Reactionaries…

WorldbyStorm

Aug 30

In a question-and-answer session, a Portuguese Jesuit said that during a sabbatical in the United States, he was saddened that many Catholics, including some bishops, were hostile to the pope's leadership.

"You have seen that in the United States the situation is not easy: there is a very strong reactionary attitude. It is organised and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally," the pope responded.

Religious conservatives in the United States often have aligned with politically conservative media outlets to criticise the pope over a host of issues such as climate change, immigration, social justice, his calls for gun control and his opposition to the death penalty.

"You have been to the United States and you say you have felt a climate of closure. Yes, this climate can be experienced in some situations," Pope Francis said.

"And there, one can lose the true tradition and turn to ideologies for support. In other words, ideology replaces faith, membership in a sector of the church replaces membership in the church," he said.

Mentioned before I was in Spain a while back and in a church on a frieze depicting significant events in the history of the Catholic Church was struck by the fact the current Pope's face had been partly scratched out by someone.

Perhaps to indicate the sort of thing that the Pope appears to be talking about:

One of the pope's fiercest American critics, Rome-based Cardinal Raymond Burke, wrote in an introduction for a recent book that a meeting of bishops called by Pope Francis for this October to help chart the future of the Church risked sowing "confusion and error and division".

Burke's views make for interesting reading.