The Shroud

There are so many instances of Catholicism being proven true and the shroud is one of them as science still can’t explain it, as the Catholic News Service notes.

An excerpt.

“VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Even with modern scientific technology, the Shroud of Turin continues to baffle researchers.

“Barrie Schwortz was the documenting photographer for the Shroud of Turin research project in 1978, an in-depth examination of what many people believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus.

“Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, “it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I’m a Jew and involved with probably the most important relic of Christianity,” Schwortz told Catholic News Service.

“Isn’t it funny how God always picks a Jew to be the messenger,” he said.

“Schwortz said that he, along with the other members of the research team who came from various faith backgrounds, had to set aside personal beliefs and focus on the shroud itself rather than any religious implication it might carry.

“We were there to gather information … to do empirical science and do it to the best of our abilities,” Schwortz said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with my personal religious beliefs. It has to do with the truth.”

“The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot linen that has a full-length photonegative image of a wounded man on the front and back of the cloth. The scientific team spent five days analyzing the chemical and physical properties of the shroud, paying special attention to the topographical information showing depth that was encoded in the light and dark shading of the cloth.

“”Our team went to Turin to answer one simple question: How was the image formed?” Schwortz said. “Ultimately, we failed.

“We could tell you what it’s not — not a painting, not a photograph, not a scorch, not a rubbing — but we know of no mechanism to this day that can make an image with the same chemical and physical properties as the image on the shroud.”

“Testing has been performed on the shroud since the initial analyses, and the results continue to be contested. In 1988 carbon testing dated the cloth to the 12th century, leading many to conclude that the shroud is a medieval forgery.

“In a paper published in 2005, chemist Raymond Rogers, member of the 1978 research team, challenged the claim that the shroud is a fake. He said the sample used in the 1988 carbon testing was a piece used to mend the cloth in the Middle Ages and that the methodology of the testing was erroneous.”

The Imprisoned Priest

Though he was imprisoned and horribly brutalized for fifteen years by the Communists, this remarkable priest, Ioan Ploscaru, truly walked the talk, as Chiesa reports.

An excerpt.

“ROME, April 23, 2013 – At least five times in the last two weeks, Pope Francis has called attention back to “our many brothers and sisters who give witness to the name of Jesus, even to the point of martyrdom.”

“During the same days as these appeals from the pope, the Romanian bishop Alexandru Mesian has gone from city to city in Italy to present to the public the witness of one of these martyrs of our time, his predecessor in the leadership of the Greek-Catholic diocese of Lugoj.

“His name is Ioan Ploscaru. He died in 1998 at the age of 87, fifteen of which he spent in prison. For one fault alone: that of remaining faithful to the Church of Rome and therefore of refusing to switch to the Orthodox Church, as ordered by the communist government.

“The second world war had just ended, and just as in Ukraine, in Romania as well the regime wanted to wipe out the local Greek-Catholic Church, with its bishops, priests, and millions of faithful, excluding it from the law and incorporating it forcibly into the Orthodox Church. In the face of their refusal, in 1948, all of the bishops were arrested. They would die in jail. Other bishops were ordained clandestinely. These included Ioan Ploscaru, who received the imposition of the hands from the Vatican nuncio in Bucharest on November 30, 1948. But he would hold out in the catacombs for only a few months. In August of 1949 he would be arrested as well.

“And his Calvary began. Which he then recounted in a book of memoirs. The book was published in Romania in 1993. But it was only this year that it crossed the borders of his country, in a very well edited Italian edition printed by Edizioni Dehoniane in Bologna.

“It is an extraordinary book for many reasons. It recalls the “Kolyma Tales” of Salamov when it depicts the ferocity of the jailers, cruel to the point of the incredible, amid humiliations that included “[making the prisoners] eat their own feces, urinating in their mouths, forcing them to confess having practiced aberrant sexual acts with their parents.” But it also recalls the descriptive serenity and the irony of Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago.”

“Above all it is the account of an experience of faith. Which lights up even the darkest nights. Which kindles with astonishment even the most depraved. Which arrives at feeling mercy even for the most terrible persecutors.”

Pope Francis

In this superb essay by George Weigel, our Holy Father’s humility and Jesuit spirituality are explored.

An excerpt.

“Rome – Twenty-first-century ecclesiastical heraldry may strike some as an arcane hangover from a long-gone past, when bishops were lords temporal as well as lords spiritual. Still, the rich vocabulary of heraldic symbolism adds a little class to a world of Twitter hashtags, and the mottoes that Catholic bishops — and popes — choose for their coats of arms can provide important clues about their character and formation. John Paul II’s “Totus tuus” (Entirely yours), as well as the composition of his stemma papale (a large “M” beneath a gold cross on a blue field), spoke volumes about his Marian piety and his conviction that his life was guided and protected by the Mother of the Church. Benedict XVI’s rather complex coat of arms was a nightmare for the Vatican gardeners who maintain a floral representation of the reigning pontiff’s stemma just behind St. Peter’s Basilica; but his motto, “Cooperatores veritatis” (Coworkers of the truth), signaled that his would be a pontificate of clear teaching rooted in deep and broad scholarship.

“What, then, shall we make of the episcopal motto that Pope Francis, the former Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio, S.J., took during his service as archbishop of Buenos Aires –  “Miserando atque eligendo” (Lowly and also chosen) — and will retain as pope?

“Foremost, expect an evangelical humility. In the first days of his pontificate, “humble” was the adjective most frequently applied to the new bishop of Rome, and rightly so. It’s important to recognize, however, that Pope Francis’s humility has a distinctive character. It is evangelical humility, a Gospel-centered and Christ-centered humility. And it has been shaped over the course of his life by classic Jesuit (or Ignatian) spirituality: the rigorously disciplined commitment to selflessness-in-Christian-mission that was inculcated in members of the Society of Jesus before Jesuit formation became one of the victims of the Catholic Revolution That Never Was. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., became a sign of contradiction — a persecuted sign of contradiction — within his own religious order, as too many of his Jesuit brethren were seduced by the solipsistic zeitgeist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Pope Francis’s approach to the spiritual life and his understanding of Christian discipleship is, by contrast, the polar opposite of this faux spirituality of self-absorption, in which self-esteem displaces selflessness, and commitments to both ecclesial obedience and mission crumble as a result.

“The new pope’s more authentically Ignatian approach to the interior life is nicely captured in a famous prayer, the Suscipe, of Saint Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus — a prayer that also offers an interpretive key to Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s self-abasing episcopal motto:

“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

“my memory, my understanding,

“and my entire will,

all I have and call my own.

“You have given all to me.

“To you, Lord, I return it.

“Everything is yours; do with it what you will.

“Give me only your love and your grace.

“That is enough for me.

“At the very center of this prayer is the sacrifice of one’s “entire will.” Submission of one’s will, to the divine will and to the will of one’s superiors, was crucial to the original Jesuit charism, or genius. The Catholic Church took an enormous gamble in accepting Ignatius Loyola’s offer to build a self-consciously elite corps of intellectual shock troops to meet the challenge of the Reformation and to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth: to “set all ablaze,” as the inscription beneath the statue of Ignatius at Jesuit GHQ near the Vatican sums up the Basque saint’s intention. Self-consciously elite bodies can revivify flaccid institutions; they can also corrupt them. It all depends on the will, and on the direction in which it is bent.

“The Catholic gamble on the Society of Jesus was that the distinctive fourth Jesuit vow — radical obedience to the pope and complete availability for whatever mission he gave the Society or individual Jesuits — would bind this elite to the body of the Church so that it could be a true intellectual and evangelical leaven. And that is precisely what the Society was for centuries. But when the confusions of the post–Vatican II Church met the turbulence summed up in that epigrammatic year, 1968, things quickly unraveled. And a community of vowed religious that had long prided itself on its defense of orthodoxy now took the lead in challenging Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxis at every conceivable turn, in an embrace of fashionable enthusiasms that ran from Marxism to environmentalism to radical feminism and gay liberation.

“In his days as Jesuit provincial in Argentina, Father Bergoglio resisted the deconstruction of Catholic doctrine and the corruption of religious life that beset too much of the Society of Jesus after Vatican II. One imagines that Bergoglio was grateful for Pope John Paul II’s early, if failed, attempt to reform the Society by putting it into a kind of papal receivership. And one can readily imagine the new pope’s being appalled by the notorious remark of an Irish Jesuit, Cyril Barrett, who was heard to bellow in a London restaurant, in respect of Mehmet Ali Agca (John Paul’s wannabe assassin), “The only thing wrong with that bloody Turk was that he couldn’t shoot straight!”

“But why, finally, was Bergoglio such a sign of contradiction within his own religious community? Why did a world-renowned Jesuit say after the 2005 conclave that, while he was no fan of Joseph Ratzinger, he nonetheless ended up supporting him because anyone was better than Bergoglio? To be sure, Bergoglio drew this kind of animosity because he is a man who accepts the symphony of Catholic truth in full, and that brought down on him the odium theologicum of the more deconstructively inclined. Perhaps more to the point for the future (and for the rest of the Church), Bergoglio was a living challenge to his Jesuit brethren because he understands that the life of discipleship, mirrored in Saint Ignatius’s Suscipe, is the antithesis of late-modern and postmodern willfulness: “Take, Lord, and receive . . . my entire will.” The whole nine yards. All of it.”

Archbishop Romero

His cause for canonization has been unblocked, and it is time. It has been blocked because many felt he was too deeply into liberation theology but from what I am learning about him by studying his works and documentaries about him, he was into, as someone else put it so beautifully,  “Beatitude Theology rather than Liberation Theology”

An excerpt from the article from Catholic News Service.

“VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family and the official promoter of the sainthood cause of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, said the process to beatify and eventually canonize the slain Salvadoran archbishop has been unblocked.

“Archbishop Paglia, who has been the postulator of Archbishop Romero’s cause for years, made the announcement in a homily April 20, just a few hours after meeting with Pope Francis.

“The Italian archbishop, who was preaching at a Mass in the Italian city Molfetta to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of the diocese’s Bishop Antonio Bello — widely known by the diminutive Don Tonino — said, “Today, the anniversary of the death of Don Tonino, the cause for the beatification of Archbishop Romero was unblocked.”

“The archbishop gave no more details, and his office said April 22 that no more would be said until there is something “concrete” to report.

“In his homily, Archbishop Paglia said, “Martyrs help us live, help us understand there is more joy in giving than in receiving. This is why we need to preserve their memories.”

“He added that he hoped Archbishop Romero and Bishop Bello — known for his care of the poor and his commitment to peace — could be beatified together “because Jesus always sent the apostles out two by two.”

“Bishop Bello died in 1993; the Vatican approved the opening of his sainthood cause in 2007.

“Archbishop Romero was shot March 24, 1980, as he celebrated Mass. The Congregation for Saints’ Causes authorized the opening of his cause in 1993. Often the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is asked to review the writings of sainthood candidates to ensure they are free of doctrinal error; many people working for Archbishop Romero’s cause described the review as “blocked” in the congregation from 2000 to 2005.”

Goodwill, Doing Good Still

A seminal American social enterprise organization still works, as this article from Philanthropy Magazine notes.

An excerpt.

“A chance, not a charity,” was how Edgar Helms, the founder of Goodwill Industries International, described the organization he founded in 1902. Over the ensuing hundred-plus years, the organization has stayed true to Helms’ core values: self-reliance, self-help, and self-respect for the jobless and needy.

“Born just after the Civil War in upstate New York, Helms was a distinguished graduate of Cornell and a divinity student at Boston University. His first ministerial assignment took him to a struggling mission in the South End of Boston, where he was shocked to discover the poverty of much of his congregation. Largely immigrant, unlettered, with few skills and generally considered unemployable, his flock lived in one of the worst slums in the United States.

“Helms, like many of his contemporaries, had been profoundly influenced by the Social Gospel movement, which dedicated itself to solving societal ills as a means toward salvation. Inspired by the movement’s insistence on strenuous self-improvement, Helms rejected mere handouts for the poor, favoring instead what today would be called job training. With burlap sacks slung over their shoulders, Helms and his wife made the rounds of Boston’s affluent neighborhoods collecting worn-out, used, and unwanted items. Helms would then employ his congregants at $4 per day (sometimes in vouchers for goods when money was tight) to repair and resell the items at low cost. He thus created a market of affordable goods—and the jobs to help people afford them.

“Central to Helms’ mission was the transformative power of work. “You can’t help a man by doubting him,” he told an interviewer. “When he tells us he wants to work, we assume that he does. When you give a man a job, you are not dealing with a pauper. He is not an applicant for charity. He wants to give something for what he receives, so we do not need to make ‘investigation’ the first item of our program.”

“Helms’ idea took off, and he quickly began to expand in the United States and internationally. While Methodist seed money fueled its earliest expansion, it quickly became a secular nonprofit in order to maximize its reach. But it has never lost its roots as an enterprise that seeks to build self-reliance. “We believe work is the mechanism by which people gain financial and personal independence,” says Jim Gibbons, the CEO of Goodwill Industries, International, the global giant that perpetuates Helms’ founding credo.

“A giant it is: Goodwill Industries is a $4.5 billion enterprise, with stores in the U.S., Canada, and 13 foreign countries. Its 2,800 stores have more than 100,000 “team members,” and upwards of 85 percent of its sales go back into the community in the form of salaries, job training programs, and other work-focused assistance. Only 2 percent of its budget comes from traditional private donations; two-thirds comes from sales of donated goods, while the rest comes from federal, state, and local grants to administer job training, counseling, and placement programs.

“A graduate of Harvard Business School—indeed, the first blind Harvard MBA—and a former telecom executive, Gibbons has the background to match the typical multinational CEO. But his role is somewhat different, since Goodwill Industries, befitting the organization’s entrepreneurial ethos, is decentralized, with each local Goodwill answering to a local board that sets operational goals. “I can’t sit in [Goodwill’s headquarters in suburban] D.C. and figure out what they need in Akron,” says Gibbons. “My job is to find the good ideas and help other Goodwills steal them, for lack of a better word.”

Israel, the Happy Country

Israel is the birthland of our faith and no one writes more perceptively about it than Caroline Glick in this excellent summary of Israel’s reasons to be happy.

An excerpt.

“As Independence Day celebrations were winding down Tuesday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a guest appearance on Channel 2’s left-wing satire show Eretz Nehederet. One of the final questions that the show’s host Eyal Kitzis asked the premier was how he would like to be remembered after he leaves office.

“Netanyahu thought a moment and said, “I’d like to be remembered as the leader who preserved Israel’s security.”

“On the face of it, Netanyahu’s stated aspiration might seem dull. In a year he’ll be the longest-serving prime minister in the state’s history, and all he wants is to preserve our national security? Why is he aiming so low? And yet, the studio audience reacted to Netanyahu’s modest goal with a thunderclap of applause.

“After pausing to gather his thoughts, a clearly befuddled Kitzis mumbled something along the lines of, “Well, if you manage to make peace as well, we wouldn’t object.”

“The audience was silent.

“The disparity between the audience’s exultation and Kitzis’s shocked disappointment at Netanyahu’s answer exposed – yet again – the yawning gap between the mainstream Israeli view of the world, and that shared by members of our elite class.

“The Israeli public gave our elites the opportunity to try out their peace fantasies in the 1990s. We gave their peace a chance and got repaid with massive terror and international isolation.

“We are not interested in repeating the experience.

“We will be nice to leftists, if they are polite. We might even watch their shows, if there’s nothing else on or they are mildly entertaining. But we won’t listen to them anymore.

“This is why US President Barack Obama’s visit last month had no impact on public opinion or government policy.

“Obama came, hugged Netanyahu and showered us with love just like Bill Clinton did back in the roaring ’90s. He praised us to high heaven and told us he has our back. And then he told us we should force our leaders to give Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to our sworn enemies even as they teach their children to aspire to kill our children.

“And we smiled and wished him a pleasant flight home.

“Obama had no idea what he was getting into when he came here. Like Kitzis and his colleagues on Channel 2, Obama surrounds himself with people who, like him, prefer fantasy to reality. In Obama’s world, Islamic jihad is about the West, not about jihadists. In Obama’s world, the most pressing issue on the international agenda is apartments for Jews in Jerusalem and Efrat. And in Obama’s world, what Israelis need more than anything else is for leftist Europeans to love us.

“Talk about retro.

“But a lot has changed since the 1990s. Twenty years after Yitzhak Rabin shook Yasser Arafat’s hand on the White House lawn and so officially ushered in Israel’s Age of Terror, most Israelis don’t really care what the Europeans or the Arabs think of us.

“The Europeans prattle on about Israeli racism, and threaten to put yellow stars or some other nasty mark on Israeli goods. They ban Israeli books from their libraries in Scotland. They boycott Israeli universities, professors and students in England. In Italy they hold rallies for convicted mass murderer Marwan Barghouti at their national Senate. And in France they butcher Jewish children.

“And then the likes of Catherine Ashton expect us to care what they think about us.

“Well, we don’t.

“For their part, Americans are bemoaning the resignation of the unelected Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and insisting that he was a true partner for Israel, who just couldn’t make a go of it due to forces beyond his control. While most recognize Fayyad’s departure has nothing to do with Israel, some US pontificators have blamed Israel for Fayyad’s failure. Elliott Abrams, for instance, wrote, “Israeli governments also gave him less cooperation than he deserved.” To that we answer, Fayyad was nothing more than a Western delusion, like Arab peace with Israel.”

California’s Realignment Still Failing

And people are still being brutally victimized and sometimes murdered by criminals released early due to realignment, as summarized by the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

An excerpt.

“With the adoption of AB109 in April 2011, California’s Legislature and Governor Jerry Brown announced that the State would no longer take responsibility for criminals convicted of roughly 500 of what they defined as “low level” felonies, such as assault, spousal abuse, commercial burglary, drug dealing, identity theft, and auto theft. AB109 (which the Governor called Public Safety Realignment) prohibits prison sentences for these offenders. Instead the law requires counties to sentence them to terms in overcrowded local jails, or a combination of jail time and probation, home detention, or a treatment program. At the same time, criminals released from prison, whose most recent felony was one of these new “low level” crimes, are automatically placed on county probation rather than the more intense supervision under state parole. This includes criminals whose record of prior crimes includes child kidnapping, child sexual assault, home invasion, and murder.

“As a result, repeat felons are being cyclically arrested and released much earlier and with much less supervision than they would have been prior to Realignment. This continues until they commit a violent or serious crime such as rape, robbery, aggravated assault, or murder, leaving victims permanently scarred and sometimes killed. Since March of last year, the Sacramento-based CJLF has been compiling news stories of crimes committed by criminals released under Realignment. In February, the Foundation also reported on the FBI Preliminary crime statistics for 2012, which showed sharp increases for the first time in over 15 years in all categories of crime in California. That report is here.

“According to San Bernardino County Probation Department Spokesman Chris Condon, the way offenders are classified as non-sexual, non-violent, and non-serious is an issue. “The most recent offense is taken into consideration for sentencing, not past offenses, which poses a problem all its own. . . “Three out of 10 people coming to us had serious violent felonies prior to their last offense.” (Daily Press, March 30).

“Sex offender Jerome DeAvila was arrested February 26, 2013, for the rape, robbery, and murder of his 76-year-old grandmother in Stockton. Her body was found dumped in a wheelbarrow in her backyard. DeAvila had been in and out of jail about a dozen times over the previous 12 months for parole violations. His most recent release was on February 20, 2013, after being arrested for violating his parole by not registering as a sex offender. Despite a 30-day jail sentence, he was released one day after pleading guilty due to a court cap which mandates releases when jails reach their population capacity. According to the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office, DeAvila was released under AB109. (The Stockton Record, March 1). Records from the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office indicate that DeAvila was released within 24 hours of being arrested in almost all of his nearly dozen arrests in the past nine months. (The Record Searchlight, March 17). San Joaquin County Chief Probation Officer Stephanie James said, “With so many people getting released early, jail is not a meaningful consequence.” (The Stockton Record, March 12).

Restorative Justice in High School

A strategy that some would bring to all levels of the criminal justice system—for which it is manifestly unsuited—is suited for high schools working with troubled students, as this article from the New York Times notes.

An excerpt.

“OAKLAND, Calif. — There is little down time in Eric Butler’s classroom.

“My daddy got arrested this morning,” Mercedes Morgan, a distraught senior, told the students gathered there.

“Mr. Butler’s mission is to help defuse grenades of conflict at Ralph J. Bunche High School, the end of the line for students with a history of getting into trouble. He is the school’s coordinator for restorative justice, a program increasingly offered in schools seeking an alternative to “zero tolerance” policies like suspension and expulsion.

“The approach now taking root in 21 Oakland schools, and in Chicago, Denver and Portland, Ore., tries to nip problems and violence in the bud by forging closer, franker relationships among students, teachers and administrators. It encourages young people to come up with meaningful reparations for their wrongdoing while challenging them to develop empathy for one another through “talking circles” led by facilitators like Mr. Butler.

“Even before her father’s arrest on a charge of shooting at a car, Mercedes was prone to anger. “When I get angry, I blank out,” she said. She listed some reasons on a white board — the names of friends and classmates who lost their lives to Oakland’s escalating violence. Among them was Kiante Campbell, a senior shot and killed during a downtown arts festival in February. His photocopied image was plastered around Mr. Butler’s room, along with white roses left from a restorative “grief circle.”

“Restorative justice adopts some techniques of the circle practice that is a way of life for indigenous cultures, fostering collaboration. Students speak without interruption, for example, to show mutual respect.

“A lot of these young people don’t have adults to cry to,” said Be-Naiah Williams, an after-school coordinator at Bunche whose 21-year-old brother was gunned down two years ago in a nightclub. “So whatever emotion they feel, they go do.”

“Oakland expanded the program after an initial success six years ago. Since then, the need for an alternative discipline has become more urgent: Last year, the district faced a Department of Education civil rights investigation into high suspension and expulsion rates, particularly among African-American boys.

“A report by the Urban Strategies Council, a research and policy organization in Oakland, showed that African-American boys made up 17 percent of the district’s enrollment but 42 percent of all suspensions, and were six times more likely to be suspended than their white male classmates. Many disciplinary actions were for “defiance” — nonviolent infractions like texting in class or using profanity with a teacher.

“A body of research indicates that lost class time due to suspension and expulsion results in alienation and often early involvement with the juvenile justice system, said Nancy Riestenberg, of the Minnesota Department of Education, an early adopter of restorative justice. Being on “high alert” for violence is not conducive to learning, she added.

“Many studies have concluded that zero-tolerance policies do not make schools safer.

“We’re a terribly violent community,” said Junious Williams, the chief executive of the Urban Strategies Council. “We have not done very much around teaching kids alternatives to conflict that escalates into violence.”

“Among the lost youngsters was Damon Smith, now an A student at Bunche, who said he had been suspended more than 15 times. “You start thinking it’s cool,” he said. “You think you’re going to come back to school and catch up, but unless you’re a genius you won’t. It made me want to mess up even more.”

“Damon, 18, said restorative justice sessions helped him view his behavior through a different lens. “I didn’t know how to express emotions with my mouth. I knew how to hit people,” he said. “I feel I can go to someone now.”

Analysis of Pope Francis on Vatican II

An excellent analysis from Catholic Culture.

An excerpt.

“Pope Francis had some strong words to say today about those who resist, twist, or ignore the impetus of the Second Vatican Council, which he described as “a beautiful work of the Holy Spirit”. What does this mean for us?

“The first thing to note is that the Pope’s remarks apply to all of us. We all tend to resist the work of the Holy Spirit; we all tend to try to remain within our comfort zones. Pope Francis was preaching on St. Stephen’s words before his martyrdom: “You stiff-necked people…you always resist the Holy Spirit.” One way or another, we are all guilty of such resistance.

“The second thing to note is the Pope’s references to two of Our Lord’s own criticisms, which seem to identify two levels of resistance to the Holy Spirit. Our Lord rebuked his disciples on the road to Emmaus: “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” (Lk 24:25). And he rebuked the scribes and Pharisees generally, saying:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? (Mt 23:29-33)

“We can guess from these references that Pope Francis sees in the Church two levels of obstruction of the action of the Holy Spirit in our own day, just as Our Lord did in His day. At the first level, again, are essentially all of those who seek to follow Christ, for we are ever slower than we should be to grasp and respond wholeheartedly to the will of God. And to take the Pope’s particular example, this slowness includes a failure to respond as promptly and energetically as we should to the work of the Holy Spirit as manifested through the Second Vatican Council. We are dulled by our attachments, we fail to trust Christ completely, we do not wish to be moved by the Holy Spirit in new and surprising ways. Yet we are all obliged to make spiritual progress as rapidly as possible, and so to take the Council’s message for the Church in our times to heart.

“Those at the second level, as the harshness of Our Lord’s language attests, are in a far more serious sort of opposition. Once again taking the Pope’s central example, on this level we have all those who positively set themselves against the Holy Spirit’s work through the acts of the Council. This can only refer to those who actually impede authentic Catholic renewal by denying the validity or appropriateness of the Conciliar texts.

“On the one hand, we have all those who claim the Catholic name but prefer to alter its meaning to fit into the dominant secular culture. These assert that the Council was a wonderful revolutionary affair which changed Catholic teachings in light of mature modern insights, even though the alleged changes are contrary to what the documents actually say. In theological terms, these are the Modernists, aided and abetted by the lukewarm, who always use theology for their own convenience. For a time, they actually hijacked the legacy of the Council throughout much of the Church, making it very difficult for the renewal which Pope John XXIII envisioned to gather steam. Their power, praise God, is rapidly dwindling now.

“On the other hand, we have those who claim to be more Catholic than pope or council. They agree that the Council was indeed a revolution, but a calamitous and ultimately illegitimate one. They argue that the Conciliar acts are replete with a combination of error, imprudence and vagueness which makes them positively harmful, and not at all a fitting inspiration for legitimate Catholic development. Often calling themselves Traditionalists, these almost literally stand on ceremony, ossifying the Church’s pre-Vatican II culture in accordance with their own comfortable piety.”

Pope Francis on Vatican II

He states clearly and unequivocally its continuity with Church history and tradition, as reported by Vatican Radio.

An excerpt.

“Pope Francis said the Holy Spirit pushes people and the Church forward but we resist this and do not want to change. His remarks came during his homily at the Mass on Tuesday morning celebrated at the Santa Marta residence which was dedicated to Benedict XVI in honour of his 86th birthday. Susy Hodges reports:

“Pope Francis dedicated Tuesday’s mass to Benedict XVI 16th who turned 86 on this date. “May the Love be with him, comfort him and gave him much consolation,” he said.

“Pope Francis’ homily at the mass was centred on the theme of the Holy Spirit and our resistance to it. It took its inspiration from the first reading of the day which was the story of the martyrdom of St. Stephen who described his accusers as stubborn people who were always resisting the Holy Spirit.

“Put frankly, the Pope continued, “the Holy Spirit upsets us because it moves us, it makes us walk, it pushes the Church forward.” He said that we wish “to calm down the Holy Spirit, we want to tame it and this is wrong.” Pope Francis said “that’s because the Holy Spirit is the strength of God, it’s what gives us the strength to go forward” but many find this upsetting and prefer the comfort of the familiar.

“Nowadays, he went on, “everybody seems happy about the presence of the Holy Spirit but it’s not really the case and there is still that temptation to resist it.” The Pope said one example of this resistance was the Second Vatican council which he called “a beautiful work of the Holy Spirit.” But 50 years later, “have we done everything the Holy Spirit was asking us to do during the Council,” he asked. The answer is “No,” said Pope Francis. “We celebrate this anniversary, we put up a monument but we don’t want it to upset us. We don’t want to change and what’s more there are those who wish to turn the clock back.” This, he went on, “is called stubbornness and wanting to tame the Holy Spirit.”