There is an instruction regarding world leaders: “Listen to what they say and you know what they will do.” The same can be said about Pope Francis.
The pope, since day one, called Catholics to a prophetic style of living based on prayer and Eucharistic adoration, helping the poor and marginalized and bringing down rigorism. If you listen to what he actually says, you will see what he actually does and you will see they are congruent.
The latest instruction has many traditionalists in the Church upset and ready to start a revolution. Franciscan University of Steubenville professor Regis Martin writing in Crisis Magazine recommends that the pope resign and spend the rest of his life in a monastery engaged in prayer and penance.
The editor of the same magazine promotes Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s catechism Credo which dismisses Vatican II as a non-infallible Council and embraces the sixteenth-century teaching of the post-reformation Council of Trent.
The reactions to the pope and his cabinet reflect a lack of understanding of what his intentions are. However, I take them as signs the pope’s plan is working exactly as he intends — pruning the Church of those who fight for a Catholicism of their own making at every turn, while others embrace Francis’ Vatican II vision for the future of the Church.
