His Holiness the Pope elected for our time and society has been trying to execute changes to structures within the Catholic Church, to deal with huge problems which he has inherited and still maintain the Doctrine and depth and beauty of the Church.
Again however, every attempt this Pope has made to clean the structures, beginning with Financials of the Church and including sexual abuse issue, and other issues that come within his ambit have been sabotaged by a very loud coterie of dissenters (including hierarchy, Cardinal/archbishops and laity) intent on holding him to ransom. Intending that they, not he, hold the Keys of Peter, sit on the Chair of Peter, and demand how “Peter” has to behave according to their agenda. Telling “Peter” what to do and how to do it.
Each and every of his very beautiful writings has been maligned. Every endeavour to bring this sanctifying creation (Church and Teachings) to all peoples including the poor and marginalised has been criticised and sabotaged.
Amoris Laetitia, Fratelli Tutti, the scandal of the so called “giving the Holy Eucharist to adulterers,” abusing the body of Christ, now seems to have subsided. However, a different cause emerged, that is, The Synod of the Amazon, a gathering of Church to try and effect some changes in that region. To pastor the people of that region, to bring the faith to those who have left the church because the church is not really there, but evangelicals are, and as deep within the human being there is imprinted a need for the divine, the holy, so when it isn’t present in the Church those with deep need for the Lord will go where there is a sign that their need will be met.
His Holiness has seen the need and enacted a possible method of satisfying that need.
The Holy Father has seen that the Amazon is the habitat of these people and has sought to protect the place not only for the people whose home and whose livelihood is made there but also for the health of the rainforest for the environment and hence society or humanity.
For his effort he has been publicly pilloried, abused, disrespected, defied, and even called “heretic” This again by a small cabal of self-appointed so-called defenders of the faith.
At a time when the Holy Father’s voice needs to be heard very loudly regarding, abortion, end of life, transgender, LGBTQ, deconstruction of the human person, his voice is being muffled by these so called “holy catholic” people.
The Church does need a culture change, it needs to be released for 16th century nooses and be present to 21st century humanity in a way that they can understand. Jesus is supposed to be the same past, present and future. He never changes but the language and manners, and ways of presenting and introducing him and his words and his ways and His life to the peoples change in order to be heard and understood by the culture of the time. The fundamentals (e.g., doctrine) never change but the development and understanding and delivery do.
The culture developed by a small group with access to all forms of media and social media is a culture of isolationism. A culture where they and they alone know dogmas and teachings of the church. Even His Holiness cannot match up to their depth of knowledge. That is according to them.
Too bad that their delivery of what they know and the souls that they influence is a delivery with malice for the one appointed and who governs in the spirit of Peter.
Too bad for their sin of calumny and detraction. Too bad about souls who have been lost because of the confusion created by this “parallel church” who is supposedly authentic whilst the mainstream One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church led by Peter is supposedly schismatic. The chair of Peter (according to them) empty, because His Holiness is the “false Prophet” as decreed by a Facebook and Instagram poster and her many many followers.
Yes His Holiness needs to attend to the sexual abuse problem within the Church and being a “labourer in this vineyard” I believe that maybe only this issue is not necessarily being handled as well as it could be. It’s being handled in such a manner as to never quite resolve the problem.
This problem of sexual abuse by clergy has a deeper reason why its occurring (still occurring in our day) and until this is understood, and sexual abuse itself be understood as an addiction and treated like an addiction it cannot be healed and stopped.
sexual abuse is a psychosexual developmental problem. An imprint issues. It has nothing to do with availability of more victims. It has to do with a psychological issue of the abuser. Had it been a breaking of the vow of celibacy, the attraction would have been a natural attraction towards a woman or maybe even an adult male but not sexual attraction to a child. So, the wounds within a perpetrator are what causes sexual abuse of children not a random child or children.
We know this because the largest % of abuse of children occurs within family or family friendships, or known persons. These are not celibate charisms.
I have said that I believe that it has not been handled well and I still stress that.
The Holy Father has been given a chalice with the fingerprint of “Judas” and has difficulty in effecting the “culture changes,” which the Church desperately needs done in order to be able to announce the Gospel to all nations, in their own language so that they can commune with one another and the Lord. They can begin to be evangelised and they understand the evangelisation and knowingly give assent to the words of Him who loves them, in their own cultures and ways and places where they are to be found.
It was He who created them as they are and he knows their hearts even if these hearts do not resemble the Judeo-Christian model of Jesus and Mary of the European artistic variety. Or modelled on the sanitised middle ages model of the modern infallible Catholics.
Anne Lastman
