SSPX and FatherZ in Agreement at Last in Criticism of Pope Francis

Edit: FatherZ has criticized the Society of St. Pius X for years, oftentimes unfairly in our opinion.  Now he's criticizing Pope Francis.  Now he's joined the ranks of the Pope Critics. They seem to have a common foe.  There are plenty of negative results from the Bergoglio Effect, but perhaps there is an upside to it as well.  This from the official Society webpage:

How confusing is the whole interview! It is another bombshell. Tomorrow's explanations will try to minimize the damage. Tonight CNA has already published an article entitled: “Stop freaking out over these two sentences from Pope Francis”. 

What most people will remember is that one day the pope said on a plane that contraception is sometimes morally acceptable and it is not always a sin! 

However the infallible and definitive teaching of the Church on contraception has been clearly given by Paul VI. The comments of the pope on a plane, the myth about Paul VI and the nuns in the Belgian Congo (based only on a claim made in a 1993 Jesuit magazine article by Fr. Giacomo Perico SJ.) and the unproven transmission of Zika virus cannot change God’s law taught by the Church.

Here, FatherZ says that the story about Paul VI excusing African nuns of making use of contraceptives is spurious, thus accusing Pope Francis of spreading an urban legend:

I’ve heard this before. I never believed it. 

Years ago on the COL Forum (which I ran) we had a discussion about this. One of the staffers tried to dig up the old files. In the meantime he – The Great Roman™ – sent this information. It was not originally written in English, so I touched it up here and there… but not very much.

This reads like a soap opera, the one hand. It reads like a vicious campaign of lies and disinformation designed to confuse the faithful and undermine the Church, on the other.

The urban legend (lie) is now so common that even high-ranking churchmen cite it as if it happened. They aren’t lying, per se. They are passing on something that isn’t true but that they think is true… even if it really doesn’t pass the smell test.

Opus Dei has been pushing contraceptives for a while now.

http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2010/11/opus-dei-definitely-advocates-condom.html?m=1

Judas’ Words Echo Through the Centuries

Edit: interesting that so many commentators are creating a false dichotomy between poverty and glorious liturgy and the beauty of the Church. It summons up an image of Judas and the incredulous disciples:

And when Jesus was in Bethania, in the house of Simon the leper, There came to him a woman having an alabaster box of precious ointment, and poured it on his head as he was at table. And the disciples seeing it, had indignation, saying: To what purpose is this waste? For this might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. And Jesus knowing it, said to them: Why do you trouble this woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.

For the poor you have always with you: but me you have not always. For she in pouring this ointment upon my body, hath done it for my burial. Amen I say to you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she hath done, shall be told for a memory of her. Then went one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the chief priests, And said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver.

FatherZ expresses this misgiving as he discusses his own ministry in Holy Mass and his own coming to terms with its “trappings”. Indeed, the caricature of humility and poverty from the media, and others who should know better, when they talks about Pope Francis’ simplifications when St. Francis himself spared no expense for the beauty of his church, vestments and appointments. FatherZ passionately writes:

Back when I resisted the liturgical kissing of my hand when being handed a chain, spoon or chalice, I had made the mistake of imagining myself to be more humble by that resistance. That was a mistake. Ironically, my resistance to those gestures turned the gestures into being about me. Submission to the gestures, on the other hand, erases the priest’s own person and helps him to be what he needs to be in that moment: priest, victim, alter Christus. The trappings, the rubrics, the gestures erase the priest’s poor person. Resisting these things runs the risk of making them all about the priest again.

In a sense, I had made the objection of Judas about the precious nard which the woman brought to the Lord. Jesus responded that the precious stuff should be kept for His Body, which was to be sacrificed. People who object that we should have only poor liturgy are falling into the argument of Judas. We must submit to the precious and sublime in recognition of the truth of what is going on. To pit the sublime and complex and precious and beautiful against the low, simple and humble is schizophrenic and not Catholic.

There is no real conflict of the humble and the sublime in liturgical worship

Link to painting a stained glass store.

Apologetics Cruisers

Edit: is there a rule against taking some form of recreation even during Lent?  In a time when most Catholics don't  fast during Lent, much less avoid meat, this newfound Jansenism on the part of some borders on the hypocritical.   For what could be worse? Supporting abortion, sodomy, the distribution of condoms and Marxist schemes using the Catholic name, or going on a cruise during Lent with Father Z?

Surely, some of these effete newly austere navel gazers have the purest motives when they attack Michael Voris and FatherZ for holding a Lenten Retreat aboard a ship bound for the Caribean islands.

Critics of this retreat would do well to take a close look at what they're objecting to.  A retreat can be a  a beautiful place, even a kind of hothouse, with good food and companions, where a man can withdraw, retreat, from the rigors of his life to take stock, still his heart and listen for God's voice.

Most retreat facilities fall nothing short of luxurious and might be accused of providing a vision of heaven and are comparable to an above average to luxurious hotel.  After all, what is a cruise ship but a hotel on the water?  Even the more austere retreat houses are far from uncomfortable, but not all of us are Carthusians, or meant to be.

Certainly, the J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative creation of the last refuge of the Noldor in Middle Earth at Rivendell has been compared to a retreat, a place to rest and refresh the soul.  It is nothing short of glorious and luxurious.

Indeed, there are few things more peaceful than sailing along the water, watching a magnificent sunset and hearing the sound of the waves and the birds after having heard a moving and thoughtful Conference by the skillful retreat director.

Any way, the Catholic Church's own puritanical Jacobins are up in arms all over the place and the usual suspects are making themselves heard.  Some of the most vocal critics have been on "apologetics" cruises themselves, which were quite expensive and frankly decadent, upwards of 10,000 dollars.  

The cost of going on a Father Z and Michael Voris cruise is $1,000-$2,000,  which is rather Spartan in comparison.

Karl Keating himself has been kind and wise enough to see how this current blogger frenzy might bleed over into his own Catholic cruise interests, which one of the most vocal critics of Voris forgets he benefits from.