The Catholic Church - No Longer Unified

Quoted in part from an articled dated November 15, 2016, from The Salt Lake Tribune [1]:

[T]he vote at their annual fall meeting in Baltimore on Tuesday [meant] that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops [("USCCB")] is still hesitant to fully endorse the more progressive and pastoral approach to ministry that Pope Francis has been championing.

...

[W]hile Gomez leads an enormous, diverse and growing archdiocese of more than 4 million Catholics, Francis pointedly passed over him last month when he named his first U.S. cardinals.

Gomez's election to the USCCB leadership this week — days before three American churchmen considered more progressive than he is will receive red hats in Rome from the pope — was seen by some as a clear signal.

Moreover, while DiNardo's ascension to president was expected, he is also widely viewed as a conservative with a spiky public persona who has clashed publicly with other bishops.

DiNardo was also one of 13 conservative cardinals who signed a private letter to Francis at a high-stakes Vatican meeting last October warning the pontiff in stark terms not to push ahead with reforms to pastoral practices that would make the church more inclusive and open to the divorced and remarried, for example.

When the letter went public it created a furor, though Francis and his allies were still able to pass language that largely did what the pope wanted.

The upshot is that while Francis has begun naming bishops and promoting cardinals who share his vision for the church, observers say it will likely take another couple of years and perhaps 20 to 30 more appointments to the nearly 300-member hierarchy before Catholics would see a definite "Francis effect" on elections of USCCB leaders.

This blogger thinks that it would take a miracle for this papacy to last "another couple of years" but then this papacy that could be the "destroyer" that Jesus Christ had sent based on the words of San Francesco d'Assisi in Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis Of Assisi, translated by a religious of the Order. [2]


[1] http://www.sltrib.com/home/4589912-155/us-catholic-bishops-follow-trumps-election
[2] http://www.saintsbooks.net/books/St.%20Francis%20of%20Assisi%20-%20Works%20of%20the%20Seraphic%20Father.pdf: Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis Of Assisi, Trans. A religious of the Order. London: R. Washbourne, 1882, p. 250.