Not holed up in the bunker yet

Recently I've been getting crazy emails about how Pope Francis is absolutely destroying the Catholic Church. These emails claim that Pope Benedict is the real Pope and has been blackmailed into exile. Supposedly Pope Francis has a crucifix which is really some sort of Wiccan magic wand. Or something insidious like that.

One reason I laugh at these kinds of conspiracies is how predictable they are. Back when John Paul I died in office there were plenty of conspiracies tailor made to fit pet agendas. One person told me he was killed because he was going to bring back the Traditional Latin Mass. This astounded me considering that another fan of the TLM told me that Albino Luciani had started the unforgivable practice of waving, smiling and shaking hands with people while in procession at the beginning of Mass. Upon suggesting this might be his interpretation of laetificat juventutem meam I was met with an unimpressed silence and a very holy frown.

Since John Paul II didn't die after a month after his election, the conspiracy theory I heard about him was that there were two Pope John Pauls. The real one was locked away somewhere and the one you saw on television or at WYD celebrations was a modernist plant with plastic surgery sent into the Vatican in the early eighties to destroy the church. If that were true I'm sure that was that agent's last mission, having failed so badly. There was reportedly a Mass celebrated by the soon-to-be-Saint John Paul II at Assisi where someone had put a statue of Buddha on top of a tabernacle. "But the Pope didn't put the statue there, did he?" I asked. "No, but he didn't remove it either, which he should have," I was informed. "Maybe he thought it was a statue of an angel. Some of them are as chubby as Buddha, you know," I suggested. I received more holy frowns for my insolence.

I'd had some conversations with Traditionalists of a more general nature which I remember fondly. Rich was a truly great guy who had a saintly devotion to the Latin Mass. He had read a lot of books about spirituality and I learned a lot from talking to him, but every once in a while he'd get really angry and blurt out an unqualified assertion. "Millions and millions of souls are going to hell all because of the Second Vatican Council!" Rich stridently stated. "Are you sure of that? How do you know that?" He was sort of apologetic and said "Well, I don't really know; I could be wrong about all of this of course."

My point is that defectibility doomsday predictions have so far been pretty far off the mark. They sometimes get downgraded to semi-doomsday predictions before dissipating altogether, or if they completely lack even a kernel of truth they go straight into the bin.

But laying wild-eyed craziness aside, I know a lot of serious people have real concerns about the current Pope's messaging that have nothing to do with weird conspiracies, rumors or exaggerations. But I still think those people can at times be prone to making overstatements. I'm in agreement with R. R. Reno's take and tone on our current Holy Father's recent interviews. More about this later.

With regard to being prone to overstatement about the present Papal interview material, I remember back when female altar servers were approved by Pope John Paul II. It was shortly after I converted, and I knew people who thought that was the beginning of the end of the Catholic Church’s tradition of a male priesthood and anything resembling reverence in the Mass. One friend who was extremely upset pointed out that seeing "cute girls" up in the sanctuary was going to make it impossible for red-blooded dudes like us to concentrate on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I think he might have had a bit of a point if he just would change the word impossible to more difficult. I wasn't worried so much about that; I'm not sure how distracting a girl wearing a shapeless white alb can be, especially compared to what I've seen some female Eucharistic Ministers wearing for years before altar girls were legalized. Not to mention women dressed horribly in the pew in front of you. Plus there are many more things to distract parishioners during Sunday Mass: football games, how your stocks are doing, the work week ahead, etc. And this was all before the iPhone was invented.

I was, however, temporarily convinced that female altar servers were not a good development and allowing them was a definite concession to secular pressures. I think I was completely wrong about that and recent history has proven that I was wrong. The dome has not cracked, lightning bolts have not been sent down from Heaven upon Masses with female acolytes, cute or otherwise. As a result, I have absolutely no problem with altar girls now and frankly I barely even notice it.

The Pope is first and foremost a Father in his essence and so my relationship to him always reminds me of my own relationship to my father. I sometimes get bored listening to my father talk about some conversation with some guy named Bill he had about something I totally forget now. But I'm intrigued when he explains how vacuum tubes work. I think my brother would rather hear news about what Bill So-and-so said and could care less about the vacuum tubes. But we love him no matter what he's off about. Most of the things we all agree on are discussed only cursorily.

Of course our father taught us right from wrong when we were children; he was indeed our first teacher. The Pope is also a teacher, I realize, but I accept his teaching as an adult who can examine my own conscience and decide whether what he is saying applies to me. When the Pope goes on and on about fighting poverty my eyes glaze over, I'll admit. I don't feel bad about this; even Jesus got sick of hearing about "the poor" sometimes (Mt. 26:11), although he directly commanded one rich guy to give ALL his money to the poor (Mk. 10:21). Obviously that was what that prig needed, and there is a time and place for everything. However I'll listen to the Pope and throw in an extra $50 when I can spare it. My eyes may glaze over but I still love the guy. Like I said in the comments before, I don't think he's talking about me when he says " It is not necessary to talk about these issues [abortion and same-sex marriage] all the time." I do know some people who are so obsessed with fighting abortion that their marriages have suffered or even failed. In other words, they may have saved the lives of unborn children, but they didn't harvest the grace of the sacrament of marriage and instead, they entirely blew their vocations and alienated their families. Randall Terry is a public poster child for this phenomenon. Maybe these people are analogous to those who said "Lord, Lord, didn't we cast out demons in your name? (Mt. 7:22)" It would appear to be so.

Another Francis, Francis Cardinal Arinze, was asked once about why the Bishops weren't fighting more against abortion and talking about it more. He said something like "You don't need a Bishop to tell you that abortion is wrong. An eight year old preparing for First Holy Communion can tell you it's wrong. (paraphrasing)" This comment is put a little less flippantly than "It is not necessary to talk about these issues [abortion and same-sex marriage] all the time," but contains a very similar underlying message.

The people I hear talking about contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage the most in America are members of the Democrat Party. They sometimes call the first two "women's services" and the last one "marriage equality", but those are merely code words. This is why one Bishop changed his party affiliation to Republican, by the way, and it made the news. Was Pope Francis upset by this at the time? I hardly think he would be. The Democrats are trying to push all this stuff on everybody, and we're pushing back. But we're not pushing back "all the time." It's not what solely defines us as Catholics.

These are random musings to be sure, and I'm jumping all over the place I realize. But I hope this gives people an idea of why I'm not in the bunker yet over Pope Francis and his different style. I think that Reno criticizes some of the Pope's words respectfully and I think respect is a key attribute in this dialogue. I've seen what is commonly called "Catholic Fundamentalism" by liberals—something I would merely call "speaking the truth without charity" (Ep. 4:15, I Cor. 13:1ff)—and it may not be as widespread as some Jesuits think, but its effects can be quite harmful, especially on the young and impressionable.