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What destroys families, he has written, is an economic system that forces millions of poor families apart in their search for work.
A s well as tackling the old-school practitioners of Latin Mass, Francis started a wide-ranging offensive against the old guard inside the Vatican. All had been chosen for their energy, and for the fact that they had in the past been at loggerheads with the Vatican. It was a popular move everywhere outside Rome.
The curia, as the Vatican bureaucracy is known, grew more powerful, stagnant and corrupt. Very little action was taken against bishops who sheltered child-abusing priests. The Vatican bank was infamous for the services it offered to money-launderers. The process of making saints — something John Paul II had done at an unprecedented rate — had become an enormously expensive racket.
The finances of the Vatican itself were a horrendous mess. The putrid state of the curia was widely known, but never talked about in public. This Vatican-centric view neglects the world around us. The court is the leprosy of the papacy. I remember that from the 70s.
In December , Francis gave his traditional Christmas address to the curia, and he pulled no punches: These can only have come from disaffected elements in the Vatican, and are outward signs of a stubborn refusal to yield power or privilege to the reformers. T his battle, though, has been overshadowed, as have all the others, by the infighting over sexual morality. The struggle over divorce and remarriage centres on two facts. But so is the second fact: Catholics actually get divorced and remarried at about the same rate as the surrounding population, and when they do so, they see nothing unforgivable in their actions.
So the churches of the western world are full of divorced and remarried couples who take communion with everyone else, even though they and their priests know perfectly well it is not allowed. The rich and powerful have always exploited loopholes.
Pope John Paul I died suddenly in September , 33 days after his election. Following contradictory reports about the circumstances of his death and. Pope John Paul I died in September , only a have fostered several conspiracy theories.
When they want to shuck off a wife and remarry, a good lawyer will find some way to prove the first marriage was a mistake, not something entered into in the spirit the church demands, and so it can be wiped from the record — in the jargon, annulled. This applies especially to conservatives: Steve Bannon has managed to divorce all three of his wives, but perhaps the most scandalous contemporary example is that of Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican takeover of Congress in the s and has since reinvented himself as a Trump ally. Gingrich broke up with his first wife while she was being treated for cancer, and while married to his second wife had an eight-year affair with Callista Bisek, a devout Catholic, before marrying her in church.
The teaching on remarriage after divorce is not the only way Catholic sexual teaching denies reality as laypeople experience it, but it is the most damaging. The ban on artificial contraception is ignored by everyone wherever it is legal. The hostility to gay people is undermined by the generally acknowledged fact that a large proportion of the priesthood in the west is gay, and some of them are well-adjusted celibates.
The rejection of abortion is not an issue where abortion is legal, and is in any case not particular to the Catholic church. In and , Francis convened two large conferences or synods of bishops from all around the world to discuss all this. He knew he could not move without broad agreement. He kept silent himself, and encouraged the bishops to wrangle. But it was soon apparent that he favoured a considerable loosening of the discipline around communion after remarriage.
Since this is what goes on in practice anyway, it is difficult for an outsider to understand the passions it arouses. I know lots of homosexuals who are doing all sorts of things that are wrong, but they know they should not be. With this mindset, the fact that the world rejects your teaching merely proves how right it is. F or Francis and his supporters, all this is irrelevant. The church, says Francis, should be a hospital, or a first-aid station. They need to recover and to piece their lives together again.
The church should stand beside them, and show mercy.
Church attendance plummeted in the western world , as it did in other denominations. That is a question that will not be answered in his lifetime. This archbishop wants Pope Francis to resign. There are other cases of Francis ignoring gross allegations about his allies. Most of the accused priests are now dead. T his battle, though, has been overshadowed, as have all the others, by the infighting over sexual morality.
At the first synod of the bishops in , this was still a minority view. A liberal document was prepared, but rejected by a majority. A year later, the conservatives were in a clear minority, but a very determined one.
Francis himself wrote a summary of the deliberations in The Joy of Love. It is a long, reflective and carefully ambiguous document. The dynamite is buried in footnote of chapter eight, and has taken on immense importance in the subsequent convulsions. The footnote appends a passage worth quoting both for what it says and how it says it. What it says is clear: Even the footnote, which says that such couples may receive communion if they have confessed their sins, approaches the matter with circumspection: It is this tiny passage that has united all the other rebellions against his authority.
No one has consulted laypeople to find out what they think about it, and in any case their opinions are of no interest to the introvert party. But among the bishops, between a quarter and a third are passively resisting the change, and a small minority are doing so actively. Sacked first from his position on the Vatican court, and then from the liturgy commission, he ended up on the supervisory board of the Knights of Malta — a charitable body run by the old Catholic aristocracies of Europe.
In Autumn , he sacked the head of the order for supposedly allowing nuns to distribute condoms in Burma. This is something that nuns do quite widely in the developing world to protect vulnerable women. The man who had been sacked appealed to the pope. Meanwhile, Burke had opened a new front, which came as close as he could to accusing the pope of heresy. Along with three other cardinals, two of whom have since died, Burke produced a list of four questions designed to establish whether or not Amoris Laetitia contravened previous teaching.
These were sent as a formal letter to Francis, who ignored it.
Of course, Amoris Laetitia does represent a break with previous teaching. It is an example of the church learning from experience. Please try again later. Charlottekrn Bookfair Top Contributor: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Weinstein is the author of five novels. Benjamin and Ester Catalan return in the sequel, having escaped the Inquisition in Spain, and are helped to reach Florence by the Moors, who war with Spain.
The richly described novel offers detail into the daily life and culture in Florence. The story portrays accurate events in the lives of Lorenzo and Giuliano, and their mother, Lucrezia. The plot to kill the Medici brothers unfolds in layers then quickly becomes the centerpiece of the novel.
Weinstein presents the delicate balance of powers between the five city states and offers an interesting mix of both real and fictitious characters. The author peppers the plot with religious debate between the Jewish, Ester Catalan and Pico della Mirandola, a young Christian scholar. Lorenzo de Medici, as in the novel, attended meetings of the Plato Academy, founded by his father, Cosimo de Medici.
The printing presses in Florence, operated as described in the book. One person found this helpful. If your Italian Renaissance history is vague, if you sometimes confuse the Borgias and the Medicis as I did, this is a historical novel for you. It will be very apparent that the research is thorough. What makes this history such a pleasure to learn is the writing. Weinstein's ability to spin a tale that endears the good guys, makes you loathe the bad guys, and leaves you gripped by the tension between them, is extraordinary. A great sequel to "The Heretic".
It invokes the struggles the Jewish people faced, but also the de Medici Catholic family who embraced and helped them thru their trials and tribulations.
Weinstein's research into the true history of people and places in that time period add tremendously to this wonderful read. Whether one enjoys a history lesson or simply wishes a great read Lew Weinstein satisfies all readers with this second in a series thriller. Apart from inserting a fictional family, the historical references are accurate and illuminating. Language reads easily but allows seeming visualization of the scene and times. Can't wait for the third in the series. I especially enjoy historical novels if there is a compelling story, and Lew, who I happen to know, does an excellent job on both fronts--and it takes place in Italy.
Weinstein has continued the saga of the Catalan family and intertwined the politics of Renaissance Italy with their plight. This is an excellent read with a great cast of characters, both historical and fictional. Highly recommended for history buffs and anyone who likes a real good story. If u love historical fiction u will love this book! Interesting story and characters.
In his book The Godmother: Madre Pascalina , [26] Fr. Charles Murr notes the coincidence that Pope John Paul I had attempted to discipline Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio , who appointed many "liberal" bishops including, later, the sex abuser Theodore McCarrick , and that Cdl. Baggio was the last person to have seen Pope John Paul I alive.
Malachi Martin 's book Vatican: A Novel [28] is a novel based on recent papal history. Although officially a work of fiction, Martin proposes the theory that the pope was murdered by the Soviet Union because he would abdicate the benign policy of his two predecessors, John XXIII and Paul VI , towards accommodating communism , and once again condemn it as an atheistic totalitarian ideology. Martin believed that the church structure was infiltrated for decades by illuminati agents who reached positions of high influence and rank, such as Jean-Marie Villot , at that time Cardinal Secretary of State.
The Last Confession is a play written by Roger Crane. It is a thriller that tracks the dramatic tensions, crises of faith, and political manoeuvrings inside the Vatican surrounding the death of Pope John Paul I. In December , a play by Mark E. Smith of British post-punk band The Fall , Hey! It drew on conspiracy theories about the pope's death. A single, " Hey!
Luciani ", reached number 59 on the UK singles chart. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved 31 December Retrieved 26 December