2023-09-21 16:36:19
In a few days, Francis will create the new cardinals who must participate (if they have not turned 80 years of age) in the election of the new Pope one day. Among them, three are Argentine: one is Monsignor Víctor “Tucho” Fernández, who since Monday the 11th assumed, by decision of Jorge Bergoglio, the presidency of the strategic Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most important in the Roman Curia.
On October 4, the Synod of Synods begins, which will meet for the rest of the month. There is a second part that will deliberate a year later. And conflicts and confrontations are already foreseen.
The World Synod of Bishops will address all the issues that divide the Church amidst growing tensions and threats of schism that the different sectors are launched.
Never have the bishops of the world met to discuss reforms that, if approved, would give a new face, for some unrecognizable, to the Church.
The situation of the always postponed women, who make up half of Catholicism, their access at least to the diaconate but with the prospect of being priests. Also andThe marriage of priests of Latin rite and the broad and difficult sexual themes.
The acceptance and blessing of gay marriages, for example. In fact, the reforms require a profound reform of the very government of the Church, the relationship between one thousand three hundred million baptized people and 600 thousand bishops and priests.
Against the bloc favorable to the pontiff, in the majority roles, the confrontation is divided into two very aggressive wings, which accuse each other of being schismatic.
Clashes between reformists and conservatives
Within the North American Church there are conservatives who guide or influence those in the rest of the world. In the renewal field, the vanguard of those in favor of great changes are active in the German church.
Pope Francis, this Wednesday, during the weekly audience at the Vatican. Photo: AP
This prologue explains the importance of a new short circuit that confronts the Pope with the conservatives but it also forces him to contain the most audacious changes that the German Church intends. In June the Pope sent two monsignors on an apostolic visit to inquire about a far-right whose figure has grown in recent years. This is Monsignor Joseph Edward Strickland, 64 years old, consecrated bishop of Tyler, Texas, by decision of Benedict XVI, the German Joseph Ratzinger, in 2012.
Monsignor Strickland’s positions have radicalized his criticism of the Argentine Pope.
Monsignor Strickland said that “if the Pope asks me to retire I will not resign. As a basic principle I cannot renounce the mandate that Pope Benedict XVI gave me.”
“Of course the Pope can dismiss me, but I will not resign voluntarily,” he remarked.
Canon lawyer and professor at the Catholic University of America, John Beal, opined that a bishop can be “deprived” of his office as punishment, but after a criminal trial for some canonical crime. Beal expressed doubt that Bishop Strickland committed anything resembling an “indictable offense.”
Las rigid positions of the head of the diocese of Tyler have great popularity among the American Catholic faithful with traditionalist tendencies contrary to the renewal measures that will be discussed in the Synod of Synods that is about to begin.
The US bishops’ conference is controlled by a conservative majority, whose natural leader is the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who will face the reforms.
Monsignor Strickland is already called “the bishop of America” and a few months ago he concluded his objections with the conclusion that the Pope “does not respect the deposit of faith”, a very serious accusation.
There is certainty among the Pope’s adversaries that if Francis decides to dismiss Strikland, after the inspections that studied his positions and some accusations of administrative irregularities, the visibility and influence of the rebellious bishop will be accentuated among the 60 million North American Catholics.
Against Joe Biden and the Democrats
Monsignor Strikland ran an entire campaign against the Democratic party and against President Joe Biden. “You can’t be Catholic and a Democrat,” he said. The bishop maintains, like many leaders of the US church, that Biden cannot remain the second Catholic president of the US (after John Kennedy) and maintain his support for laws that allow abortion and other measures contrary to teachings of religion.
The Pope received the President of the United States, Joe Biden, in October 2021 at the Vatican. Photo: EFE
The Pope and the renewal sector of the Church have defended the position of President Biden, who says that he is limited to defending a law approved by Congress (abortion) because it must respect the Constitution.
The Pope is not likely to make any decisions about Monsignor Strikland’s future in the coming months, although the rebel bishop struck a new blow in his confrontation with the pontiff in May, proclaiming that “Monsignor Lefevbre was not schismatic.”
The late French bishop Marcel Lefebvre was struck down by Pope John Paul II, committing the latest schism that has torn the unity of the Church, by consecrating four of his followers as bishops without an apostolic mandate in the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, based in Switzerland. The North American bishop said that the Fraternity founded by the late Lefebvre “is not schismatic,” a position that deepens his confrontation with Francis.
John Paul II, who always followed a traditional line in his 26 years of apostolic reign, sent a letter to Monsignor Lefebvre a few days before excommunicating him, on February 24, 1987. Karol Wojtyla deeply felt the wound caused by the French bishop and did not He hid from him the pain he suffered from having to punish him. In the letter he asked him to “humbly return to full obedience to the Vicar of Christ.”
The Pope asked Lefebvre to obey “through the wounds of Christ.” The Lefebvrian schism continues to this day.
It is evident that the American bishop’s support for the schismatic action of the ultra-conservative Monsignor Lefebvre must cause hives in the Vatican because it represents a not at all veiled threat on the part of Monsignor Strinkland.
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