The Francis Pontificate: A Double-Barreled Question

[Michie]

ANALYSIS: In a recent address, the Vatican secretary of state said there’s no going back from Pope Francis’ reforms. How does the Church determine how to accomplish them?

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, presented a book by Vatican expert Ignazio Ingrao on the “Five Questions That Agitate the Church” on April 24. In his speech, he outlined Pope Francis’ reform efforts as a path that cannot be reversed, for which there should be a commensurate pastoral response everywhere and, ultimately, an ethical and moral response.

Cardinal Parolin acknowledged patience will be required to work out the best ways of putting Pope Francis’ reforms to good use and even recognized that the Church is “in a storm” of the kind that calls to mind the one that assailed Peter’s barque in the Gospel of Matthew.

Answers to Ingrao’s five questions will have to make sense of things like synodal reform, including a renewed role for laypeople, especially women, the place of young people in the Church and the world, attention to the poor, and evangelization.

The one thing Cardinal Parolin said with certainty was that there can be no going back on Pope Francis’ reforms.

But is it really like that? Are we faced with irreversible paths? And is talking about reform adequate to understanding Pope Francis’ pontificate?

These should not be viewed as controversial questions. Instead, it is necessary to establish how much of Pope Francis’ work has been narrative and how much has been concrete. How much has been focused on the image of the Pope and the poor Church for the poor, and how much was instead on the actual things he has done?

Continued below.

The Francis Pontificate: A Double-Barreled Question

ANALYSIS: In a recent address, the Vatican secretary of state said there’s no going back from Pope Francis’ reforms. How does the Church determine how to accomplish them?

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[Simon_Templar]

I don't know what he thinks the path of Francis' reforms are/is... and I'm too tired to care at present. But this I know. There is no such thing as a path that can't be reversed, or changed.

 

[WarriorAngel]

Opinions on how to …is like the form of Mass.
How is kinda subjective.

I am reading the article as a how to.

 

[jamiec]

"Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, presented a book by Vatican expert Ignazio Ingrao on the “Five Questions That Agitate the Church” on April 24. In his speech, he outlined Pope Francis’ reform efforts as a path that cannot be reversed, for which there should be a commensurate pastoral response everywhere and, ultimately, an ethical and moral response."

Of course they can be reversed. It is pure hubris to pretend otherwise. If PF can reverse Catholic doctrine and practice, his successors can equally well reverse what he has done. He reversed Summorum Pontificum, so his own acts - with the possible exception of his canonisations - can claim no more no more irreversibility than Summorum Pontificum. Saints have been abolished before now, so canonisations are not beyond being undone: the cultus of the supposed child-martyr Andrew of Rinn (canonised in 1588) was totally suppressed in 1965; so even canonised Saints can be unsainted. Nothing in the Church is beyond revision, alteration, reconsideration, reversal, or abolition. Given long enough, the Church will probably define as a dogma the 8th sacrament of Abortion. It probably won't happen for 20,000 years, but it will probably happen, once the objections to it can be explained away. The Papacy under PF is not interested in truth, but in control.

Ultimately, and for all practical purposes, the Popes can do anything they like to the Church - they have absolute power over everything whatsoever in the Church, regardless of the theorising of theologians; so whenever there are objections, they can punish or ignore the objectors, & and market the changes as "the work of the Holy Spirit", "a new Pentecost", "ecclesial renewal", "responsiveness to modern man", "reading the signs of the times", or "doctrinal development", or some other pious-sounding flannel for the obedient (and necessarily incompletely-informed) Faithful to lap up. For Catholics are supposed to live, not by bread alone, but by pretty much every word of the Pope. The rest is left to the popesplainers, who can be relied upon to prove, to their own satisfaction if to no-one else's, that black is white, bad is good, false is true, & down is up. Catholics are free to grumble, now, without being arrested or tortured or executed or excommunicated - but they are as powerless to check the bad ideas of the Popes as they were 500 years ago. Unfettered Papal dominion, without any recourse against it whatsoever, is built into the Papacy.

 

[JSRG]

Saints have been abolished before now, so canonisations are not beyond being undone: the cultus of the supposed child-martyr Andrew of Rinn (canonised in 1588) was totally suppressed in 1965; so even canonised Saints can be unsainted.

Andrew of Rinn was never, as far as I can tell, canonized. He may have been beatified by Benedict XIV, but not canonized... and that would have been in 1752, not 1588. Based on your mention of 1588, you may be getting him mixed up with the similar Simon of Trent. However, looking into it, as far as I can tell what happened in 1588 was that he was beatified, but he was never canonized.

So neither of these seem to have ever been formally canonized, just beatified. Thus neither has been "unsainted".