All Pope Francis said was: Don’t execute gay people. FaithfulCatholics™ went nuts. (Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXXIII.)

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • February 3, 2023 • LGBT Issues; Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Fake Site News pro­motes Fr. Ger­ald Murray’s lat­est fit against the pope on Warmed Over With Ray­mond Arroyo. Mur­ray and Fake Site are huge pro­mot­ers of what they call “anti-sodomy laws.” They don’t say they want gays to be exe­cut­ed. They don’t say they don’t want gays to be exe­cut­ed. They don’t bring it up at all, as though it wasn’t the con­text of the pope’s remarks in his inter­view with the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. But it was the con­text. I con­fess I don’t know how you can neglect that con­text when dis­cussing the pope’s insis­tence that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is “not a crime.” But they don’t men­tion it. At best this is slop­py.

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Pope says gay sex not a crime; Phil Lawler confused again. Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXXII.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 29, 2023 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

“Anoth­er month, anoth­er papal inter­view, anoth­er spate of con­fu­sion,” Mr. Lawler writes at his usu­al plat­form, Catholic Cul­ture. There’s not a papal state­ment under the sun that doesn’t befud­dle him. Some peo­ple are addict­ed to anger, some to con­fu­sion. This time, the pope’s words were a mod­el of clar­i­ty. “It’s not a crime,” Fran­cis said (refer­ring to homo­sex­u­al acts). “Yes, but it’s a sin. Fine, but let’s first dis­tin­guish between a sin and a crime.” In fact, this is so sim­ple it’s banal. If I cheat on my wife with the next-door neigh­bor, I’ve com­mit­ted a sin. But no one’s going to arrest me for it. This every­day con­cept con­fus­es Mr. Lawler. Read his arti­cle; you will mar­vel, not at how con­fus­ing the pope is, but at how much effort Mr. Lawler makes to be con­fused.

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Pope St. Pius X vs. Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 26, 2022 • papacy; Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Crit­ics of Pope Fran­cis claim to love tra­di­tion while time and again tra­di­tion turns out to be utter­ly for­eign to them. And thus, in just the most recent exam­ple, the trad­dies decide that a Mar­i­an title from a Byzan­tine hymn that dates to before 1000 A.D. — well-known among East­ern Catholics and Ortho­dox Chris­tians — must be a ref­er­ence to Pachama­ma and proof of the here­sies of Pope Fran­cis. The irony is that gen­uine Catholic tra­di­tion also teach­es that the pope is pro­tect­ed by God from lead­ing the Church into error and that Catholics owe the pope reli­gious sub­mis­sion, not rebel­lion (or as demon con­sul­tant Tay­lor Mar­shall puts it, “rec­og­nize and resist”).

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Skojec’s tweets proof that Traditionalism ends in Modernism. Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, Vol. XXXI.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 23, 2021 • Papal Infallibility; Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Mr. Steve Sko­jec, for­mer­ly of One Luther Five, is no longer both­er­ing to hide his dis­sent from the dog­ma of papal infal­li­bil­i­ty. He’s not try­ing to nuance a dis­tinc­tion out between the rare occa­sions when an infal­li­ble state­ment is made and every­thing else a pope says. Any­one who tried to do that would need to explain why they wor­ry them­selves over what Pope Fran­cis says at all, since he’s not exer­cised that charism as far as I can tell. But Mr. Sko­jec has integri­ty, casts nuance to the winds, and says that the dog­ma itself is a sham. Let’s peer — briefly, for it is painful — into his Twit­ter feed

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Archbishop Chaput calls Pope Francis a pig. Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, Vol. XXX.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 23, 2021 • Media Personalities; Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Cha­put, writ­ing at First Things, is all wrought up by the thought that Pope Fran­cis has suround­ed him­self with toad­ies and there­fore can’t han­dle con­struc­tive crit­i­cism from his loy­al ser­vant Ray­mond Arroyo. He would impress upon our minds a “lit­tle wis­dom” from St. Bernard of Clair­vaux. Bernard wrote: “The most griev­ous dan­ger for any pope lies in the fact that, encom­passed as he is by flat­ter­ers, he nev­er hears the truth about his own per­son and ends by not wish­ing to hear it.” I sup­pose, though Cha­put does not men­tion a lit­tle wis­dom from St. Cather­ine of Siena.

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Pope “dashes hopes of gay Catholics.” Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome, Vol. XXIX.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 15, 2021 • LGBT Issues; Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Gay Catholics appar­ent­ly have a remark­able abil­i­ty to keep being shocked by what they’ve heard over and over, as though they’ve been cru­el­ly mis­led. “Every­one already knows,” we always hear, “that the Church is against abor­tion and gay sex.” I’ve had occa­sion to say these words myself to a cer­tain fac­tion of heavy-hand­ed Reminders. But arti­cles like today’s in the Wash­ing­ton Post make me sym­pa­thize with Catholics who spend their days and nights remind­ing. The pope says the Church can’t bless same-sex unions and gay Catholics wail that their “hopes” have been “dashed.”

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXVIII: A response to Steve Ray.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 17, 2020 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Steve Ray is a Bap­tist con­vert to Catholi­cism who likes to wear a bush hat and call him­self “Jerusalem Jones” because he’s gone on pil­grim­age to the Holy Land, by his count, “almost 200 times.” He leads tours. But he’s real­ly wor­ried that Pope Fran­cis is chang­ing the deposit of faith; and sad to say, such a wor­ry con­tains its own con­tra­dic­tion. (I’ll get there.) Back in the day, when he was a new­ly-mint­ed con­vert, Mr. Ray wrote a book enti­tled Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Pri­ma­cy of Rome. Con­verts seem always to be rush­ing out and writ­ing books in a fer­vor of hav­ing Found Truth.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXVII: Schismatic? No, no, no! It ain’t we, babe!

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 24, 2019 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Loy­al defend­ers of the Church Ray­mond Leo Burke & Athana­sius Schnei­der have anoth­er doc­u­ment out! The impar­tial Edward Pentin includes it in the text of his arti­cle today at the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter. The title of this one is “A clar­i­fi­ca­tion about the mean­ing of fideli­ty to the Supreme Pon­tiff.” The gist of this one is: Fideli­ty to the Supreme Pon­tiff does not mean you can’t call out his man­i­fest errors and here­sies. Paul cor­rect­ed Peter, don’t you know? Since I am not giv­en to polemics on this blog, I will go through the doc­u­ment point by point.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXVI. In which the EWTN schism infects a priest’s homily at Mass.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 17, 2019 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

One would think that the pur­pose of the homi­ly at Mass is to shed light upon the text of Scrip­ture. So here’s some­thing worth a real com­plaint: At EWTN’s dai­ly Mass on Mon­day, Fr. Matthew Mary read Christ’s prayer for his dis­ci­ples in John 17, and there­after had noth­ing to say aobut it; instead, he used the occa­sion of the homi­ly to pro­mote a fac­tion in the Church that pro­motes schism against Pope Fran­cis. So let’s be clear that that’s a scan­dal — an abuse of the sacred litur­gy; treat­ing it as an occa­sion to pro­mote dis­sent against the Holy Father.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXV: Athanasius contra Magisterium.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 1, 2019 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

The Vat­i­can is imple­ment­ing the Abu Dhabi state­ment, and the Faith­ful Catholic™ freak-out con­tin­ues apace, Athan­sius con­tra Mag­is­teri­um. “The spread of this doc­u­ment in its uncor­rect­ed form,” Fake Site writes, quot­ing ACM, “will ‘par­a­lyze the Church’s mis­sion ad gentes’ and ‘suf­fo­cate her burn­ing zeal to evan­ge­lize all men.’ ” ACM went on and said that if the pope does not cor­rect the “erro­neous affir­ma­tion on the diver­si­ty of reli­gions,” then “men in the Church not betray Jesus Christ as the only Sav­ior of mankind.” That’s wild.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XXIV: Cardinal Burke’s Rebel Yell

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 17, 2019 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Those Faith­ful­Catholics™ who have been swal­low­ing whole phar­ma­cies of red pills over Pope Fran­cis have a real prob­lem. They want to reject his Mag­is­teri­um, but deep down they know that’s not real­ly con­sis­tent with their chest-thump­ing insis­tence on their own faith­ful­ness. But if the con­clave was illic­it, if it broke the rules, if the pope’s not real­ly the pope, then we have a license to throw all that out. We can get rid of Evan­gelii Gaudi­um, we can get rid of Lauda­to Si, we can get rid of Amor­is Laeti­tia. And we can get rid of that pesky Bergoglio and call anoth­er con­clave.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XXIII: Cardinal Burke & four rebel bishops create parallel Magisterium.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • June 10, 2019 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

They’ve been in a com­pro­mised posi­tion for some time. But now Car­di­nal Burke; Arch­bish­op Athana­sius Schnei­der; and bish­ops Janis Pujats, Tomash Peta, and Jan Pawel Lenga have all signed a new cor­rec­tion of the Holy Father. (No doubt it’s fil­ial. These things always are.) The cor­rec­tion is titled “Dec­la­ra­tion of the truths relat­ing to some of the most com­mon errors in the life of the Church of our time.” So, you know: Wow. I think it’s a total dis­grace. Fake Site News and the For­mer­ly Catholic Reg­is­ter are, as you might expect, doing cart­wheels.

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God willed Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXII.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • May 19, 2019 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

There are two sens­es in which one may speak of “God’s will.” One may speak of God’s per­fect will — that is, what God specif­i­cal­ly ordains. For exam­ple, the fact that the pope has supreme teach­ing author­i­ty in the Church is God’s per­fect will. But one may also speak of God’s per­mis­sive will — that is, what God does not ordain but per­mits. The fact that some peo­ple would resist the pope’s teach­ing author­i­ty and there would be Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome is part of God’s will in this lat­ter sense. What­ev­er hap­pens is God’s will.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XXI: Lavender Mafia edition.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 30, 2018 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome

 

Over at The Fed­er­al­ist you will find a long and ram­bling arti­cle by Dr. Paul Rahe, his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Hills­dale who once upon a time taught at Yale. Dr. Rahe goes on — and on, for nigh on 2500 words — in an attempt to tie togeth­er a bunch of dis­parate events scat­tered over six­ty years. These, he tells us, prove that the sin­is­ter Laven­der Mafia “con­trols the papa­cy and the Vat­i­can over­all.” That is a large the­sis from such scat­ter­shot evi­dence. Would that I could refute it all in one blog post. But for now, I want to call your atten­tion to this one claim.

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Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome Vol. XX: Death Penalty Edition.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • August 5, 2018 • Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome; Pro-Life Issues

 

John Zmi­rak, who denies Catholic social teach­ing, is wor­ried that Pope Fran­cis is “fal­si­fy­ing Catholic teach­ing.” Ray­mond P.W. Arroyo can bare­ly hide his insin­u­a­tion and his calum­ny that Pope Francis’s change to the Cat­e­chism was some­how meant to dis­tract atten­tion from the sex abuse scan­dal (despite the pope hav­ing said the same thing last year). Then, the chron­i­cal­ly con­fused Phil Lawler decides that, because he is con­fused, “the [whole] world [must also be] full of con­fu­sion.” Steve Sko­jec, how­ev­er, is not con­fused. He’s cer­tain that the pope is a heretic. And if Sko­jec’s cer­tain, who dare ques­tion it?

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