Regime media sparked a new outbreak of Francis Derangement Syndrome on X yesterday. The molehill the lying press hyped into a mountain was a recent document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. And the shovels they used to pile BS on it were fake news stories alleging that Francis greenlit priests blessing gay unions.
The DDF document, Fiducia Supplicans, which Pope Francis signed off on, became the subject of shameless slander from the media. Extremely online atheists, pagan, protestants, and even a vocal minority of hyper-traditionalist Catholics used the fake news as a handy club to beat their favorite effigy, Straw Francis.
As is too often the case, the lie made it ’round the world before the truth could get its boots on. But faithful Catholic theologians and commentators sprang into action setting the record straight; in some cases, beating the Vatican and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to the punch in issuing clarifications.
Top apologetics Zoomer Pinesap cited the controversial doc’s own forbiddance of blessing same-sex unions and its condemnation of gay “marriage”:
Related: “CDS”
Related: “The Cure for Francis Derangement Syndrome”
Even this writer took time away from reinventing the dark adventure genre to issue some fraternal corrections.
Official Church outlets did manage to get corrections out, as well.
Rome Reports gave great coverage of the document pic.twitter.com/3AJxwVv98B
— Pinesap🌲✝️☦️🇻🇦 (@Pinesap3wasc) December 18, 2023
By the end of the day yesterday, the truth got out, and the FDS sufferers playing crazy cookout uncle got ratioed off X.
Walking theology manual Classical Theist summed up the FDS crowd’s rout in this pithy post:
CT also referred back to a post of his from October, in which he correctly predicted the DDF document’s contents.
Whatever one’s opinion on the DDF document, its pastoral guidance falls far short of the dogma changes and manifest heresy that Church critics expected from October’s Synod on Synodality.
With yet another calumnious attack on Pope Francis fizzled, one can only wonder when the FDS heads and crazy cookout uncles will stop swallowing the corrupt media’s fake news.
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Well I’m not qualified on this matter nor a great Catholic but here’s the thing as I see it:
The 2021 condemnation I understand allowed for blessing individual homosexuals and participants in an “irregular” relationship like everyone struggling with sin in church but not blessing them as “couples” in front of the priest. That sounds ok to me.
It has now changed to that they can be blessed in front of the priest as “couples.” Which appears like they are unrepentant and thus seems like an affront.
So something has changed, and as the document says it ” implies a real development from what has been said about blessings in the Magisterium” so it seems like the document made a “doctrinal shift” as it has been called in order to accomplish it.
I imagine he can be described as “Pro-LGBT” Fr. James Martin has said: ““Be wary of the ‘Nothing has changed’ response to today’s news. It’s a significant change. In short, yesterday, as a priest, I was forbidden to bless same-sex couples at all. Today, with some limitations, I can.” ”
So blessing “couples” could be actually blessing the relationship against doctrine as I understand so they had to “develop” and “innovate” an understanding of what is written in doctrine. But as I said I’m not qualified or a great Catholic here.
“Well I’m not qualified on this matter …”
Which your confusing a pastoral declaration for a doctrinal one demonstrates. Not only does the document explain up front that its developments are pastoral only, it spells out that one of them is making a clear separation between liturgical and non-liturgical blessings. When it does mention doctrine, it reaffirms that Church teaching on same-sex unions hasn’t changed.
As for reading into the allowance for blessing same-sex couples, they are considered only as individual recipients of the prayer, with any blessing of their irregular union forbidden in no uncertain terms. And the prayer used includes a petition for the healing of the recipients’ sin. So much for the appearance of unrepentance.
Of course, I could have skipped the liturgy lesson and pointed out that you quoted Fr. James Martin. Citing him on Church matters is like quoting CNN on Trump.
Doctrinally, this is pretty much a non-statement.
Pastorally, Francis is following his infamous World Youth Day 2013 advice: “Make a mess!”
Doctrine ok I’m not sure. But it’s not as you say blessing individuals it is “couples.” That’s why the change from 2021.
It’s not a ruling on doctrine but pastoral ok but it does mention the Magesterium so isn’t that a reference to doctrine and how they justify it in relation to it? If they condemn in no uncertain terms blessing the relationship then they would not bless them together in front of the priest so as to avoid uncertain terms. Yet they can bless them as a “couple” in the document not individuals. Can they hold hands while they bless them as a couple?
Yes they are holding hands. And they see it as an affirmation to their relationship.
“Some queer folks and some traditional Catholics share one thing in common—they don’t believe the church is a good place for LGBTQ folks. But Damian and I show that it is possible to be a thriving, married, gay Catholic couple”
https://outreach.faith/2023/12/as-a-married-gay-catholic-just-blessed-by-a-catholic-priest-i-welcome-the-churchs-openness/
And by doing so they automatically invalidated the blessing according to the standards laid out in the document. So no, that couple was not blessed.
I dunno document says they can be blessed as a “couple.” Did Fr. James Martin explain in “no uncertain terms” that they need to repent of their sinful relationship and work to reform their lives? I doubt it, certainly the man who wrote about his blessing seems to think the opposite.
So the church can’t help that? Really?
Francis Derangement Syndrome. I like it. If you haven’t found Reason and Theology and Michael Lofton yet (YouTube, X/Twitter), I follow a lot of his work. I emailed a few friends encouraging them to just read the Vatican document rather than trust the headlines. The disconnect between the headlines and the actual document is epic.
Adding to the fun is all the Protestants who know that the mainstream media is fake news, but somehow they’re getting right with Pope Francis. Sure…
Lofton has his strengths, yeah. Glad he’s on this.
In justice and charity to our separated brethren, I have seen at least one Protestant account dismantling this nonsense.
I’m ashamed to admit that this did somewhat worry me, but that’s because I’m an OCD and anxiety-afflicted wreck who literally can’t go a week without giving serious thought to whether the sky is going to fall. Nonetheless I knew something smelled fishy about this. Thank you so much for your clear commentary.
What’s most striking is how just weeks ago, the FDS crowd were making dire predictions about the Synod. Now it’s been relegated to the memory hole in favor of what can only be seen as a relative non-issue.
Being an internet theologian, I spent October preparing to do damage control if women’s ordination, a Humanae Vitae override, or Church-sanctioned gay weddings came down. Getting a reminder that sinners can seek the Church’s help in battling their sin, which also reiterates perennial doctrine on marriage, has been a delight by comparison.
This validates completely my decision to studiously avoid any interest in the Synod during October. I don’t handle stress well at the best of times, and in prior years have faced genuine emotional meltdown over seeming contradiction in doctrine or hyperbolic doomsaying from (presumably) well-meaning Traditionalists.
That’s the best argument against listening to these people. Their ringleaders have made a cottage industry out of predicting doom for the Church. They have never once been right. But instead of admitting they were wrong, they sweep their latest flub under the rug and move right on to the next outrage.
As someone who deals with anxiety, OCD, and the like, and who was pretty sure for a while the world as we know it was going to implode any day now, I get it. As a lifelong Protestant, I’m not going to weigh in on Francis, except to note I used to worry about him, too. Then Brian pointed out how silly it is to trust people who hate us (and can’t get anything else right) to somehow accurately report about His Holiness.
I’d like to recommend, if I may be so bold, fasting and prayer as a way to break out of the anxiety trap you seem to be in. The “peace that passes understanding” really is possible, and in the face of things that by rights might scare us silly. I do not believe God means for us to be nervous wrecks. 1 Thes 5:16-24 suggests quite the opposite, in point of fact.
Be not afraid, brother. “Our king and savior now draws near,” to quote one of the Advent antiphons.
Gell-Mann amnesia is when you read some incredibly inaccurate article in the newspaper, turn the page, and then convince yourself that THIS article is 100% accurate despite what you know to be true about reporters.
Catholics somehow have gotten something worse. They not only accept the initial reporting as accurate, despite knowing that the press lies all the time. But even when they see that they reporting is a bunch of lies they blame the Pope for the inaccurate reporting anyway.
I admit I used to rage against our Pope. I’m not going to blame just MSM, because I should have known better since I worked as a journo and I had more than just healthy mistrust for any source of information published in MSM. It was thanks to one of your blog posts that I realised how blinded I was when I was willing to believe the media just because they said Pope Francis did something, when I wasn’t willing to trust them had they said 2+2=4.
Since then, whenever I see MSM reporting Pope Francis did something, I just shrug and move on. I’m certain MSM is lying, and that the pope, no matter what, is still Catholic.
Praise to God for wisdom!
As to being the Uncomfortable Cookout Uncle, we all are branded with that, so there’s nothing to lose by saying you are strangely credulous on Francis. No one else in the world is subject to an MSM slander campaign consisting of “he’s basically one of us and we love him.” The short-sighted tribal mentality of JournoList would short-circuit before giving an actual enemy that treatment, never mind consistently applying it for years on end.
No, that’s just how he successfully presents himself to the media, because he really does have those sympathies. What with the seal of the Holy Spirit and the fact that he’s in the Vatican, he can’t do all he’d like, but the general appearance of going squish on grave sins is certainly of his own cultivation. Case (pulled out of a hat, there are so many): McCarrick.
No one else is the Vicar of Christ on Earth.
What’s strange is how quick otherwise rational Conservatives, let alone Catholics, are to ditch the principle of charity for the sake of politics. It’s vicious when done to anyone, even more so to our Holy Father.
As for citing our enemies’ narrative on Francis as proof he’s one of them, the selective amnesia another commenter mentioned must extend a decade back. Maybe it’s the Mandela Effect, but I remember the same press smearing him as a Nazi at the start of his pontificate.
And since when has the Death Cult embraced as a fellow traveler anyone who went “squish on grave sin”? If you think they’re honest in their affection for a man who calls gender ideology more dangerous than nuclear weapons and continues to condemn gay marriage, I invite you to try either yourself and see how deep in their good graces it gets you.
Here’s a priest explaining what all the hair-splitting square-circling distinctions-without-a-difference Francis has come up with for his Schroeder’s permission to bless homosexual couplings mean on the ground:
https://twitter.com/Joeinblack/status/1737295171178332483
And keep in mind these are conservative priests, there will be any number of progressive priests who will jump at the chance to officiate at gay “not-weddings” in full glare of the cameras.
If Conservative Catholics want to be taken seriously, they should stop letting the Church’s enemies dictate their feelings on Church policy and leadership.
Skojec might have been reliable once. But since writing that post a couple years back that read like a jilted teen’s breakup letter to the Church, he’s just gotten more unhinged. Interesting how often TradCaths and LibCaths follow that same trajectory away from the Barque of Peter.
With all due respect to Fr. Joe, it’s following the quite real and evident distinctions in Fiducia that have him worried about being called names. A gay couple that present themselves for a blessing as a couple can’t licitly receive it, which leaves priests in the same position they were in last week.
What the people flipping out over this pastorally imprudent but theologically insignificant document have proven is they have no rational grievance to address. They just want the majority of Catholics to leave charity at the door and join their two minutes’ hate. No thanks.
Something occurred to me when discussing this with other Catholics:
People will claim that their rage is not media manufactured, since if you go through the documents you can find “suspiciously misleading” statements which supposedly are what triggered the media’s lies. That is, the idea is that the media is dishonest but the documents are poorly written and better written documents wouldn’t lead to a media frenzy. Therefore the Catholics attacking Pope Francis over the document are just attacking a bad document and not being misled. Or so the reasoning goes.
But the problem is that pretty much anything produced by the Vatican and especially pastoral documents and ESPECIALLY pastoral documents written by Pope Francis will include a lot of language which is flowery, indirect, or which otherwise could be misinterpreted. So the people attacking this document could get mad in the same way at a thousand other such documents. Yet they only get mad at the one that the media told them to get mad at.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who loathes overwrought, imprecise contemporary “Church Speak” more than me. What I wouldn’t give for the return of one-page papal bulls.
That said, the selectivity of the outrage you pinpointed is a dead tell that some folks are just looking for an excuse to be outraged.