Will conservatives turn on Pope Francis?
ROME – As the Synod of Bishops continues to produce drama, coming today in a surprise decision to release frank internal reports of its debates, one big-picture question captured by the event seems to be coming into clear focus.
Here it is in a nutshell: Is a tipping point drawing close, when conservatives who have been inclined to give Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt will, instead, turn on him?
Granted, labels such as “liberal” and “conservative” often conceal as much as they reveal, especially when applied to the Church. That said, they capture something at a big-picture level, and the fault line between left and right has seemed especially clear over the past two weeks.
Well before the Oct. 5-19 Synod of Bishops on the family, there was a small but vocal wing of traditionalist Catholic opinion fiercely critical of the pope.
In February, Italian Catholic writer and historian Roberto de Mattei posted a piece on the website of his Lepanto foundation asserting that developments since the election of Francis, including his famous “Who am I to judge?” sound bite about gays, risk “a road that leads to schism and heresy.”
Another Italian writer, Antonio Socci, has a new book out titled “It’s not Francis: The Church in a Great Storm,” basically implying that the resignation of Benedict XVI was invalid and that Francis isn’t really the pope.
Most mainstream conservatives, however, have argued that media hype, or perhaps unintentional ambiguity on the part of the pope himself, has been to blame for mistaken impressions that he’s engineering a radical overhaul.
In recent days, however, some of those voices have taken on a harder edge.
We’ve seen a Paraguayan bishop post the following on his personal blog: “Insidethe Church, and recently from some of its highest circles, new winds blow that aren’t from the Holy Spirit,” referring to what’s happening at the synod.
Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano, formerly of the diocese of Ciudad del Este, said, “The situation is very grave and I’m not the first to notice that, regretfully, we’re facing the danger of a great schism.”
Livieres, who belongs to the Catholic organization Opus Dei, also accused retired German Cardinal Walter Kasper and the Jesuit-edited magazine Civilità Cattolica, which ran a celebrated interview with Francis early in his papacy, of being “the active propellers that lead this confusion in Bergoglio’s church.”
LINK
