ADDIS: The MSM on Pope Francis

I found this via Pewsitter – they are doing a great job – from CatholicJournalUS:

Francis and the Media: A Doomed Romance

by Thomas Addis

The Lenten season is an excellent time for confessions, so here goes: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. On April 13, I actually watched a segment of 60 Minutes. I hadn’t planned to do it, but as I was eating my dinner and surfing through the TV channels, I heard the name of Pope Francis, and, well, suddenly I was watching CBS journalist Scott Pelley mentioning that the Pope had recently apologized for the sex abuse scandal in the Church and quoted the Pontiff thusly: “I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil . . . to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage done.” Pelley followed with “It was another advance from a pope of “firsts.” [Isn’t that the way of it these days?  Pope Francis is, for example, the first Pope who ever smiled… ehvurrrr.  He is the most wonderfullest, fluffiest Pope, isn’t he?]

A person who knew nothing about the Catholic Church except what he heard through the mainstream media would probably conclude that Francis was the first pope to make such an apology and that it should have come years before. [Yep.] Well, it had come years before. In 2001, John Paul II said, “Sexual abuse within the Church is a profound contradiction of the teaching and witness of Jesus Christ.” He added that the church “apologizes unreservedly to the victims for the pain and disillusionment caused to them.” In 2010, Pope Benedict said:

I think of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children,especially within the Church and by her ministers. Above all, I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes . . . I also acknowledge with you the shame and humiliation that all of us have suffered because of these sins . . .

By omitting the previous apologies, CBS created a misleading narrative. Bad enough, but there was more.

Pelley interviewed Robert Mickens, an American journalist who covers the Vatican for The Tablet: [I wonder if The Pill gave him back his Magic Circle Decoder Ring yet.] The International Catholic News Weekly. According to The Tablet’s editor, the news weekly provides a forum for “progressive, but responsible Catholic thinking, a place where orthodoxy is at home, but ideas are welcome.” It’s hard to imagine progressive and orthodoxy living in peaceful existence, but I digress.  [A palpable hit.  Well done.]

By his own admission, Mickens believes that Vatican II and the changes that followed were part of the golden age of Catholicism. [and of emptying churches, seminaries, convents, the uncatechized in vast number, closing hospitals and schools, widespread defiance of internal order and law…] Unfortunately, Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI destroyed the promises of ecumenism and openness to new ideas. But Pope Francis might just be the man to restore that lost glory.

Yet CBS made another omission by not informing the viewer that Mickens may have an ax to grind. The Tablet recently suspended him because of a tweet he wrote that looked forward to the death of “The Rat,” a clear reference to Benedict and the derogatory term applied to him by his opponents when he was Cardinal Ratzinger.  [For more on that go HERE.]

I am sure that CBS led an exhaustive search to find a truly objective Vatican journalist but just couldn’t find one. Right. So when Pelley asked him what kind of Church does Francis dream of, Mickens offered his opinion:

A missionary church, a missionary church that shows the mercy of God, a church that’s not wagging its finger at people, not scolding people, but is inviting people, walking with people, befriending people . . . He [Francis] calls the Church a field hospital after a battle.

Again, the low-information viewer [occasionally impressed by such analysis] must assume that the Church has never reached out to people and shared the love of God. [I like this writer.  He doesn’t simply accept liberal premises.] This, of course, will come as a shock to the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Jesuits, the great missionary orders of the Church. And then there are Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, the Holy Ghost Fathers, and the PIME missionaries, just to name a few. The Church has been a missionary church since Jesus told the Apostles, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

The truth is that Mickens doesn’t really care about a missionary church. He shows his true colors when he opines that the “new” Catholic Church will be one of mercy, one that will not wag its finger at people or scold them. Of course, Pelley offered no rebuttal to this silly assertion. So, when Catholic Relief Services provides food, shelter, clothing, and material assistance to over 130 million people in 90 countries each year, does that sound like a “scolding” church? When 26% of all health care around the world is provided by Catholic institutions, is that a church without mercy? When the Church has the largest non-government school system in the world, is that a church “wagging” its finger? Obviously, CBS doesn’t want facts to interfere with its agenda.

[NB:] What CBS, Mickens, and their fellow travelers are hoping for is that Pope Francis will create a church that smiles approvingly when they contracept, abort, divorce, and proudly support sodomy. They long for a church that is a democracy where the people vote for the rules they may or may not follow. After all, you can’t sin if there are no sins.

Currently, the media treat Francis like a rock star. They gush over every phrase he utters that seems to coincide with their own world view. But this won’t last forever. Eventually, he will scold them and wag his finger at them in order to save their souls. And then he will become a pariah, and they will set out to destroy him. It’s just a matter of time.  [Yes.]

As I have been saying all along, the catholic Left will eventually turn on Pope Francis.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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40 Comments

  1. Kerry says:

    After “orthodoxy is” and before “at home”, methinks the phrase “safely locked up” was omitted.

  2. annalisa says:

    yestarday Pope Francis phoned to Marco Pannella, an Italian lawmaker, member of the far left radicale party. Pannella was at the forefront of battles to legalise divorce and abortion in Italy in the 1970s. Until the pope continue to do this I don’t se likely that ” the catholic Left will eventually turn on Pope Francis”

    http://www.ansa.it/english/news/vatican/2014/04/25/pope-phones-pannella_c25db6a5-f7e9-4c46-8adf-dfafa0cc8291.html

  3. McCall1981 says:

    Hopefully these statements yesterday from Pope Francis (which seem to have been ignored by the MSM) will help:

    “The holiness and indissolubility of Christian matrimony, often disintegrating under tremendous pressure from the secular world, must be deepened by clear doctrine and supported by the witness of committed married couples. Christian matrimony is a lifelong covenant of love between one man and one woman; it entails real sacrifices in order to turn away from illusory notions of sexual freedom and in order to foster conjugal fidelity.” He pointed to the teaching of Blessed John Paul II on marriage and family as a “promising and indeed indispensable means of communicating the liberating truth about Christian marriage.”

    “You have spoken to me of some of the serious pastoral challenges facing your communities. Catholic families have fewer children, with repercussions on the number of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Some Catholics turn away from the Church to other groups who seem to promise something better. Abortion compounds the grief of many women who now carry with them deep physical and spiritual wounds after succumbing to the pressures of a secular culture which devalues God’s gift of sexuality and the right to life of the unborn. In addition, the rate of separation and divorce is high, even in many Christian families, and children frequently do not grow up in a stable home environment. We also observe with great concern, and can only deplore, an increase in violence against women and children. All these realities threaten the sanctity of marriage, the stability of life in the home and consequently the life of society as a whole. In this sea of difficulties, we bishops and priests must give a consistent witness to the moral teaching of the Gospel. I am confident that you will not weaken in your resolve to teach the truth “in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2), sustained by prayer and discernment, and always with great compassion.”

    http://southernorderspage.blogspot.com/2014/04/bombshell-pope-francis-clarifies-his.html?m=1

  4. rtjl says:

    Again, the low-information viewer [occasionally impressed by such analysis] must assume that the Church has never reached out to people and shared the love of God. [I like this writer. He doesn’t simply accept liberal premises.] This, of course, will come as a shock to the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Jesuits, the great missionary orders of the Church.

    It would have come as a shock to JPII as well. After all, JPIIs real sin in the eyes of many liberal elites is precisely that he DID reach out to people – over their heads and without them. Up until JPII, they largely controlled the agenda and the information flow. JPII grabbed much that control back and managed his own information flow – without the mediation of the mainstream liberal elites. He reached out directly to the people – over the heads of liberal theologians and experts – well before Francis ever did. (no slight to Francis – just acknowledgement of JPII)

    What JPII did in resetting the agenda and redirecting the information flow was truly incredible especially considering it was done in the days before Internet access became widespread.

  5. Lavrans says:

    Can it be later today that they turn on him? That, of course, would require a definitive and powerful defense of Catholic teaching on the issues most near and dear to liberals. A strong and clear statement.

    Thus far, His Holiness (for all his strengths) has not done such a thing and is not showing signs of doing such. Confusion seems to rule the day, which plays into the hands of our enemies.

  6. anna 6 says:

    From the Tablet:
    Message to readers: Robert Mickens
    24 April 2014 16:37
    After serious consideration, The Tablet and Robert Mickens have come to a mutual agreement that he will no longer be the journal’s Rome correspondent.

  7. Brooklyn says:

    rtjl wrote: “JPIIs real sin in the eyes of many liberal elites is precisely that he DID reach out to people – over their heads and without them. ” Ironically, that also seems to be the “real sin” that many ultraconservatives throw at JPII, that “he DID reach out to people – over their heads and without them. ”

    I am completely fascinated by the fact that ultra liberals and ultra conservatives have joined together in their disdain of this canonization. It would seem to be for very different reasons, but is it really?

  8. cajuncath says:

    Brooklyn,

    Traditional Catholic concerns regarding the canonization of JPII generally have nothing to with reaching out to people itself. Perhaps it’s what that reaching all too often consisted of.

    Does a pope participating in pagan worship concern you? What about imbuing the false non-salvific religions of the world with some measure of meaningful importance and worth? Or claiming that the Church changed her very nature at the Second Vatican Council? Or stating that the liturgical reform was the one of the most manifest fruits of the council, as though the 1970s and 1980s were an incomparable shining example of Latin rite worship?

    Perhaps the real question to ask and reflect upon is whether any of these points gives you serious pause, and, if not, why not?

  9. cajuncath says:

    The fact remains that, regardless of whatever questionable conduct and assertions by some in the media and so-called liberals, Pope Francis has quickly assembled an array of questionable and disturbing statements.

  10. Vecchio di Londra says:

    Yes, Mickens has now been abandoned by The Tablet, so he now has no restraint on his loopy ‘vision’ of that chimera that has haunted the deserted cemetery of postconciliar dissent – the ‘New Inclusive Church of the Laity’.
    In the 1960s and 1970s such people had the integrity and moral courage to cease pretending to be Catholic, and publicly left the Church. Now nothing prevents them from hanging on at the heretical fringes. They are like bankrupts who would default on their loans, but are allowed by the bank to extend-and-pretend.

  11. As long as the Holy Father keeps flogging the Bat Christians and being Pastoral, I suspect liberals of all occupations, including scribblers, will forgive the mention of things like “souls” and “the devil.”

  12. benedetta says:

    The biased, anti Catholic media, interviews, a, biased, anti Catholic JOURNALIST on, a Catholic topic?? What could go wrong??

  13. benedetta says:

    At that point it is no longer really an “interview” or “journalism” or even “reporting” but a couple of sort of officially Church working bigots gossiping over a subject they both detest. On camera and broadcast and served up as something the world needs to note well. Their conspired opinion on pretty much anything including our Holy Father is, well…amazing people get paid for that.

  14. gretta says:

    What the MSM is really missing about this Pope Francis is that while he may come across as not “wagging his finger” at folks, [He doesn’t? Have you read the reports of his daily sermonettes?] he has a profound sense of the existence of sin and the need for frequent repentance. Thus his push to encourage people to rediscover the sacrament of penance – and his “lead by example” by going to confession in front of everyone. It may be that his style is encouragement not fire and brimstone (and this is not in any way to say that this was the style of previous popes either), but it is no less deeply aware of sin and the work of the evil one in the world. If they think that he is simply going to give people a pass on engaging in sinful behavior without the need for forgiveness, I think they are sadly mistaken.

  15. CharlesG says:

    I’m not sure that the liberals will turn on the Pope, because he will give them just enough grist for their mill that they can spin in a liberal direction, and they will take the view in the long term that even if he doesn’t officially change Church teaching now, he’s laying down the groundwork that can be built upon by the future pope or popes who will really start changing Catholic teaching to suit the sinful desires of the world. These people think in the long term as they conduct their long march through the institutions, a strategy that has been remarkably successful in taking over the media, schools, the mainstream Protestant churches, etc. We can only pray and trust in God’s ultimate protection of the Church at this point.

  16. benedetta says:

    Also @Brooklyn (and hey, how are you, nice to “see” you again at Father Z’s)…I have worked in ultra liberal/dissenting places, diocese, parishes, etc. and, yes, they hate, with a vengeance, JPII, all his encyclicals, all his world youth days, all his travel and work, his holiness, and, quite particularly, the fast track to sainthood. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just look up back issues of, commonweal, america, fishwrap, nytimes, tablet, etc etc etc to see the extent of their admiration or respect for JPII, at the time of his pontificate, or, after.

    In my very first encounter as a young adult working in a parish doing youth work JPII was mocked and derided to my face, openly, and then, in serious tones it was put to me that as a matter of policy it was important for religious education in parishes to work very publicly against him. So, yeah, if you want to compare the overwhelming disobedience to a Holy Father of our times with a few grumbles one is picking up lately from the “rad trads”, go ahead…

    I mean really what was so evil in the liberal Church wing’s estimation about freeing Poland from generations of organized, corrupt, atheistic oppression and persecution? What’s not to like. There was nothing then, nor now, that one can admire about the way the Stalinists did things…or for that matter other regimes which have taken that style of ideology seriously and tried to effectuate it. The problem with the liberal Church in this country is that their short sightedness has done damage both here and in the larger world. Kind of laughable in retrospect that they basically taught a new generation to appreciate organized totalitarianism, just because, a small elite group detested, ronald reagan? Really, quite shameful when you think about it.

  17. benedetta says:

    I put to the “liberal”/activist dissenting/organized left Church media and official folks that VII stood for peaceful solidarity and nonviolent resistance, and the Christian liberation, of whole cultures from totalitarianism. Here in the US the last gasp of the dissenters is that VII stood for sexual libertinism with state sanctioned encouragement to slaughter children in the womb. Which interpretation comforms better to the spirit of VII? Not the latter…

  18. RJHighland says:

    With Pope John Paul II the reason the far left doesn’t like him is because on a number of occations he took a stong public stance on traditional Catholic teachings, the reasons that traditional Catholics have a problem with John Paul II is that he is being canonized when there were very serious problems in the Church that he did not address and by lack of attention created great confussion and a separation from traditional teachings and greater division in the Church. I say this as a person that was lead into the Church by John Paul II stand on traditional teachings. I believe he did some incredible things as First Shepherd but I also believe that his actions in certian areas caused great confussion and think this is way to early to be placing him and John XXIII into the ring of honor so to speak. Look at the condition of the Church does it look like it is being run by saint’s? Were there saint’s in the Church during the Pontificates of these Pope’s and today most certainly. It is often not the heads of the Church that are saints but those working inside the Church trying to maintain its tradition that are the true saints. To canonize these men as the Church is in spiritual collapse is ridiculous. Looking back through the Renaissance period of the Church there aren’t main Popes that were cannonized or Cardinals for that matter it were the boots on the ground trying to hold it together that were the saints. 100 years ago these two Pope’s would not be looked at as saints they would be considered moderists Popes at best or heretics at the worst. A 100 years from now when this period is looked upon by are descendents they will come to the same conclusion. It took the Church a long time to get its act together during the Renaissance so will it post Vatican II. It will be interesting to see what kind of weather our Lord offers Rome for this incredible event.

  19. Mike says:

    A decade of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy would seem an especially appropriate offering for the souls of the nominal Catholics who participated in the production of this “mainstream” media travesty.

  20. JSII says:

    There is no such thing as a Left and Right Catholic. You are either Catholic and believe ALL of what the Bride of Christ teaches, or you are wondering into Heresy. The Lord has not abandoned his Church.

  21. benedetta says:

    I think our Holy Father Pope Francis sternly wagged his finger recently in quite a prophetic and admirable way towards the throwaway culture of the West, in which the msm is complicit, when he said that “abortion is an abominable crime” and that children needed to grow up with “a mother and a father” together. He is not blowing the msm’ perpetuated culture of death a kiss, no.

  22. StJude says:

    They will turn on him but probably not for a long time.. at this point, they have way too much invested in their own ideology.

  23. RJHighland says:

    There are Catholics that have liberal interpretations of Church teaching and those that have traditional interpretations of Church teaching, those that practice a liberal faith and those that practice a traditional faith that is a fact. It is not the Lord that has abandoned the Church there are individuals in the Church that have taken Holy Orders and in the laity that have abandoned Him and his teachings, twisted them, or re-interpret them, but still hold the title Catholic. As it was, as it is now and ever shall be. We find out on our Judgement day whether or not we did His will or our will in our lives. We are all on a journey we all pray that we are on the right path but there are false teachers all about us pulling us off the path whether it be to the liberal or extreme traditional sides. As for me I will keep my leanings toward tradition and pray that is the true path that Our Lord has called me to. As Pilot stated “What is the Truth?” we find out when we find out like him, when we meet God face to face, hopefully we have been allowing Him to direct our lives the whole time living in Him and His Church’s teachings and it is a joyous day. Through the smoke lies the Truth, don’t get lost in the smoke.

  24. Rome, we have a problem. Things are amiss when practically every week the Universal Church must perform damage control following some action from Rome.

  25. Athelstan says:

    Unfortunately, Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI destroyed the promises of ecumenism…

    If only.

  26. Robbie says:

    I think the most interesting comment in the article is the mention of the “new” Catholic Church. I think that’s where the fault line is and will be for some time. In other words, is the Catholic Church is a religion or is it a humanitarian organization with a spiritual focus? Pope Francis spoke about this on his first day on the job saying the Church can’t be a spiritual NGO, but some who try and claim his mantle have suggested otherwise.

  27. JSII says:

    RJHighland-
    Very well thought response!
    Thank you.

  28. Traductora says:

    I’ve been sitting on the sidelines (not that I ever participate much) but a couple of things have occurred to me from reading other people’s comments. One is that even if JPII wasn’t great as a pope, he was very holy personally and maybe that’s what was needed. I think he was a terrible administrator and that a lot of the problems of the 80s and 90s were probably the result of his laxity. However, you do have to remember that he had nearly died in an assassination attempt, was then in ill health afterwards, and, had it not been for the work of Cdl Ratzinger as JPII got weaker and less able to handle the day to day, would have completely let go because he simply couldn’t handle it.

    Yes, he was still able to be a rock star – but that doesn’t take a lot of effort. However, the fact that the “rock star” was willing to let people watch him get old, infirm, ugly and then die…to me, that was very heroic, especially in these times when anyone who is no longer photogenic and fun is suddenly considered expendable. So I think his witness to the value of human life – something on which he was always very good – is worthy of canonization.

    As for John XXIII, most of the people who are coming are from his hometown, and I think he’s basically going to be a local saint. Nothing wrong with that.

    And overall, I agree, yes, this was meant to put the seal of approval on Vatican II. Don’t forget that these processes were promoted by BXVI. But I think it was simply to say, ok, it happened, it’s fine, we’re doing what we need to do, and now let’s go on to the next stage. In other words, I see the canonizations as “sealing off” Vatican II and taking it out of the discussion. Now it’s time to talk about how we’re going to get people back into the churches, how we’re going to take the wheel and turn our society in the direction of life and happiness, and how we’re going to create a world full of beauty and splendor that reflects the splendor of the Lord. Vatican II and any arguments about it are over and done. Time to move on.

  29. GypsyMom says:

    CharlesG,
    I agree with you. The mainstream media uses whatever they can find to advance their agenda, then ignores the rest. Pope Francis has uttered many solid and clear statements of Church teaching, but the only ones who hear about them are those of us in the “choir” who follow solid Catholic media sources. Pope Francis has said and done enough fuzzy and imprudent things that the media has successfully recreated him into a progressive modernizer in the minds of most of the ignorant public. For most people, anything the media doesn’t report about didn’t happen. All the reporters have to do is to continue to just sit and wait for the inevitable blunders to happen, and then exploit them in the press. As long as Francis keeps stepping in it, they will have all they need to continue to manipulate the masses. Only if the Pope stops with the continuous torrent of unscripted thoughts and starts to release carefully worded statements of solid Catholic doctrine will the fuel be taken away from the mainstream media. And that is nowhere near coming to pass. Until then, he is quite a useful tool, and they will “love” him.

  30. kpoterack says:

    “The holiness and indissolubility of Christian matrimony, often disintegrating under tremendous pressure from the secular world, must be deepened by clear doctrine and supported by the witness of committed married couples. Christian matrimony is a lifelong covenant of love between one man and one woman; it entails real sacrifices in order to turn away from illusory notions of sexual freedom and in order to foster conjugal fidelity.”

    KP: Thank you, McCall1981. This is music to my ears. We need to hear more of this from Pope Francis.

  31. Random Friar says:

    Could history repeat itself? H.H. Pio Nono was also a “liberal”, or at least portrayed so strongly at the beginning of his reign. He was likewise extremely frugal, was seen as a friend of the Jews, etc.

    Regardless, I think we need to be careful. We do not have the perspective necessary to properly judge all things.

  32. Kathleen10 says:

    It’s likely that the media and large segments of liberals don’t pay any attention to much of what Pope Francis says. They have gotten the gist of his papacy and know what he’s about more or less. They are accustomed to ignoring what they don’t want to hear, have their plans and designs on the church, and they will live in the bubble of their own designing and wait things out. They see the tide changing, the course contemporary cultures are on, so patience, patience. Things are swinging their way, however slowly, so it seems, or maybe is. I don’t know.
    Nobody is going to get in a lather about abortion comments, contraception comments, and so on. The sacred cow is homosexuality and say, the sexual abuse crisis being conducted by homosexual priests, with 81% of the victims being post-adolescent boys. Start talking about sodomy, homosexuality as disordered, same-sex marriage as monstrous, the worrisome predicament of children raised by homosexuals, and listen for the racket then. Other than that, they expect a Pope to, after all, talk like a Pope.
    Short of that topic, I don’t expect anyone to turn on Pope Francis at any time.

  33. Mike says:

    “Short of that topic, I don’t expect anyone to turn on Pope Francis at any time.”

    My sense is different: given enough time, and a Western outbreak of faithful Christian witness from street corner to pulpit, Francis and the rest of us could find ourselves in the crosshairs — literal as well as figurative — of political correctness much sooner than our timid natures would care to have us imagine. We must pray for the grace to persevere through the coming chastisement.

  34. Imrahil says:

    The Süddeutsche Zeitung (which has not the best reputation among orthodox Catholics) very recently wrote something about the reception of Pope Francis and added the parenthesis

    “- although he upholds Catholic doctrine just like his predecessors – ” (quoted from memory).

    There you go. Honor to whom honor is due.

  35. benedetta says:

    Despite the preponderance American elitist ‘catholic’ media and political apparatus, the moderate middle of the universal Church is orthodoxy. It is not good old American academe and media/culture of death/Obama trumpeting ‘liberalism’ as articulated in the present rendition of the Democratic Party. I am certainly not saying that orthodoxy equals any political iteration. I am saying that the thesis that the core and center of the American Church is a liberalism just shyly domesticated from the alleged “ultra liberals” is preposterous, and steadily losing ground in parishes, seminaries, and places that matter to the spread of the faith.

    The center and core and locus, as reflected in this continuum of Popes now before us, including the Pius Popes and Paul the VI, and including VII, is, orthodoxy, all the way baby…Was not Evangelium Vitae, a brilliant encyclical in so many aspects, a beautifully representation of the beauty and prophetic wisdom of Humanae Vitae? Just one example of myriad. The coherence and order of the succession of these pontificates in their gifts to the Church is providential. The beige, domesticated American rendition of the ultra liberals, though predominating in some places, is not something that can sustain life in full.

  36. benedetta says:

    I am pleased that our Holy Father Pope Francis will be canonizing holy men Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II tomorrow, for our good, for the good of the whole universal Church, as we all need their intercession. The Church certainly is better off for the way they lived their vocations, and, faketivism like this CBS interview aside, the truth of the full Gospel will continue to be spread, in an intensely missionary spirit, and Catholics who embrace the truth as Pope Francis is conveying with love will always be enabled to live the joy of the Gospel. Just because CBS doesn’t broadcast that a great many are doing just that doesn’t mean it is not happening, right now, where you are.

  37. MikeD says:

    I disagree with this. The media will never give stop cultivating the Francis Mystique. He has become far too useful for them. Francis could start making statements along the lines of Gregory XVI, and the media would still use him as a cudgel to beat back anyone who would dare impede their agenda.

  38. Pelley interviewed Robert Mickens, an American journalist who covers the Vatican for The Tablet

    That sounds about as relevant as being Booze & Fags Correspondent for L’Osservatore Romano.

    Now there’s a job in which I could potentially excel. I’d even throw in a racing guide and football tips for no extra charge.

  39. jonvilas says:

    The author of the post writes:
    Currently, the media treat Francis like a rock star. … But this won’t last forever. Eventually, he will scold them and wag his finger at them in order to save their souls. And then he will become a pariah, and they will set out to destroy him. It’s just a matter of time.
    One little question, though, when will this happen? I am hearing about it for months already. :)

  40. cajuncath says:

    Traductora,

    I believe you are mistaken.

    There will always be committed traditional Catholics. And as long as there are such Catholics, Second Vatican will never be off the table and out of scope for critical discussion. In fact, the true discussion has only just begun.

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