Right out of the gate this year!
- ObamaCare (aka “Affordable” Care Act) will be repealed.
- Construction will begin on The Wall.
- Pres. Trump’s first international trip will be to Jerusalem.
- Pres. Trump will appoint two Justices to the Supreme Court.
- Pope Francis will not respond to the Dubia and will, in fact, double down.
- Card. Burke will emerge unscathed from the Knights of Malta controversy.
- Curial reform will still not make significant progress.
- The number of places in which Extraordinary Form (TLM) Masses are offered will continue to grow.
- Applications to seminaries will continue to drop.
- Fr. Z will still not be a Monsignor.
How did I do last year? HERE
1. Francis will still be Pope. [+1]
2. Pres. Obama will continue to trample on the US Constitution. [+1]
3. The Holy Year of Mercy will be under-observed. [+1]
4. Applications to seminaries will drop. [+1]
5. Donald Trump will be the GOP nominee. [+1]
6. Controversy will continue to surround the Synod of Bishops when
priesthood is discussed. [-1]
7. Curial reform will not make significant progress. [+1]
8. The number of places in which Extraordinary Form (TLM) Masses are
offered will continue to grow. [+1]
9. Former-Father Greg Reynolds will still be excommunicated. [+1]
10. Fr. Z will still not be a Monsignor. [+1]
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No prediction that Pope Francis will still be Pope? Or that he will resign/abdicate?
Father….don’t you think something Fatima-Garabandal-Akita-related is in the cards?! Say, around Easter?
We can pray that the will of God be done.
Didn’t Pope Francis abolish the monsignorate? [No. He didn’t.] That’s an easy one to pump up your stats. How about “Pope Francis will modify the rules governing the Cardinalate giving himself the authority to remove Cardinals without appeal. He will not use this authority (in 2017)” [He can already do that.]
He seems to have abolished it for those under 65. That’s the latest I’ve heard.
Happy New Year Father!
Forget the Monsignor, we are in need of a new Bishop for our Diocese!
[I’ll stick with mine.]
What’s particularly interesting about that point is a seeming connection with ex-priest Anthony Wilhelm (?)’s early 1980s error-ridden catechism. I read it ’cause I was a convert then and knew no better. Anyway that book basically pissed all over the concept of the monsignorate and anticipated its demise. I never thought I’d say this, but I think that that “catechism” is arguably a road map for this pontificate.
I have a feeling 2017 is going to be a very messy year for Holy Mother Church. Oremus…
I was going to point out that prediction #1 from 2016 did not appear in the predictions for 2017, but someone already beat me to it. Maybe that’s just an oversight by Fr. Z.
I’m not very good at the prediction business, but I’ll say this. It feels as though there is a very uneasy status quo that exists in the Church right now and I don’t see how it can last much longer. I just get the sense something big is going to happen (Conclave, married priests, female deacons).
No. 9 needs qualification. Traditional (rigid) seminaries will find increased applications.
I was wondering if you’d publish your predictions for this year as you were spot on last year.
1. ObamaCare (aka “Affordable” Care Act) will be repealed. [And suddenly the Democrats will say they were for “reform of the healthcare reform” from the beginning.]
2. Construction will begin on The Wall. [And Mexico will support it.]
3. Pres. Trump’s first international trip will be to Jerusalem. [And suddenly the Democrats will say they weren’t really in support of the UN resolution.]
4. Pres. Trump will appoint two Justices to the Supreme Court. [Despite the Democrats’ trying in vain to block the nominations.]
5. Pope Francis will not respond to the Dubia and will, in fact, double down. [And this will only further alienate faithful Catholics trying to live the faith and further divide the Church. Moreover, more bishops will begin to support the Dubia, especially when dioceses start dealing with the headaches caused by trying to implement Amoris Laetitia.]
6. Card. Burke will emerge unscathed from the Knights of Malta controversy. [But, his enemies will attempt to further minimize and discredit him, and he will heroically suffer for it.]
7. Curial reform will still not make significant progress. [Ironically, the bureaucracy Pope Francis says he wants to decrease will actually increase.]
8. The number of places in which Extraordinary Form (TLM) Masses are offered will continue to grow. [To the consternation of many bishops and curial officials.]
9. Applications to seminaries will continue to drop. [Sadly, this is true.]
10. Fr. Z will still not be a Monsignor. [It’s too bad that dioceses in the United States don’t have canons. Cannot a chapter of canons adopt special vesture privileges unique to its diocese? Under the new rules for monsignori, being a canon would be a much more colorful alternative. ]
Re. last year’s record of predictions, excellent record. As a result, I want to check on whether you have any predictions about the DJIA or S & P for this time next year.
In a more serious vein: I am willing to essay this 2017 prediction. If the fraternal correction indeed occurs in camera caritatis, it will not be long before it is followed by a formal, public correction. (If it doesn’t, it will have been a waste of time.)
Thomistica, Plastics! (movie reference)
10(b). Fr. Z will still HATE VATICAN TWO!
I predict Father Z will be named Auxiliary Bishop of Madison with the Tridentine communities under his care.
I also predict that Kim and Kanye will stay married ….
I have my doubts about the last part (double down) of #5. IMHO, the strong, formal opposition to AL (esp the dubia) stunned Francis. And it hasn’t come from people who think the Luminous Mysteries are heretical or the earth is flat. His reported remark that he might go down in history as someone who split the Church is significant. The reason for the flabby theology (i.e., fundamental option) of AL was to include more people–not to cause a split.
Robbie, ordained female deacons will not happen. Read what Pope Francis has said about the subject on multiple occasions.
Applications to seminaries *where* will drop? What is your evidence that the number of applications has dropped? In the U.S.? World-wide?
In the U.S., numbers right now are as high as they have been since 1990.
http://cara.georgetown.edu/frequently-requested-church-statistics/
Fr Z has triggered Nolo episcopari; he’ll be a bishop soon.
AL does appear to be deliberately ambiguous, not saying that the divorced and remarried may receive Holy Communion, but not saying that they can’t. When it was criticized, there really was little substantive defense. Perhaps it was intended to function like the deliberately ambiguous formulations that appeared during the Arian crisis, designed so that everyone could sign on, a bridge across the rift. But then in September the pope bombed his own bridge and told the Argentine bishops there is only one interpretation, the Kasperite. Ten days later, the Four Cardinals presented him with the five dubia.
Yes, something has to give. I hope bombcar is right and we have a Bishop Z. In which case, something will have given.
11. The SSPX will still not be regularized.
Dear Liam,
well, in 2015 I’d have said that the SSPX either will, or will not, be regularized in the following year. Turns out that the Holy Father, as it were, chose a middle path (the prolongation of ordinary faculties until further notice).
Grateful etc,
I have often thought (and taught) that much of post modern theology is similar to Semi-Arianism. And it is not limited to moral theology–it includes other branches, including Eucharistic theology.
There is, however, one difference. Those who opposed Eusebian Semi-Arianism didn’t refer to prior official documents. The four Cardinals who produced the dubia referenced Veritatis Splendor, Familiaris Consortio, and St Thomas.
Nice job on the Trump prediction. Except for one, I was drawn and quartered by my friends by not supporting Cruz. Though he was solid, he didn’t stand a chance against Hillary. The media would have succeeded in skewering him, whereas they failed miserable in doing the same to Trump.
Robtbrown,
I agree that the aberrations concerning marriage, the Eucharist, the historicity of Scripture, the moral order, the indefectibility of the Church, the meaning and form of the Mass, and so many other topics are fundamentally like Arianism or Semi-Arianism: they are an attack on the Incarnation. The Incarnation and the Holy Trinity are the irreducible doctrines of Christianity. Somewhere it is said that it was the Incarnation that elicited Satan’s Non serviam. He works to destroy all its fruits.
Modernism is not simply a collection of errors, it is the “heresy of all heresies,” denying not just some particular truth but the existence of any truth absolute and immutable. So everything becomes ambiguous, relative, changeable, and necessarily man-centered. It blocks the way between God and Man.
Satan’s goal is to cut off the sacred exchange between God and Man, sealed in the Incarnation and played out potentially in every human life, so that “we may become sharers in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity” (prayer for the mingling of water and wine). Perverting sexuality, the faculty by which we share in the very creative power of God, frustrates the formation of holy families, domestic churches, and robs children of the model of the Faith in the fidelity of their parents. Thus the sacred exchange and the power of the Incarnation are impeded and can be restored only by the abundant grace of God acting outside the normal course of healthy families.
Sr. Lucia of Fatima told Card. Caffarra that the final battle with Satan would be about marriage and family. It makes perfect sense. Having failed in the first great heresy of Arianism, he has carefully prepared the ultimate attack on the Incarnation by attacking its fruits in the Church, marriage and family.
Both the anti-Arians and the Four Cardinals drew on the authentic Tradition of the Church, in whatever form it was available. But Amoris laetitia ignores Veritatis splendor, omits the crucial sentence about continence from its quotation of Familiaris consortio, and misrepresents Thomas Aquinas, making him say about always forbidden acts what he actually says about acts whose morality can depend on circumstances..
Pope Francis will bless the wall LOL
Okay, he will bless the Vatican wall.
Grateful etc,
1. I don’t consider the problems to be aberrations. They are obfuscations, ambiguous words or phrases that fail to distinguish Truth from error.
Unapologetic Thomist that I am, I consider theology to have been finished by St Thomas. The theological errors of contemporary times are found in objections in the Summa. The problems I have with the theology of AL are, IMHO, to be found in the 12th century.
2. I consider the foundation of theological Modernism to be the denial of Revelation, that dogma is nothing else than various expressions of subjective religious instincts.
Thus, I don’t consider Modernism to be necessarily at the bottom of theological obfuscations. Ecumenism with Protestantism is, IMHO, is the basis. Germany is at the geographical center of Europe and is the economic fulcrum–it is the birthplace of Protestantism.
3. Once again, the anti-Arians at Nicaea didn’t draw on the Tradition of the Church–they established it. Before Nicaea there was agreement in the Church that Christ was Divine–the question was in specifics.
robtbrown, much of modern heresy is based on the fundamental error of continuing revelation. An example of this is the various misinterpretations of “Behold, I am doing a new thing,” which are used to justify involvement in homosexuality, etc.
There are several vacant Sees currently in the United States, and retirements pending. I am not the Papal Nuncio and I am not the Pope, but it’s possible that the Extraordinary Ordinary (Bishop Morlino) is being considered for another See (Cleveland, Indianapolis, Raleigh, Pensacola-Talahassee?) Hmmm…could Fr Z become Bishop Z in 2017 for the Diocese of Madison or the Diocese of Allentown?
My new Bishop arrives next month – I pray for him too.
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un-ionized says:
robtbrown, much of modern heresy is based on the fundamental error of continuing revelation. An example of this is the various misinterpretations of “Behold, I am doing a new thing,” which are used to justify involvement in homosexuality, etc.
In which case it is not Revelation but simply an expression of religious instincts according to the zeitgiest.