Rorate Editorial: The Pope in the United States - Ambiguous on what should be clear, clear only on his political priorities

Priorities

Pope Francis' visit has shown us once more that he can be clear and unambiguous on his priorities, and vocal and forthright in saying what he wants to say. He did not hesitate to make direct statements on immigration, on the environment, on the abolition of the death penalty and in praise of religious liberty (that is, religious liberty as understood by the Western secular consensus rather than the defense of the Church's right to proclaim the truth in any society). There was no question left about the importance he placed on these issues. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the importance he accords to the defense of the unborn and of true marriage.

We affirm -- and we are not alone in doing so -- that the entire papal visit to the US and the UN was a series of missed opportunities and a monumental failure to affirm Church teaching precisely where it is under greatest threat from public opinion and secular power. These will come back to haunt the very same Catholics who have tried so hard to justify all of the Pope's omissions in the past week. 

"But he spoke against abortion! He spoke about the right to life! He spoke about the need to defend marriage and the family!" Of course he did. Equally clear is that he treated these issues as having marginal importance. No one can in all honesty point to his brief and often vague reminders on abortion and declare that the defense of the unborn was one of his primary interests during his visit. Even less can it be said that he gave a clear and ringing defense of true marriage as only between a man and a woman. During his main address on the topic of the family -- the address at the "Prayer Vigil for the Festival of Families" in Philadelphia -- the Pope focused on the material needs of families rather than the defense of the very essence and identity of the family. At least the Pope had mentioned the word "abortion" in the course of his visit, but on the defense of true marriage he was never as forthright.

A Vatican II Moment in Philadelphia: Widespread Concelebration is the Celebration of Man

"Concelebration, whereby the unity of the priesthood is appropriately manifested, has remained in use to this day in the Church both in the east and in the west. For this reason it has seemed good to the Council to extend permission for concelebration..."

Sacrosanctum Concilium, 57

Yep, great idea! Click!
[Image: CNS]

On the Pope's Visit to America, First Days. - The Hierarchy May Go Silent, but the Lay Stones Will Cry Out

Some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out." (St. Luke 19)

Fellow Traditional Catholic, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News: Why Pope Francis has disappointed many Catholics.

Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing. "The Catholic Church in America, harsh???..." "Who is Pope Francis speaking to?"

Maureen Mullarkey, The Federalist: Che Guevara’s Pope: Pope Francis’s address to Congress will prove a concluding flourish to the descent of the Catholic Church into an accessory for modern man’s temptation toward totalitarianism.

Life Site News Editorial: Pope's Address to Congress: Not a Word about Abortion while Planned Parenthood sells Baby Parts

Pope Francis Just Echoed Obama's 'Offensive' Prayer Breakfast Remarks: The pontiff said all religions are susceptible to extremism and violence, just like Obama said in February.

Religious Liberty in the United States

In his speech on the South Lawn of the White House, Pope Francis spoke of members of the American Congress as being “called” to “fidelity to [the] founding principles [of the United States],” and praised the American tradition of religious liberty:

With countless other people of good will, [American Catholics] are likewise concerned that efforts to build a just and wisely ordered society respect their deepest concerns and their right to religious liberty. That freedom remains one of America’s most precious possessions. And, as my brothers, the United States Bishops, have reminded us, all are called to be vigilant, precisely as good citizens, to preserve and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten or compromise it.

"The Pope has denied that he's a leftist!" Or has he?How the Catholic mainstream media spins just as much as the secular media. - PLUS:What the Pope REALLY said about Cuba

[Read also our post on Francis' meeting with Fidel Castro: Has the Church surrendered to Fidel Castro?]

Tonight, various news agencies and websites representing what some would call the "Catholic mainstream media" are going wild with reports that the Pope has just denied that he is a leftist. 

Now, let's have a look at what he really said during his in-flight press conference from Cuba to the United States. The full transcript (in translation, naturally) of the in-flight press conference can be read on the Catholic News Agency's website. (Full transcript of Pope's in-flight interview from Cuba to US.) 

First, regarding his denial of being a leftist, here's what Pope Francis actually said:

A cardinal friend of mine told me that a very concerned woman, very Catholic, went to him. A bit rigid, but Catholic. And she asked him if it was true that in the Bible, they spoke of an antichrist, and she explained it to him. And also in the Apocalypse, no? And, then, if it was true that an anti-pope, who is the antichrist, the anti-Pope. But why is she asking me this question, this cardinal asked me? “Because I’m sure that Pope Francis is the anti-pope,” she said. And why does she ask this, why does she have this idea? “It’s because he doesn’t wear red shoes.” The reason for thinking if one is communist or isn’t communist. I’m sure that I haven't said anything more than what’s written in the social doctrine of the Church. On another flight, a colleague asked me if I had reached out a hand to the popular movements and asked me, “But is the Church going to follow you?” I told him, “I’m the one following the Church.” And in this it seems that I’m not wrong. I believe that I never said a thing that wasn’t the social doctrine of the Church. Things can be explained, possibly an explanation gave an impression of being a little “to the left”, but it would be an error of explanation. No, my doctrine on this, in Laudato si', on economic imperialism, all of this, is the social doctrine of the Church. And it if necessary, I’ll recite the creed. I am available to do that, eh.

Look! There! Aha! The Pope denies being a leftist! In fact what the Pope does here is to refer to an unspecified explanation of the things he has said that "give an impression" of being left-leaning ("a little to the left") and then says that it is an erroneous explanation. The fact is we do not know exactly what he is describing here as the "erroneous" explanation of his thinking, or even what he means here by being "to the left", which can mean vastly different things on either side of the equator. If anything, this looks like a non-denial denial. This, like so many other things coming from this Pope, is cloaked in so many verbal vagaries that it is hard to have a precise idea of what he actually has in mind.  More to the point is what he says about Cuba in the rest of the interview, Cuba being an unmistakably Communist regime. 

The U.S. churches Francis will visit

Pope Francis is currently in the United States, for the first time in his life.

During his visit in America, he will step inside five churches (not including chapels): the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and Saint Patrick's church, all in Washington, D.C.; the Cathedral of Saint Patrick in New York City; and the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.

Remarkably, four of the five churches still have altar rails, which of course will not be used during any of the liturgies with this pope.  All of the churches were built before the Second Vatican Council, and three of them have seen traditional Latin Masses offered at their main altars since the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei in 1988.

Having visited each of these churches, we thought it may be of interest to present a brief summary, from a traditional viewpoint, of the sacred spaces the Holy Father will encounter.

1) The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle started out as a parish church when Washington, D.C. was part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It is most known for the Requiem Low Mass offered by Richard Cardinal Cushing, archbishop of Boston, for President John F. Kennedy's funeral in 1963.

Today, in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, it is considered one of the most liberal parishes in the region, with a notable portion of its congregation opposed to Church teachings and natural law (to put it kindly). Although the cathedral offers a Sunday morning novus ordo partially in Latin (except when something more important bumps it) attempts to offer traditional Latin Masses have been denied.  The cardinal-archbishop lives at another parish, not at the cathedral.

Pontifical Family Council President Paglia: "World Family Meeting in Philadelphia open to homosexual couples."

“Everyone is welcome, nobody is excluded”. With these words Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, replied to the questions from journalists at a press conference for the presentation of the eighth World Meeting of Families, planned for the 22nd to the 27th of September in Philadelphia. Asked about the presence or non-presence of homosexual couples in Philadelphia, Monsignor responded: “We are following Instrumentum Laboris on the Synod to the letter. Everyone can come, nobody is excluded. And if anyone feels excluded, I’ll leave the 99 little sheep and go and get him”, he added with a quip.

“The intimate connection” between the meeting in the USA and the Synod, specified Monsignor Paglia, “is evidently not only temporal. The hope is that the meeting in Philadelphia and the Synod in October may truly build an ecclesial and social season, characterized by a renewed focus on the family. We want to work towards this. We want the Gospel of mercy proclaimed in the great cities of the world, most of all in the poorest and most marginalized quarters.” (SIR).

(Source: La Fede Quotidiana, translation by Contributor Francesca Romana)