disdain.’ Warhurst says that what ‘the church needs now is not faithful engagement but disruption … [especially] … on the “woman’s equality” issue.’ In McRedmond’s rhetoric ‘reform groups’ means ‘progressives’.

Warhurst’s right. Faithful Western Catholics need to think about, imagine and model new ways of being Catholics, because the bishops’ inaction has signed the institutional church’s death warrant. As Newman says, we have to change to remain the same.

Beyond the developed West, things are different. But just as Australian Catholics trying to create a church that lives in and is responsive to the cultural and human needs of our fellow citizens, so Catholics in other cultures are trying to do something similar.

Catholics today live in the complexity of a world church and if there’s one thing Pope Francis understands, it’s this.

https://johnmenadue.com/a-catholic-church-responsive-to-the-human-needs-of-our-fellow-citizens/

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Vatican-watching is, without a doubt, the lowest form of journalism, lower even than gossip or “media analysis.” For one thing, the substrate from which you’re working is, invariably, the Italian press, which has a much vaguer relationship with the truth than its Anglophone counterparts. For another, the Roman Church is one of the last tattered European imperial bureaucracies—a leaky, factionalized collection of cliques and camarillas whose various members will say more or less anything to do down their rivals at court.

Throat-clearing aside, Pope Francis most definitely said there is too much frociaggine (“faggotry”) afoot in the seminaries of Italy in response to the Italian ordinaries who proposed loosening rules against allowing gay men into the priesthood. Temporizing, equivocating, and apologizing ensued—although via emissaries. The successor of Peter himself has not taken to the airwaves to express any kind of remorse.

An anonymous source informs us that “‘frocio’ and its derivatives are the most offensive anti-gay slurs in Italian before the real top-tier ones”—apparently all the high-test stuff involves explicit references to the fundament.  

He added, “If some non-Anglophone immigrant who lived here for 10 years decided to start railing against ‘n*ggers,’ nobody would be like, ‘Well, it’s not his first language, and I respect that.’” So much for the philology.

This has been a confusing news cycle for the American press, which, since the infamous 2013 “Who am I to judge?” airplane interview, has been determined to shoehorn Francis into Western social liberalism—a lefty antithesis to the alleged hidebound dogmatism of the late Benedict XVI, whose reactionary credentials included acting as secretary for the revolutionary faction of the Second Vatican Council and penning vociferous defenses of social democracy and world government. It may not have anything to do with reality, but it sells papers. Unfortunately, our press has the habit of believing its own nonsense. When it turns out that Francis has the sexual sensibilities of an 87-year-old Italian-Argentinian, it is very distressing. 

The real Francis is much more interesting. He is not an even superficially coherent character. He has, above all, an unrefined taste for making people uncomfortable—the through-line between the airplane interviews and frociaggine and the fact that he is always talking about Satan. He gleefully headlined and then seemed instantly to regret the antics at his own Amazonian Synod. He has in large part suppressed the old form of the Mass and has gone to great lengths to insult those who hold Latinity fondly, but has regularized relations with the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X and says the modern Divine Office in Latin. (To give you an idea of how unusual this is, just the books to do the Latin Liturgy of the Hours will run you $300 in America. Not many people do it! It’s a pain in the neck!) He has cultivated “the synodal way” with much fanfare (and, along the way, has given up a massive amount of the Church’s arguments with the nation-states from the 18th century until, well, the beginning of this pontificate), but has wrung his hands publicly about the Germans taking it all too far. He happily wears native headgear and hands out red hats to the farthest-flung, smallest portions of the Church, but Eurocentrically listens to Wagner on his own time. Jorge Bergoglio, the man, is much more complicated and conflicted than Pope Francis, the liberal legend.

No, the American press has it all wrong; they also miss the point. All but one or two of Francis’s ideas and predilections are irrelevant in explaining the Vatican’s behavior. There are basically three major determinants of the Roman court’s policy under this papacy. First, the Vatican is functionally broke. This gives wealthy pressure groups—like the liberal, taxpayer-funded German prelates—outsized say in what is going on in the Eternal City. Second, Francis does genuinely dislike Americans; he has consistently broken with custom to stick it to the historical bastions of Catholicism in America, most visibly by denying red hats to the archbishops of Philadelphia and Baltimore. Third, Francis values personal control. His constant reorganization of the Curia and reassignment of personnel within its reorganized bodies, and his preference for keeping compromised loyalists around under his sole protection, strengthen his position as the singular axle on which the Roman wheel spins.

Maybe he’s born with it; maybe it’s Peronism. In any case, the Francis papacy’s story, when it is written, will not be one of clashing ideologies, let alone the glorious onward march of a progressive, enlightened Catholicism. It will be something more shadowy, more idiosyncratic, and more personal. There may not be much left of the Church as an institution, but what does remain will bear the mark, not of a party or a politics or a theological school, but of a man—of himself.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/what-the-anglophone-press-misses-about-the-pope/

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French bishops condemn Olympic ‘mockery of Christianity’
The opening of the Paris games featured drag queens and transsexuals posing as Jesus and his apostles

The Bishops’ Conference of France has denounced the organizers of the Olympic Games over an LGBTQ-themed parody of the Last Supper during the event's opening ceremony. The organizers have claimed that the performance reflected their “values and principles.”

The ceremony, which took place in central Paris on Friday night, concluded with a troupe of drag queens, homosexuals, and transsexuals posing at a table, as Jesus Christ and his apostles appeared in Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’. 

A giant serving dish was then wheeled out in front of the table, from which emerged a mostly naked man made up to resemble Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and festivity.

Throughout the performance, a male dancer’s exposed testicles could be seen behind the table.

Actual opening ceremony of the Olympics. This isn’t parody.RIP Olympics. pic.twitter.com/5gk1yObldB

“This ceremony unfortunately included scenes in which Christianity was mocked and ridiculed, which we deeply regret,” the Bishops’ Conference said in a statement on Saturday. 

“We thank the members of other religious denominations who have expressed their solidarity with us,”the statement continued. “This morning we think of all Christians on all continents who have been hurt by the exaggeration and provocation of some scenes.”

The ceremony was condemned by Christians and conservatives around the world. Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota called the performance a “gross mockery of the Last Supper,” while Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini declared that “opening the Olympics by insulting billions of Christians across the world was a really bad start” for France. 

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the spectacle as “extremely disrespectful to Christians,” while tech entrepreneur Dr. Eli David wrote that “even as a Jew,” he was “infuriated by this outrageous insult to Jesus and Christianity.”

Olympic organizers have defended the opening show. “We imagined a ceremony to show our values and our principles so we gave a very committed message,” Paris 2024 President Tony Estanguet told reporters on Saturday. “The idea was to really trigger a reflection. We wanted to have a message as strong as possible.”

“Our idea was inclusion,” added Thomas Jolly, the ceremony’s artistic director. “We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everybody.”

https://www.rt.com/news/601746-bishops-condemn-olympic-ceremony/

MEANWHILE:

IOC and NBC take down Olympic opening ceremony video from YouTube
The move came after criticism over an LGBTQ-themed parody widely seen as mocking Christianity

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has deleted a video of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Games in Paris from its YouTube channel. Committee officials faced massive global public backlash over an alleged LGBTQ-themed parody of ‘The Last Supper’ at the event, which was widely seen by Christians as blasphemous.

As of Sunday, the 26-minute video on the Olympics YouTube channel titled ‘LET THE GAMES BEGIN! | #Paris2024 Opening Ceremony Highlights’ is unavailable, with comments under the link closed. The same goes for a similar video on the YouTube channel of NBC Sports, the official broadcaster of the Games in the US. The IOC did not explain the reason for the move.

The apparent removal of the video came after numerous politicians, social media users, and influencers expressed outrage over a scene featuring a troupe of drag queens, homosexuals, and transsexuals posing at a table as Jesus Christ and his apostles appeared in Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’.

https://www.rt.com/pop-culture/601770-ioc-video-olympics-removed/

MEANWHILE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Wuebnte0w

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - One of the largest US telecommunications companies, C Spire, has announced the decision to withdraw its advertising from the Summer Olympic Games in Paris after the controversial parody of the Last Supper during the opening ceremony, saying that its employees were shocked by the performance.
"We were shocked by the mockery of the Last Supper during the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. C Spire will be pulling our advertising from the Olympics," the company said in a statement on X late Saturday.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240728/major-us-tech-company-to-pull-advertising-from-paris-olympics-after-last-supper-mockery-1119539511.html

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