MichaelD14 wrote:
As a reader of Hans Urs von Balthasar (inspired by recommendation of Cardinal Ratzinger), I do not get any sense Pope Francis shares that extreme exaggeration of God's Mercy.
He has never given any indication it's a temporary state, as purgatory.
He has warned it's eternal.
Pope Francis has been quite clear on this topic.
Th Liturgy, well - that's another topic for another day...
Let me be bluntly honest with you: I have absolutely no confidence in this pope. Absolutely none. When he was first elected, my reaction was optimistic, I thought he would be a great reforming Pope. But in the first few months of his reign, I noticed that he was making a number of rather bizarre and inexplicable public statements, such as 'who am I to judge?' (is this a serious question? You're the pope, the vicar of Christ on Earth, you are the one person on this planet who is the MOST QUALIFIED to judge, to say this, is to say that you refuse to do your job) and he said 'Catholics shouldn't be breeding like rabbits', which is a comment he claims he said to a woman he met in Argentina who had 8 children, this is a statement which seems to imply that he has no problem with contraception, and indeed, maybe contraception might even be mandatory (to make sure that we don't 'breed like rabbits'), on another occassion, he made a statement that made it seem like he approved of sex change operations, and this is just the FIRST YEAR.
Over the past 5 years, I've gone from being hopeful to being confused to being angry, to where I am now, which is almost total despair at the fact that it now seems that to be a faithful Catholic, I have to completely ignore everything the Pope says and does.
Are you familiar with ER Chamberlin's classic text 'The Bad Popes'? I think that 100 or 500 years from now, someone will add a chapter to that book about Pope Francis, to go along with the chapters about Benedict IX, Boniface VIII, Celestine V, Alexander VI, Julius II and Leo X.