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| Five Challengers Pope Francis Now Faces
By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
January 26, 2015
http://christiancatholicism.com/five-challengers-pope-francis-now-faces/
Five groups listed below, and likely others, are now confronting Pope Francis with immediate and serious challenges. He must meet them all or he will fail to save the leadership of the Catholic Church. He evidently has made protecting Catholic bishops his top priority. Personally, I think Francis will fail to meet all the key challenges, which overall will be “gospel” — good news. The Church’s leadership has failed miserably and do not deserve to be saved.
Pope Francis, now in his 79th year, is running out of time. The pope has made insufficient progress in almost two years, despite considerable efforts. He, however, is confronting 21st Century challenges with a 19th Century strategy. For my fuller analysis of Pope Francis’ currently misguided strategies, please see my “Pope Francis Is Still Failing Too Many Abused & Abandoned Children, No??”
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The five top challengers Pope Francis faces are:
(1) Truth Tellers Using 24/7 Media & the Internet,
(2) Modern Women,
(3) Defenseless Children,
(4) Democratic Politicians, and
(5) Religious Competitors.
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Truth Tellers Using 24/7 Media & the Internet: If on any day one just “googles” Pope Francis’ name, the stories challenging the Vatican’s Opus Dei influenced and well funded spin efforts are numerous and increasing. For example, see recently “Be Fruitful, Not Bananas: Pope Francis, Birth Control and American Catholics“, here, [The New York Times],
and “Pope Francis Is A U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Public Relations Creation” here, [Politics USA]
and “Beware of the two faces of Pope Francis: he ain’t no liberal” here, [Telegraph]
and “Vatican foiled over bid to hide Swiss bank data” here,
[thelocal.ch]
and “Clergy Misconduct among Priests in the Philippines: Key Cases” here,
[bishop-accountability.org]
And the challenges are also growing out of renewed interest in the works of long time prophetic truth tellers, like Jesuit educated Fr. Hans Kung here,
[huffingtonpost.com]
and Jesuit educated Fr. Richard McBrien here [National Catholic Reporter]
Please also click on to my above related detailed analysis and supporting links and here at Pope, M.L. King & a Dream About Street Children , at The Crisis Pope Francis Faces and at The Likely Decline in Pope Francis’ Public Image .
Modern Women: Catholic women are increasingly objecting to celibate men telling them how many babies to have. and generally to being treated as second class citizens. Please click on to my above related detailed analysis and supporting links and at, Francis’ Breeding Policy Fails Kids, Women & Gay and at The End of Vatican Scandals in 2015?
Defenseless Children: The world is fed up with the Vatican’s inability, if not refusal, to curtail effectively and promptly priest child abuse and bishops who protect predatory priests. Please click on to my above related detailed analysis and supporting links and at Pope Cools Down Abuse Team – NO Tom Doyle .
Democratic Politicians: Leaders of democracies are under great pressure to investigate Vatican crimes and to curtail Vatican gratuitous disrespect for priest sexual abuse survivors, gay folks, divorced couples and other victims of misguided Vatican crusades. As Pope Francis’ early popularity declines further, as is already happening, these politicians will likely move on the Vatican, as is occurring now in Australia. Please click on to my above related detailed analysis and supporting links and to Obama’s Nuns Win, But He Faces Vatican Flak , to Francis’ Synod, Wall Street, NCR, Crux, Nuns & Kids and to Hillary Clinton vs. Pope Francis in 2015 ?
Religious Competitors: Pentecostal, Protestant and Orthodox religious leaders, and even Muslims and Mormon leaders, are increasingly thwarting Catholic expansion worldwide. Please click on to my above related detailed analysis and supporting links and to Pope’s Priority For Christmas 2014 ? Children or Clerics .
Moving Catholic Testimony: Some recent comments from an eighty year old lifelong Catholic, “Aleight”, to the recent National Catholic Reporter editorial: “We must get beyond the ‘Humanae Vitae’ impasse“, captured for me in a moving and effective way some of the dilemmas Pope Francis faces.
Aleight wrote: “I am an 80 year old widower, father of eight wonderful children, wounded veteran of the Humanae Vitae Wars. My late wife and I were Depression babies, grew up during WW2 and it’s aftermath, both of us from Irish Catholic families. We married in 1958 and my wife had two miscarriages in the first two years of our marriage.”
” After that we had five children in four and a half years and when the sixth one was born the oldest was not yet seven. In later years we had children in grammar school for twenty-eight straight years. In 1968 the Church was gifted with Humanae Vitae, about the same time that the Pill was beginning to be widely used. We considered using the Pill, and years ahead of Francis’s advice, we went to see a priest that we both knew and
had a lot of respect for.. When we told him what we wanted to talk to him about, he gave us this short answer–“I can’t talk about that ” How
helpful !”
“Over the following years we tried Natural Family Planning and also abstinence. Abstinence was easier than NFP. We found NFP anything but natural. Over a period of years we had two more children for a total of eight. We loved every one of them and we were
both proud of the fine adults that they grew up to be.”
“Through it all my wife never complained. She was a tough woman, known for her laughter but it was also said of her “She could kick-start a 747 “. We lost her nineteen years ago–after a nine year battle with breast
cancer.”
“And now for the present. We have Francis, who I greatly admire, the head of the Church, telling the world that we don’t have to breed like rabbits. Those of us who adhered to Humanae Vitae are being held up for ridicule by the head of the very organization that threatened us with eternal damnation if we did not adhere to their lnfallible dictates.”
“The saddest part is that we believed them. When all is said and done I guess that I should be angry,but I am not. I have no anger. I am just totally disillusioned.”
Another NCR commenter, “Lip Balm” replied to “Aleight”: Your wife sounds like one tough cookie with a great sense of humor. I am sorry to hear of your tremendous loss. Disillusion is what several of my Catholic friends who are mothers of many are feeling and talking about this week. Most have had at least one or two (if not more) NFP “surprises,” often in far less than ideal circumstances and sometimes under the circumstance of serious health problems and/or grave financial difficulty. Up till now, at least they felt the Church had their back. Now, not so much. “I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t” said my very good friend who just had #9, very much a surprise and at a very stressful period of their lives.”
“I have known more than one couple who found total abstinence so much less stressful than NFP (especially for those couples who have already experienced several NFP failures) that they opted for that as their form of birth control instead. But not a single one of those couples felt that abstinence was good for their marriage or their family life.
“If the Church is going to start calling women irresponsible for having children in a bad spot, then the Church needs to explain to those women just what they should do when NFP turns out not to be very effective for them, abstinence is destroying the marriage and family, and all their praying, rosary-saying, and reception of the sacraments isn’t working to make the situation any more livable.”
Aleight responded to Lip Balm: “Lip Balm, thanks for your support. You are right, my wife was a tough cookie.When she was diagnosed with cancer people told her that she should go to Lourdes. She told them “If God wants to cure me He can do it right here in Burlingame”
“For me the battle has come and gone but I feel sorry for the people in this generation that have to deal with it.There is one thing that gives me hope,and that is the fact that, unlike my generation, most young people today are not afraid of the Church. We were brought up with a lot of fear.”
“As I said earlier, I am very proud of our children but I have to say that out of the eight only one of them still goes to church. I don’t think that they are particularly upset with the church. It is just not part of their lives. It is going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. “
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