Let’s be clear. There is an element among Francis’ most dedicated promoters, channel their inner Rex Mottram and declare nearly every syllable that he utters to be oracular and under the inspiration of the Spirit. Some of them form an inner core, like a New catholic Red Guards, a la the Cultural Revolution, ready to pounce on any deviation from their received message and according to their orders from their cadres.
One of best/worst examples of this came almost a year ago from NcRG member Fr Thomas Rosica of Salt and Light. Recently, Rosica has been embroiled in a plagiarism scandal, which has revealed quite a few examples.
Anyway, Rosica, in July 2018, wrote… and meant it… that Pope Francis
“breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants because he is ‘free from disordered attachments.’ Our Church has indeed entered a new phase: with the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture.”
Apart from it being highly weird, that was one of best/worst examples of sycophantic crawling you will find from that end of the spectrum. Truly exemplary.
And… it was plagiarized.
As a story at CNA notes, …
In April, it was discovered that one of Rosica’s most controversial publications, a July 2018 blog post, had been plagiarized from a 2014 blog post by by Richard Bennett, a former member of Dominican Order and an apparently laicized priest, who is now active in a fundamentalist Protestant organization which says it “places particular emphasis on the evangelization and conversion of Roman Catholics.”
What a source.
That same CNA story says that Rosica has resigned from Salt and Light.
I’ll turn on the comment moderation queue for this one.
Loading ...
Plagerized or not, the sentiment is just as terrifying!
Aside from the pope himself and his declarations, nothing has revealed more about the character of this papacy than the sorts of people he has appointed and closely associated himself with.
I’m trying to wrap my mind about this: he DEFENDED Pope Francis, and SUPPORTED His Holiness’ way of governing by quoting (accidentally?) a laicized priest who was, at the time, criticizing His Holiness and is now a lapsed Catholic?
Is that rather like quoting William Lloyd Garrison (accurately) to support the cause of continued slavery in America?
It’s sorta a “mobius strip” kind of action–epexegetical, almost :) :), where a thing is what it is about:
Where a priest makes a bizarre statement defending unorthodoxy from the pope (at best) or heresy (at worst), which could, if true, help destroy the Church…. which that same priest, a known plagiarist, stole from a heretical(?), laicized-priest who is seeking to destroy the Church.
Bingo: Circle complete in a never ending do loop.
Hasn’t it always been a Protestant calumny against the Church that she is ruled absolutely, arbitrarily and capriciously by the Pope? I guess the Rosica Claim implicitly refutes this.
Making this situation even more flabbergasting, when folks criticized Fr. Rosica about his dubious quote, he tweeted, “For those who have not read the full text & go about your daily work of condemning, maligning & distorting anything about @Pontifex, here’s the link to the full text: […] Then go to confession.”
I wonder what other leftist churchmen have gotten into the habit of plagiarizing. Google makes it easy for us to check for that sort of thing.
Thank you, Father, for posting this, as it cleared up something that bothered me for awhile.
I read that quote several times when it first came to light but could never understand why Father Rosica would state, “…with the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone…”
Regardless of which part of the conservative/liberal (for lack of a better term) spectrum one falls into, neither “liberal Catholics” nor “conservative Catholics” would use such language, as neither side believes in “the authority of Scripture alone.” That part of the quote just never made sense to me; now it does. They weren’t Father Rosica’s words to begin with.
The original quote can be found here:
https://ratherexposethem.blogspot.com/2014/04/ex-catholic-priest-richard-bennett-key.html
Is Rosica also going to resign as an english language liason for the Vatican Media Department?
Who in their right mind would want a liar and a fraud as their spokesperson (let alone our Holy Catholic Church?)
I don’t see what there is to be puzzled about: Fr. Rosica is, basically, an idiot. A useful idiot, most likely (at least at times, like doberman dogs are useful at times), but someone forgot to put an effective muzzle on him. So he reads this passage in a diatribe against the Catholic Church, recognizes in it something fairly close to true about Francis though not about the Church, and decides to trumpet it out loud, before his handler can yank his leash to keep him quiet about the truth. After Rosica is done barking and yapping, his handler does yank his leash – or at least his relationship with Salt and Light – but the damage is done, the truth leaked out: this is how libs view Francis.