Recently, Michael Sean Winters warned that the Francis-haters want schism<\/a>:<\/p>\n Last week, a friend called my attention to a\u00a0website called \u201cFaithful Shepherds\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that was launched a year ago by LifeSiteNews. They state that their purpose is to provide a \u201cone-stop database\u201d about where Catholic bishops stand on certain issues and to \u201cencourage bishops to be faithful to Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n The website considers a range of issues, including homosexuality and liturgy: \u201cDoes your bishop encourage Communion on the tongue while kneeling?\u201d is one of the questions posed. I was glad to see that they properly labeled one category \u201cabortion politics,\u201d although they failed to see that certainty about politics is different from certainty about morality. The weirdest item on the list is Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan\u00f2\u2019s testimony about which they ask \u201cHas the bishop supported an investigation into\u00a0Vigan\u00f2\u2019s claims? Does the bishop say his allegations are driven by ideology or are an attack on Pope Franics [sic]? Has the bishop said Vigan\u00f2 is a man of integrity?\u201d It is odd, is it not, that fidelity to Vigan\u00f2 has become such a calling card among these schismatics. His screeds are so obviously a combination of score settling, innuendo and simple smearing \u2014 if you knew nothing about Vigan\u00f2 and nothing about the people he names and only read the texts as they are, you would be suspicious of the author.<\/p>\n When you find out where your bishop stands on these issues, you can click on a button to send him a postcard, thanking him for supporting the positions LifeSiteNews endorses or asking him to abandon his wayward ways. First, you are invited to make a donation of $5 or more, and then alerted that your credit card will be charged $2 for the postcard. You can also \u201cdo-it-yourself,\u201d as they provide an email address and phone number for each prelate as well.<\/p>\n \u201cFor too long, lay Catholics have been without an authoritative accountability tool for U.S. bishops, especially those who deviate from the Church\u2019s magisterium,\u201d they write. Seeing as Francis is now the embodiment of the church\u2019s magisterium, the fact that they applaud bishops who have criticized\u00a0Amoris Laetitia<\/em>\u00a0and denounce those who have supported it is a bit rich.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You may be wondering how it is that Liesite News is \u201cauthoritative\u201d as it makes open war on the Holy Father and the Magisterium.\u00a0 Me too.\u00a0 Where Peter Is<\/em> has, thankfully, done the unpleasant job of wading through this dimestore Inquisition so you don\u2019t have to.<\/a>\u00a0 Meanwhile, Michael Lewis (also at Where Peter Is<\/em>) comments on the spectacle of the Right Wing assault on the Church<\/a>:<\/p>\n In many quarters of what has been described as the Church\u2019s \u201csanity caucus,\u201d Catholic leaders believe that the most effective way to address anti-papal extremism is to ignore it, and to avoid \u201cgiving them a platform.\u201d Unfortunately (and Winters now agrees), they have built prominent platforms for themselves. Thanks to well-funded publishing operations and media outlets, as well as the cooperation (if not open support) of\u00a0accommodating<\/a>bishops<\/a>, more and more well-intentioned and ordinary Catholics have been sucked into the\u00a0anti-Francis Vortex<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those who are in public leadership of the Church and stand with Pope Francis must begin to address the dangerous narratives that have drawn in so many of the faithful. Those who have been consuming the onslaught of American Catholic media against the pope\u2013without ever hearing the other side of the story\u2013are not to be entirely blamed. Many of these Catholics are devoted, well-meaning, and sincere. Additionally, I know many hardworking priests and religious who are too busy in their ministry and pastoral work to consume much of this media, but their friends and parishioners have forwarded Lifesite and\u00a0Crisis Magazine<\/em>\u00a0articles or Church Militant videos to them. After a while it has an effect.<\/p>\n Due to the lack of an effective response to this propaganda, we\u2019ve reached a point where some of them can\u2019t even conceive of a faithful Catholic enthusiastically loving and supporting Pope Francis. To them, we\u2019re all modernist liberals who want to take down the Church. This isn\u2019t because they\u2019ve actually read Francis\u2019s documents or balanced opposing views. It\u2019s because they\u2019ve been pulled into an ideological mindset, and are largely unaware that there\u2019s even another side to the story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In addition, Massimo Faggioli take a look at the historical roots of neo-Trad dissent (read the whole thing<\/a>) and remarks:<\/p>\n If Lefebvre\u2019s movement cannot be understood outside the context of French Catholicism, the French Revolution, and\u00a0la\u00efcit\u00e9<\/em>, the U.S. neo-traditionalist movement is incomprehensible outside the history of the American culture wars. A growing media ecosystem of cable TV outlets, internet channels, and bloggers acting as self-appointed watchdogs has helped nurture the movement, while acting in almost guerilla fashion against Pope Francis.\u00a0For example<\/a>, EWTN<\/a>, the only major national Catholic television outlet in the United States (which also has global reach) has a joint publishing venture with\u00a0Sophia Institute Press<\/a>, which recently released a book titled\u00a0Infiltration<\/em>. It not only\u00a0promotes anti-Francis conspiracy theories<\/a>\u00a0but also pushes sedevacantism much farther, accusing Pius XII of being under the influence of theological modernism. This kind of stuff has flourished since the 2013 resignation of Benedict, whose continued residency in the Vatican and periodic public signals on key issues affecting the church has had the effect of creating a kind of parallel magisterium\u2014giving further coverage to Catholics (including clergy and hierarchy) opposed to Francis.<\/p>\n Nearly twenty years passed between the foundation of the SSPX and the formal excommunication; it was more than ten years between Lefebvre\u2019s suspension\u00a0a divinis<\/em>\u00a0and the excommunication of 1988. By contrast, only three years have elapsed since a quartet of cardinals raised the\u00a0dubia<\/em>\u00a0against Pope Francis in September 2016. So, we\u2019re still in the middle of things, with no way of knowing what will transpire five or ten years from now. Formal separations in the Catholic communion do not occur overnight. But in a sense, the U.S. Catholic church is already fragmented, with parts of it further separated from the papacy of Francis, and some of those also separated from one another. There\u2019s another Synod coming up, this one on the pan-Amazon region. Might it provide the occasion for the rifts to widen more?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Last but not least is the commentary of the Holy Father himself, the white hot focus of all the hostility from the Most Wrong Demographic in the Church: self-appointed rich, white, conservative Catholic Christianists bent on destroying him and bending the Church to their will<\/a>:<\/p>\n In an informal exchange aboard the papal plane, Pope Francis told Nicolas Sen\u00e8ze that he is \u201chonored that the Americans attack me\u201d when the French Catholic journalist presented him with a copy of his book\u00a0How America Wants to Change the Pope<\/em>\u00a0(Comment L\u2019Am\u00e9rique veut changer de Pape<\/em>) on the flight from Rome to Maputo, Mozambique, on Sept. 4.<\/p>\n The book describes how a wealthy and often traditionalist sector of the American Catholic church\u2014both clerical and lay\u2014attacks Pope Francis and notes that it is already working, with projects such as the \u201cRed Hat Report<\/a>,\u201d to ensure that the cardinal elected pope at the next conclave is to its liking. It was clear from the context that Pope Francis was referring specifically to that sector of the U.S. church that is mentioned in the book and not to anyone else.<\/p>\n Mr. Sen\u00e8ze\u2019s book details the opposition to Pope Francis\u2014which\u00a0Sen\u00e8ze\u00a0says comes from \u201ca small minority\u201d\u2014including\u00a0Cardinal Raymond Burke<\/a>,\u00a0Archbishop Charles Chaput and Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan\u00f2<\/a>\u00a0(the former papal nuncio to the United States), as well as from wealthy lay people like\u00a0Tim Busch<\/a>\u00a0and some U.S. Catholic authors like\u00a0George Weigel,<\/a>together with a sector of the U.S. Catholic media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My question, which nobody has ever been able to answer, is this: Aside from endlessly bitching, obsessing over liturgical minutiae, being wrong about war, wrong about torture, wrong about economics, wrong about the least of these, wrong about gun violence, wrong about capital punishment, wrong about support for the worst president in American history, wrong about crappy movies like \u201cGod Is Not Dead\u201d, wrong about climate change, wrong about science, wrong about geocentrism, wrong about Maciel, wrong about Corapi, wrong about abuse, wrong about the Council, wrong about anti-semitism, wrong about racism, and wrong about virtually everything else, what is it that gives the Most Wrong Demographic in the Church such unassailable and yet utterly unfounded and unearned confidence about their God-given right to save the Church from the Pope? How are they so unshakably certain they are not the manifest fools they continually charge the rest of us (and especially Francis) with being?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently, Michael Sean Winters warned that the Francis-haters want schism: Last week, a friend called my attention to a\u00a0website called \u201cFaithful Shepherds\u201d\u00a0that was launched a year ago by LifeSiteNews. They state that their purpose is to provide a \u201cone-stop database\u201d about where Catholic bishops stand on certain issues and to \u201cencourage bishops to be faithful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[669],"class_list":["post-113490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-reactionary-inquisitors"],"yoast_head":"\n