As Pope Francis prepares to visit Cuba, Washington, D.C., New York and Philadelphia, numerous mainstream media articles are in the midst of publication concerning the Church and the pope, as seen by the faithful.
One such piece today, in The Washington Post, highlights traditionalist and conservative concerns, further illustrating the ever-increasing unity of those two camps thanks to this pope -- a Francis Effect that is actually quantifiable, unlike the myth of increasing Mass attendance during this pontificate.
From the article:
When Steven Skojec heard that Jorge Mario Bergoglio had been elected pope, he got a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He can’t say why, exactly — though he follows Vatican politics closely, he didn’t know much about Francis then. But as he watched the new Catholic leader greet the crowds on his office television in Manassas, Va., he was filled with dread.
“I felt a discontinuity,” he said. “A disruption.” ...
That criticism has been echoed in opinion pieces by prominent Catholics in the Wall Street Journal, in free market think tanks, and by business leaders around the world. This summer, the Heartland Institute sent a delegation to Rome to “educate” the pope on climate change (the organization believes that manmade climate change is a myth). The Heritage Foundation warned that the pope has aligned himself “with the far left and has embraced an ideology that would make people poorer and less free.”
Even Catholic publications have piled on, in unusally harsh language. A writer for the conservative Catholic publication First Things has called Francis “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist.” An August church bulletin from the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in St. Hedwig, Tex., bemoaned the pope’s encyclical Laudato Si, writing that “it’s too bad that he acquired and used phrases that are scientifically unproven and used by the segment of world leaders that strive to ‘control people’ by controlling energy issues usages.” Cardinal Raymond Burke has even suggested it might be necessary to “resist” the Pope’s doctrinal shifts.
The entire article in the Washington Post can be read here.
