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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34482 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I think Francis does at the core have a solid or at least traditional understanding. There's a couple of things going on: he's a South American Jesuit, he does have the instinct for the pastoral role as the primary one, and he tends to say things off the cuff that the media then take up and amplify as their message (the one about "who am I to judge?" was not about "the gay is okay" and if you read the full context, it's in a specific case that was presented to him in a press interview aboard the Vatican jet, but that's not how it was reported in the papers).

I don't have much personal liking for Francis as his style is completely at odds with my own tendencies, and he does have a liberal streak. But "liberal" is not the same as "progressive" and I think he does believe in things like the divinity of Christ, the Real Presence, etc. He has a taste for the kind of lay devotions that the Spirit of Vatican II crowd looked down their noses at and swept away when in power.

I wish he'd clobber a few of the ones straying off the reservation, but he does believe the job of the Shepherd is to go after the sheep, not drive them further off.

Agree that Francis doesn’t seem personally very progressive(hence why I draw the distinction between liberal and progressive), but he’s definitely increasingly reliant on progressives to do anything and his weakness as a manager is not helped by his tendency to come down like a ton of bricks to his right.

his tendency to come down like a ton of bricks to his right.

Yeah, that's the Jesuit in him (I was going to say "South American Jesuit" but it's pretty much all the Jebbies everywhere, save for a few reactionary holdouts here and there).

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