The election of Jorge Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was somewhat of a surprise, although it should not have been, because he seems to have been the runner-up in the last papal election,, coming in second after Ratzinger.
A few thoughts:
From all reports he is dedicated to the poor and leads a simple, austere life. He wants to seek out the most wounded and despised members of society. He is fiercely orthodox in his denunciations of abortion and gay marriage.
His record as Jesuit superior during Argentina’s dirty war has been questioned. Leftist terrorism in the1970s was designed to provoke a crack-down which would provoke a revolution. The leftists got the crackdown, but not the revolution, and the military executed 30,000 victims. Bergoglio remained publicly silent, although he seems to have helped some victims.
What can one infer about his character from this public silence? It is hard to say. He may have had trouble understanding what was going on and uncertain about how to proceed. I think one can say that he does not seek out confrontation, even when provoked.
What does all this mean for the church?
His embrace of the despised may include abusers and enablers of abusers in the Church; he just visited Cardinal Law.
He may ignore the Curia and concentrate on the horrendous problems of the Catholic poor. The typical Catholic, we forget, is a South American or African peasant. These people face starvation, oppression, disease, and grinding poverty. If he concentrates on these problems he will be praised, and he may ignore sexual abuse and the corruption in the Church administration that has enabled it, viewing it as a minor problem compared to what the poor are suffering throughout the world.
That may have been the intention of the Italian cardinals, who are happy with the way the Curia functions and thinks that all the fuss about sexual abuse is Anglo-American Puritanism.
Alton ,Great insight!
I was friends with Mother Teresa of St Anne’s House in Stillriver. I can assure you that the stories about Fr Feeney were twisted and retwisted in print.
Mother bacame a Catholic and a nun after WW2 She had been a military nurse and was around fifty I recall, when she heard Fr Feeney speak in Harvard Square. She told me the whole story first hand. How Joe Kennedy’s Jewish buisiness associates complained their university sons and daughters were converting to Catholicism after listening to Fr Feeney. They asked Joe to put a lid on him. So Joe contacted Cushing . Bobby even showed up at the st Benedict Study Center ( I believe that was the name in Harvard Square) and in a haughty and nasty tone said,” So your the priest who is telling my friends they are going to go to hell.” Feeney replied that he was telling them how to get to heaven and chastised Robert Kennedy for his arrogance. Cushing gave the false excommunication and when they went to Rome they discovered no papers were ever sent there. Cushing got Cook where he wound up and Cook was a good friend of Frannies as was Hoover. They hung out at the same cross dressing night clubs with Roy Cohn who later worked for a SMOM legal firm where Frannie got him a position. Mother told me that after she became a nun the Sisters would go to Boston and were spat upon in the street by the wives of Jewish businessmen. The Catholic institutions and hierarchy are and have been way too intertwined with politics .
http://catholicforum.fisheaters.com/index.php?topic=3439083.0
http://queerhistory.blogspot.com/2011/09/cardinal-francis-joseph-spellman.html
http://nypress.com/cardinal-spellmans-dark-legacy/
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/11/12/the-real-unexciting-life-of-roy/
Alton, Am I impressed with the robe swishing images of Sheen on EWTN’s replays? No!
Nor was I ever impressed with those who follow in his image like Corapi,Eutenauer ,Roberts,Groeschel et al!
Mary,
Ahh, the Kennedys, the Catholic lackeys of the northeastern establishment. Catholics, especially Irish ones, make good frontmen when the establishment wants to go after Catholics. The same with the Jews, who apparently have been the preferred tools of oligarchs for ages. The Cold War years of the 50s must’ve been something. I wouldn’t doubt members of the SMOM somehow mastered the art of being pro-Communist and anti-Communist at the same time, always with an eye for profits and geopolitics.
Our friends the Jesuits are masters of the left-right charade:
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1983/eirv10n18-19830510/eirv10n18-19830510_019-the_jesuits_on_both_sides_of_the.pdf
Alton . now one is the Pope!
I will read the link ,thanks!
There was a time when back issues of Fr. Feeney’s newsletter had been posted online by a modern-day follower. (I don’t remember the URL, so I can’t say whether the site still exists.) They contained some good stuff but also such things as rants against “Jewish chairs” – apparently he (or one of his writers) believed that Jews had taken over the chair industry and had (deliberately?) changed the design of chairs so that they were now uncomfortable to sit in.
Hey, here it is:
http://www.fatherfeeney.org/other/jews-art.html
I agree that modern art and architecture is mostly bad, but this article is just a fusillade of anti-Jewish invective. It also contains perhaps the telltale sign of a anti-Semite – when a particular enemy is not Jewish, say he is anyway! (Picasso being the pseudo-Jew in question in this particular case.)