“The attacks against Pope Francis in the church today” are “a fight between those who want the church dreamed of by the Second Vatican Council and those who do not want this,” Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Jesuits, stated at the Foreign Press Association in Rome on Sept. 16.
Speaking to the press in Italian, he said, “There is no doubt, there is a political fight [going on] in the church today.” But, he added, “I am convinced that it is not only an attack against this pope. Francis is convinced of what he is doing, ever since he was elected pope. He will not change.” And his critics “know he will not change,” said Father Sosa, adding, “In reality, these [attacks] are a way to influence the election of the next pope.”
Father Sosa was responding to questions about attacks against Pope Francis from a minority of church leaders with the support of some corners of the Catholic media.
“Francis is not a young man,” Father Sosa said, “and, because of his age, his will not be the longest pontificate in history. They are aiming at the succession because they know that it takes a long time, more than 50 years, to really implement the Second Vatican Council.”
He explained that “in this fight there is an element that Pope Francis always mentions, which is clericalism, that is a way of understanding the exercise of power in the church.” He said, “Francis is fighting against clericalism and this exercise of power” and so “proposes a synodal church,” which encourages greater collegiality and participation in decision making.
His critics know Pope Francis "will not change,” said Father Sosa, adding, “In reality, these [attacks] are a way to influence the election of the next pope.”
“Pope Francis is a son of the Second Vatican Council,” Father Sosa told the international press. Indeed, he said, “as a responsible son of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis puts all his energy and capacity to incarnate it and to make a reality all that this event has dreamed for the church, and it seems to me that this is a great contribution to the church.” He explained that he believes the church shows “true reform” the “closer it comes to the design of the Second Vatican Council.”
He added that “just as happened over the past 50 years” so too today “there are those who are more favorable to the Second Vatican Council and those who are more resistant to it.” But, he commented, “50 years is not so much” in terms of implementing a council in the church.
Some have attacked the working document for the synod on the Amazon and alleged that there is heresy in that text. Father Sosa, the first Latin American to be elected as superior general of the Jesuits, noted that the same people who attacked the two synods on the family and the synod on young people are now attacking the Amazon synod.
He disagrees with them and said he believes the synodal process introduced by Pope Francis “creates unity.” He said he witnessed this at the synod on young people, and he is now seeing it also in the process of preparation for the synod on the Amazon region where he sees “great unity within Repam,” or Red Eclesial Panamazónica, the network of church leaders responsible for organizing the upcoming synod.
Asked about the pope’s decision to make three new Jesuit cardinals in the consistory on Oct. 5, Father Sosa said that Pope Francis consulted no one, not even the new cardinal-designates, but his choices sent “messages.” He said that the nomination of Michael Czerny, S.J., a man with experience in different continents, is a strong “affirmation” that migrants and refugees are a priority for this pontificate and the church today.
The pope’s decision to give the red hat to Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., archbishop of Luxembourg, who spent many years of his life in Japan until his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI, is an endorsement of the idea of the European unity, according to Father Sosa. He added that the pope’s decision to make the Lithuanian archbishop, Sigitas Tamkevičius, a cardinal reflected his recognition of the persecution of Christians in today’s world. The archbishop was arrested in 1983 and spent 10 years in the prison work camps of Perm and Mordovia.
Asked about the accord signed by the Holy See with China on the nomination of bishops, Father Sosa said the agreement is “very important” and offers a “serious hope” for the reconciliation of the church in China. It was not an “improvised” agreement, he said, but the result of a long process that started in the early years of the pontificate of John Paul II, was continued under Benedict XVI and was finalized under Francis.
He told journalists that just as Pope Paul III approved and confirmed the formula that St. Ignatius and his ten companions had “discerned” for the Society of Jesus, so too Pope Francis “confirmed” the four universal apostolic preferences which the Jesuits had discerned over some years as the way forward for the Society of Jesus at this moment in history.
Pope Francis some years ago had asked the religious orders in Rome to open their homes to migrants and refugees. Father Sosa confirmed that many Jesuit houses had done so. In Palermo and in Rome Jesuits have taken in 30 families, and they have added new capacity for migrants and refugees at the Jesuit-run Centro Astalli. At the Jesuit curia, they have opened a dormitory for those who have nowhere to sleep. Other religious orders have done the same.
Father Sosa told the press that the axis of Jesuit vocations has shifted from Europe to Latin America and Africa, with a big number also emerging in India. He expects the numbers to decrease from a total of about 15,000 Jesuits currently to 10,000 in 15 year’s-time, but noted that the average age would be much younger than it is today.
Question: What does it mean to support Vatican II? Oppose Vatican II?
Question: Did Vatican II say the Catholic Church is nothing special? No real reason to specifically belong to it? That’s my understanding. Why is my understanding wrong?
Is the photo above of two people sympathetic to communism?
Do you mean Mondragon/Land O' Lakes communism, Benedictine/Jesuit/Apostolic communism, the Chinese authoritarian shame culture (communism is simply a label for them) or the Soviet system (which no longer exist except for the Putin Oligarchy that the President would so like to join, if only he were not about to be forced out of the White House and into jail). Of course, there is the kind with Child Tax Credits (Milton Freidman's negative income tax) or Social Security, but don't touch my Medicare! Is there a type of Crypto-Communism I am missing?
We have lots of trolls on the America comments sections, Michael. I like your response to our resident misanthropic Cosgrove
Trolls just want to have fun
In two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of their Internet commenting styles. Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct underlying the measures. Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both enjoyment ratings and identity scores. Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated to sadism. Thus cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886914000324
Thank you for your positive Christian comments. When someone resorts to such denigrating ad hominems, you know you are correct. I have been making comments here for over 12 years mainly because I am a graduate of a Jesuit university and try to provide an alternative view point to modern Jesuits who by the way just admitted they support communism. Often I ask questions.
Cooperatives are not socialist organizations. Neither are religious orders. They are voluntary and not the government. You have just confirmed what many believe here. The Pope is sympathetic to a philosophy that has killed in large numbers. An economic professor once told us that socialism can only be successful as far as the eye can see. That’s why it works in small voluntary groups. The family also generally works that way too.
Socialism only worked one place in the history of mankind and was abandoned after one generation. That was Israel. If you want to know a major reason the left hates Israel this is it. Read Joshua Muravchik, Heaven on Earth amzn.to/33tTB5Y
My ex-wife's cousin is married to someone who lived on a kibbutz. We are all in our mid-50s, so no.
The Soviet Union died in 1991. As for cooperatives, my great-grandfather started the American version. He and my grandfather considered it an offshoot of apostolic communism. Mondragon copied him. For me, this is family history. Stalin was about industrialization from the top down. That is not socialism. The Marxist elevator speech is all Stalin knew, not the ins and outs of Marx and Engels. Read The Twighlight of Capitalism by Michael Harrington, especially if you have trouble sleeping. Also Socialism, it's past and future. You are right, of course. Francis and Sossa are communists. They both took a vow of poverty in their initiate in the Society of Jesus.
You may have issues with liberation theology. Much of LT is resistance to the corrosive effect of American economic policy and the CIA on Latin America. From their point of view, that is simply patriotism.
What is ironic about your comments is that cooperatives are free market capitalism at work and you don’t know it. Every organization operates on the basis of cooperation or else they die. It’s just what they agree to cooperate on.
What does that have to do with the article? Did you and I read the same article?
To oppose Vatican II is to oppose all of the documents emanating from it, on which the Council agreed, and voted in affirmation. To oppose those documents is to oppose Church teaching. Simple.
Communism has nothing to do with that simple fact or this article.
Not one person has answered my questions. You didn’t either. My guess is that no one knows what Vatican II means.
I brought up communism because the photo are of two people sympathetic to it and Vatican Ii had many elements but one was the Catholic Church was to engage more in the world and let the world in. Well communism killed more than a hundred million and here are two Catholic leaders sympathetic to that part of the world.
exactly!!!!!!! I proudly define myself as a ''Vat 2 Catholic'' ---no matter that prevailing winds. supporting it in every way that I can is ''the light of my life.''' it is definitely 'weird' the way that these comments have ended up focussed on communism.
To oppose Vatican II is to oppose all of the documents emanating from it, on which the Council agreed, and voted in affirmation. To oppose those documents is to oppose Church teaching. Simple.
Communism has nothing to do with that simple fact or this article.
There are two camps in the Church today, Those who support Vatican 1 and those who support Vatican 2.
There is no returning to the Church where social pressure brought people to Mass. Parents are usually 100 miles away and may be staying home too. There are no more small parishes where people know when you are not there.
The climate of fear in the Clergy fostered by Pio Nono and St. Pius, which had a brief reappearance under St. John Paul, is fading fast as the 5 Dubia generation dies off. This is a change in discipline, not doctrine. There is no more hiding from inventive theologians. The CDF is too busy cleaning up after bishops on sexual abuse. There is still more to do. A lot of priests who think they are heterosexuals making a sacrifice are odd duck asexuals who need to be taught social skills. First, they must be outed to themselves and their sexual histories investigated. Most are well integrated. Those that are not need extreme therapy before having altar servers.
The next Conclave, stocked with electors representing (finally) a global Church, will be one that Americans will be lucky to have their whimper heard, if that. Americans with their first world problems will be scorned at the next Conclave.
Jorge
You seem to enjoy the prospect that,as you put it, : “the Americans with their first world problems will be scorned at next conclave”. Perhaps you could explain why you seem to relish such a prospect ....?
America has more pathology than anywhere else and yet Americans think they've got it made. America is a very sick patient. Then there are the obvious: Pride, Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Greed...for starters. “America’s poverty is loneliness” - Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Among 11 countries, US ranks last for health outcomes, equity and quality
July 10th, 2018
The U.S. has spends more on healthcare than any high-income country, yet Americans have poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with other countries, according to a report from the The Commonwealth Fund.
For the study, The Commonwealth Fund assessed the healthcare systems of 11 countries, including the U.S., based on these five areas: care process, access, administrative efficiency, equity and healthcare outcomes. Data was collected using international surveys of public and physicians, from 2015-2017.
Here are the three things to know:
1. The U.S. ranked last place among the 11 countries for health outcomes, equity and quality, despite having the highest per capita health earnings.
2. The U.S. also had the highest rate of mortality amenable to healthcare, meaning more Americans die from poor care quality than any other country involved in the study.
3. Poor access to primary care in the U.S. has contributed to inadequate chronic disease prevention and management, delayed diagnoses and safety concerns, among other issues.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/among-11-countries-us-ranks-last-for-health-outcomes-equity-and-quality.html
Jorge
I now understand your political position.....but the question is why are you integrating that negative outlook with what you seem to hope will be the diminished standing of The American Catholic Church at the next Conclave? Why? What is the relevance ?
Stuart, pathology is omnipresent in America and hence Americans, be they low socioeconomic levels or the rich. I deal with both extremes in my career. I often sense that the poor I serve in my profession have physical maladies as a result of ignorance, poor decisions, broken history, poverty etc while the rich suffer from the Cardinal sins I already mentioned though mainly pride. Pope Francis took the name of St Francis. Think about that. St Francis would have been skewered today by the many “Catholics” skewering Pope Francis today. The great Mystics of the Church, Ignatius, John of the Cross, Teresa de Avila, all brought before the Inquisition multiple times. Do you see any irony in this given Pope Francis critics?
I am apolitical, contrary to your statement. I loathe the “dividir y conquistar” mindset run amok in US culture. There is neither conservative nor liberal, Republican nor Democrat, Vatican II Catholic nor Traditionalist Catholic in Christ. Thus anyone and indeed all of us can fall short of the grace of God, (humility is key right?) and hence American Catholic powerhouses thundering about how they will cherry pick the next Pope is well laughable and arrogant. Who ever the Holy Spirit chooses to be Pope, as Catholics believe, will be the Pope. Period. Americans have “worries” ( cf Luke 12:27) that are no where on the continuum of reality for global Catholics. When the conclave meets next year, in 5 years, in 15, the voting bloc of Cardinals will thankfully not be from Italy but from the universal Church and I find that refreshing. So should all Catholics. NB: the current crop of US Cardinals - not too encouraging.
Umm Jorge - the other countries you are comparing the U.S. to are Western first world countries not third world countries. America rates poorly compared to Western European Countries, Australia, New Zealand but much better still than any third world countries. Although you are correct, it is the U.S.'s greed and decision to let conservatives turn the word social program into a dirty word that has caused us to sink compared to our first world peers.
That may be because they are no more. Many American Catholics are weary of the sexism, LGBT bias, clergy abuse, etc. and many are leaving, especially women, continuously. The NONEs don't care who makes Pope next so that anti-western church you want so badly may find itself stressing to find ways to afford to keep running.
Liberation Theology is more a reaction to American imperialism in the interest of American businesses and consumers than a Marxist ideal.
I would have liked to have seen Wilton get a red hat, although usually it takes a bit to confer (although McCarrick and Wuerl got theirs early on). Dolan had to wait a minute too. That Chaput will retire without one makes up for my disappointment. The same for letting Burke's see lose the one he has aged out of (or soon will). God forbid Ray ever becoming pope.
What American imperialism? Latin America has been backward economically and socially from the beginning because of ideas brought from Spain and Portugal. It was essentially closed to the world till the early 1800’s. American influence has been minimal. Maybe what Liberation Theology is about is jealousy, a reaction to an obviously much more prosperous part of the world.
Quite a bit of desperate sounding defenses of Pope Francis coming from his team lately.
More joining him in pity for the Red Hatters.
Arturo Sosa S.J. is the Liberation Priest who supported Hugo Chavez’s attempted coup d'etat in Venezuela; who convinced the government to free Chavez from prison; who supported his election as President and his imposition of revolutionary socialism. But yes after Chavez’s death Father Sosa disavowed Chavez as a dictator ...but alas Venezuela had already been reduced to ashes .
This is the same Father Sosa who is famed for writing a tract calling for “The Marxist Mediation Of Christianity”!
Look closely at Venezuela ....it has gone from the richest and most prosperous Country in Latin America to one where millions are fleeing for freedom and simple food!
I do not doubt Fr Sosa’s good intent but I do doubt his judgement and his self presumed ability to formulate and advocate economic and political policies to achieve social justice.
The fight is not over the social justice goals espoused by Vatican 11 ....it is over the right and most importantly the competence the Church’s leaders to propose and promulgate economic and political policies to implement Vatican11’s social justice goals. The applied results of such an approach in Latin America have been uniformly disastrous ranging from Cuba and Nicaragua to Venezuela: nothing but increased poverty and total loss of political freedom!
Denis Prager had an artilce last week on how good intentions lead to evil. http://bit.ly/2kN0Nc5 .
He specifically mentions communism and how good intentions led to the killing of millions. What's missing is wisdom to know how the world works or what are the rules of life.
Mr. Cosgrove, your link perhaps says, "let the oligarchy extract all money out of the economy, otherwise, you are a communist."
You got to be kidding. No one could possibly come to that conclusion from what is written. Are you making things up and depending on others not reading?
No, he's NOT making things up; all of the Europe that is, at least, culturally Catholic (which is most of it), benefits from the social justice encyclicals of the modern popes, who, from Leo XIII onwards, up to and including St. John Paul II, were very clear that unregulated capitalism and denial of workers' fundamental rights to negotiate their working conditions (which are rightfully called, especially by French economists like Thomas Picketty, the "Anglo-American Model" of capitalism) lead to oligarchy, and, eventually to economic chaos (and, possibly, to violent revolution, as John F. Kennedy suggested when he said that a good welfare system is capitalism's "safety net"). What we have in the United States, and, to a lesser degree, in Britain) is a perversion of what Adam Smith wrote about, since he believed in regulation by the "enlightened despots" of his Eighteenth Century. The form of capitalism practised by English-speaking nations is really heavily influenced by Protestantism--and, particularly, Calvinism--because, in radical Protestant theology--the kind most Fundamentalist Americans practise--attempts to create a more just society are held to be blasphemous, because wholesale acceptance of man's "fallen nature" is considered to be the most essential trait of Christian piety. This is a by-product of "salvation by faith alone" heresy.
Yes, he is making it up and so are you. What you are saying is incoherent and nonsense. What changed in England was the average person became free and could benefit from their efforts. Most were of the Church of England. Nothing to do with Calvin or any specific Protestant doctrine. The best example of this is Pennsylvania where 80,000 German immigrants in the 1700's were able to prosper along with the others living there.
Cosgrove, you are extremely ignorant: much of Anglicanism's theology has been, ever since the "reforms" of Cranmer, heavily influenced by Calvinism.
Ask yourself why did the modern world start in England in the 1600’s. It was due to religious wars among Protestants. Why didn’t it start some place else? The reason is it had nothing to do with religion. But religious wars led to freedom as parliament and the king fought for power. The winner was the people.
I would refrain from calling someone else ignorant when it is obvious you are getting things wrong.
There are very few historians who believe that capitalism's rise--in its most socially Darwinist manifestation, peculiar to English-speaking societies--isn't associated with the "Puritan ethic," which is a direct product of the highest theological form of Protestant Biblical Fundamentalism, i.e. Calvinism. You may know a lot about economics, but you apparently know very little of the "history of ideas," or about theology.
No, you keep getting it wrong. It was freedom not any religious doctrine. The religious wars in England were amongst Protestants but the effect was to take the power away from the king and place more with parliament. This struggle for power led slowly to freedom for the average person. This allowed some who were common men to innovate and then accumulate the benefits of their efforts. As I said the best example is Pennsylvania founded for Quakers but who allowed anyone in including poor Catholics. some of whom became rich.
It was not religion, hard work, science, or the accumulation of capital that changed the world. It was that the average person, the bottom 98%, could now achieve prosperity through their own efforts. And many did. This is what led to the some 70 times increase in worldly wealth after centuries of essentially no growth. Now hard work, capital and science helped but they were there before. And it didn't happen because of any specific change in religious belief but where religious beliefs became irrelevant.
You are very much obsessed with material wealth and accumulation of "goods and services." Many folks who are spiritually minded--even more than I am--people like Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and even Evelyn Waugh (at the end of his life) --are persuaded that much that is important in human life has been utterly lost, with the cultural victories of radical Protestant "individualism" and the "infallible hand" of "the market." People such as I (and, interestingly enough, some of your most "conservative" pontiffs) feel that God did not intend man to live this way, and that the society formed around "Anglo-American" capitalistic values is like a pack of lemmings heading for the environmental and cultural abyss.
You are making personal accusations which you do not know are even close to true. I would suggest you refrain from it. If you want to suggest that the increase in wealth and health/longevity in the world came with some negatives then that is a different argument. No one has offered an alternative that produces anything close to the current standard of living let alone one that doesn't have even worse consequences. Life prior to the early 1800's was poor, nasty, brutish and short. The Industrial Revolution for good or bad ended that.
The philosophy of the Church for about 1500 years was called the "Great Chain of Being." It essentially oppressed about 98% of Christendom. The rest of the world was no better as governance was by dictators with some favored cronies no matter where you would look. No one argued for individual freedom and the results were very negative except for those who were at the very top including those in the Church. Is that what you want to go back to?
If it brought greater numbers of people closer to Christ, yes--absolutely!
Robert
Well those conditions had multi millions more crying out and praying in desperation for relief from their abject condition......those conditions drove people to prayer as a last resort from their short brutish conditions...is that being closer to Christ?
You realize you just endorsed slavery or its equivalent, involuntary servitude.
Again, the most craven, benighted ignorance: the Christian societies of the Middle Ages may have had peasants, but they never had "slaves"--not even the serfs of the later Tsarist regimes.
Depending upon your age, you may very well live to see an apocalyptic environmental collapse of a consumerist society, which, as it spreads like cancer over the whole planet, devouring the rain forests, polluting the rivers and seas, ethnically cleansing the indigenous, proves that the radical individualism of Enlightenment anthropology, which is the source of its capitalist economic theory, is actually the extinction phase of human life.
Thank you about being so honest about what you believe. I suggest you find out what life was like for the peasants of the world till the mid 1800’s. There are sources.
Robert
I suggest you lay aside your your academic preening and certitude about what “serfdom” meant/constituted in Tsarist Russia both before and after Peter the Great. Do a bit more research before attributing “benighted ignorance” to others. The fact that Russian serfs could not be sold separately but only with the land the worked on is not what one would call a significant differentiating factor in determining whether they were or were not slaves.
Sorry, but I'm quite sure I know a great deal about the differences among "slaves," "serfs" and "peasants," and that my distinctions are absolutely correct. And I love the way you call scholarship "academic preening." Your right-wing debating ploy is not so clever as you think.
Robert
Since you know a great deal about those topics then I am quite sure you understand that the distinctions you draw between the conditions imposed on peasants ,serfs and slaves ignores the basic fact that all are uniformly one of subjection to the will and direction of others.
Your self proclaimed “scholarship” is a more than adequate demonstration of your “ academic preening”
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