Humility of Pope Francis Disputed

Dear TIA,

I hear so many people applauding the pope’s “humility” on his first day of being pope. He didn’t step on the raised pedestal but chose to stay at the same level as the other cardinals. He didn’t bless the people, but instead asked the people to pray for him. He declined the expensive ride for the mini-bus with his other cardinals. The three-tiered crown still was not used. Many other breaks from tradition were also seen which a quick Google search will promptly produce.

I have a different outlook on this apparently than other people. I don’t mean to speak bad about the Holy Pontiff, but this doesn’t strike me correctly and I want to see if my line of thinking is incorrect.

To me, the pope IS the highest living authority on earth. He IS higher than the cardinals who elected him and he NEEDS to show that to the people. How about instead of asking people to pray for him, which is great, he blesses them and THEN asked them to pray for him?

If he continues this trend of making his own way, then the position of pope will lose all its regality. The respect for the pope will lessen because people will think of him as just another person - just the president of the Catholic Church, when in reality he is supposed to be the closest Alter-Christos there is here on earth.

Why do I think back to the Pharisees of Christ’s time whom He said had nothing but a false façade? Am I wrong? Of course I will always continue to pray for the pope and truly hope that he does say 15 decades of the rosary a day, but I am afraid. I’m afraid of this being a false humility and many Catholic people being drawn into it and lead down an erroneous road.

     All through Mary; all for Jesus

     J.R.

Dear TIA,

Cordial greetings. Thank you for the important work that you do toward the restoration of the Church during these dark, unprecedented times. May God abundantly bless and preserve your work!

Not unlike many, I find myself progressively uneasy about the election of Pope Francis, especially in regards to this notion of his “humility.” Like the word “love,” “humility” (as understood by the highly excitable, spiritually/morally “dumbed-down,” worldly-minded masses) is over-used but quite predictably little understood.

True, only God knows for certain whether one is truly humble. That said, the big mainstream media endorsement/attention that Pope Francis is getting for his apparent track-record of making “acts of humility” are concerning to me precisely because they are noticed and seen by all.

These are not hidden acts as in the case of Matthew 6:3, which says: “But when thou dost alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth.”

• Then Cardinal Bergoglio’s regularly taking a crowded city bus to work as a well-known public figure;
• His famously cooking his own meals as a well-known public figure;
• His choosing to live in a small apartment instead of the cardinal’s residence as a well-known public figure;
• His dramatically refusing (now as pope) the papal limousine with the eyes of the whole world upon him; and
• His refusing traditional papal attire and protocol with the eyes of the whole world upon him

All of the aforementioned attention-getting behaviors are being cheered as definitive “proof” of his humility, but I suspect I am not alone when I see this not so much as “humility” but rather a hippy-like attempt at “making a statement,” hence really a show of pride that he is somehow “better,” knows “better,” and is therefore “apart” from the rest or “above it all,” as they like to say.

Indeed, as pope - the Vicar of Christ on earth - Pope Francis is, by virtue of his very title, “apart from the rest” and superior to all on earth by way of authority. However, it is not the sheer splendor and superiority of his papal title and authority that Pope Francis appears to want to stress (as he is bound to do for the honor of Our Lord and for the sake of His holy Church). Rather, his appears to be a merely “human” ambition to tell the whole world that he has somehow “matured” and “out-grown” even the papacy - even to the point of dispensing with “silly” and “shameful” traditions and regalia.

This is right in line with the highly disordered notion of the “cool modern dad” who quickly rids himself of his commanding (and manly) business attire (pathologically ashamed or “uncomfortable” as he is of his God-given role of authority in the household) and opting, rather, to dress just like his bratty, underperforming teenage son whose only waking ambition each day it is to enjoy “total freedom” but also have “equal say-so” in making household decisions - all the while squandering his parents’ hard-earned money on useless electronic gadgets and sinful pleasures in the process.

By total contrast, Pope St. Pius X did not set aside the papal honors proper to his state but rather embraced them all the more with the requisite gravity of character and conviction befitting a true king, knowing that it was not his own person that was the focus of his papacy but rather Christ the King (of all nations and in fact of the whole entire universe) whom he was representing in the very person of His Vicar on earth! “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Yet, who amongst us would be able to enumerate the great personal mortifications well hidden behind his commanding but benevolent regal exterior? What a saintly example of true humility! “And when you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matthew 6:16).

Ultimately, however, it is not Pope Francis’ apparent leanings toward establishing an air of moral superiority for all to see that troubles me the most (if, in fact, that happens to be the case).

It is not even the fact that Pope Paul VI back in November of 1963 sold his papal tiara in what he intended as a gesture of “humility,” asking that the proceeds be donated to the poor - but in reality committing the grave self-centered error of making his own person, Giovanni Montini, the focus of the papacy rather than Christ the King, to whom the tiara actually belonged.

No, what is really disturbing to me about these perceived “acts of humility,” whether or not their princely perpetrators were conscious of it at the time, is how they collectively and quite persuasively come to seduce the unthinking, dumbed-down but excitable Godless masses to progressively embrace a model of the Church and the papacy rooted in a most crass and diabolical egalitarianism- an egalitarianism poised to aggressively blend away the sacred to the fatal end of doing away with the ministerial priesthood and therefore the perpetual Sacrifice. “Let us make good social workers of them all, instead!”

It is this unholy gradualism toward a vulgar, Godless secular understanding and implementation of the Gospel message - however generously laced with “supernatural,” traditional references (albeit totally redefined, of course) - that plays right into the hands of the Freemasons and other crazed or calculating enemies of the Church under the dignified cover of “humility” and “simplicity.”

By supreme irony, in an era marked by a dire paucity of souls responding to God’s urgent call to the consecrated life, there seems to be no shortage of useful idiots desperately wanting to throw themselves before their demonic masters to make the world not just a “better place” but, in fact, their god. If this is not the “diabolical disorientation” spoken of by Sister Lucia, I do not know what is.

No analysis of this time of great apostasy within the Church would ever be complete, of course, without the prickling reminder of our own happy fate: that those of us who would dare to take a true Catholic stand would undergo extreme persecution and be denounced as “enemies” or “haters” of peace, poverty, humility, “LUV” (love), and “Christ-like” simplicity - first, in the hands of those sworn to shepherd and protect us from the wolves.

Indeed, how shrewd these mortal enemies of the Church have become during these end times - skillfully turning the tables on the very ones they mean to sink their blood-stained teeth into all the while gaining the admiration of the masses as “makers of peace”!

     Most sincerely in Christ Our King,

     Stephen Kim

TIA,

Since the election of Pope Francis, there have been literally millions of words written about the Catholic Church being the ‘Church of the Poor’ but not a single word about saving souls.

During the 20th century a very elite, smart group of theologians finally figured out that there was no hell and you didn’t need the Church established by Jesus Christ or any other Church with better ideas to be saved. God is love and He would never let anyone spend an eternity in hell. That’s all medieval propaganda to scare those simpleminded souls who lived during the earlier centuries. You see these thoughts expounded everyday when someone dies and now they are in a better place.

Our Lady of Fatima's first message to the three seers was that sinners go to hell! According to those who should know it was only the children’s imagination. Don’t worry! It’s only an eternity if they are wrong.

     Homer Sweeney

Dear Marian,

For half of my long lifetime, I have prayed earnestly and continually for relief and deliverance from the barbaric, pagan and anti-Christ functionaries who have infiltrated and betrayed Our Lord’s Church, and who have become a monumental Cross upon the backs of Catholics, rather than a soothing balm for our spirits, hearts and souls. Pope Francis will only exacerbate the downward slide. He does not want the true Catholic Church.

Understandably, Our Lord is not yet ready to grant this relief. The reprobate hierarchy is too involved in the cesspool of this world, exhibiting too many monstrous sins, too much absolutely invincible ignorance, which culminates in the intentional and unending flagellation of Jesus, as well as all true Catholics.

This absolute one-topic-only concentration on “the poor” is unnerving. The sins of men make sure that the poor will always be with us. By all means feed the poor, but do not forget the grandeur of worship that is owed to Almighty God. The Church is the house of God. A healthy triumphalism must exist in the acknowledgment of Eternal Truth.

As Henry Thoreau said: “Every Stoic was a Stoic, but in Christendom where is the Christian?”

I can no longer imagine the True Church returning whole in my lifetime. It resides only in scattered oases of absolute Truth such as Tradition in Action.

     Joseph Shaara

TIA,

Some trads are not happy with those of us raising concerns about the Pope Francis’ liturgical and doctrinal baggage.

Here is why I think we have every right to consider this baggage.

When JP2 became Pope, we were all dazzled by his APPARENT Marian devotion, including the “totus tuus” on his coat of arms. Thereafter many of us, myself included, just accepted or overlooked his heterodox pronouncements and pontifical acts.

As the saying goes “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

I hope and pray that the grace of office gives us a devout and truly Marian pope. At the same time, the faithful need to be prepared to “resist him to the face” if he and his papacy is another post-conciliar debacle.

There is nothing wrong with taking notes right from the get-go. Had we carefully looked into JP2’s prior writings we would have been better armed to deal with his disastrous papacy.

     J.B.

Editor’s Note:

Recently TIA posted a comment by a reader, Mr. E.J., in which he attributes the order to remove the online sermon Quo Vadis Petre?, delivered by an anonymous priest, to an action of the Fraternity of St. Peter. Mr. E.J. also surmised that the priest would be a member of FSSP and that the Superior of that organization would be involved in such a prohibition.

I want to clarify that these data are partially correct and partially mistaken.

Actually, the anonymous priest is not a member of FSSP and there is no evidence that the Superior of that religious institution was involved in that prohibition. The sermon was asked to be removed from the Audio Sancto website by the very priest who delivered it. He, at turn, was asked to do so by a priest of FSSP of an important city in Texas. That sermon had reached a growing popularity among ladies of good society in that city. When one of those ladies communicated to the FSSP priest the existence of the sermon and the effect it was causing, he triggered the process that ended by taking the sermon off-line.

I thank Mr. E.J. for sending TIA that timely sermon; I also thank the two priests from different religious congregations who called me to clarify these data.

TIA continues to make that very good and opportune sermon available to our readers here.

     Atila S. Guimarães, editor of TIA website