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Pope ‘Shocked’ By Gay Adoption, Urges Bishop to Speak Out Against Legislation Permitting It

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Photo Credit: Sunday Times of Malta

Photo Credit: Sunday Times of Malta

Pope Francis is “shocked” about legislation in Malta that would allow homosexual couples to adopt children and encouraged the auxiliary bishop of that island nation, Charles J. Scicluna, to “speak out” against the proposal, the bishop told the Sunday Times of Malta on Dec. 29.

In his Christmas Day sermon, Bishop Scicluna had defended the Catholic Church’s teaching against same-sex “marriage” and gay adoption. When asked why he would discuss such a topic as part of a Christmas homily, Bishop Scicluna said he had met with Pope Francis on Dec. 12 and the pope advised him to speak boldly on the subject.

“We discussed many aspects,” said Bishop Scicluna. “And when I raised the issue that’s worrying me as a bishop [gay adoption], he encouraged me to speak out.”

“[T]hat is exactly what I did in my Christmas sermon,” said Bishop Scicluna. “My sermon was not about the rights of gay people but about children’s rights.”

In his Christmas Day homily, the bishop had said, “The message of Christmas remains always a current message. It beckons and invites us to seek and recognize the true Wisdom that the manger of our Lord Jesus embraces ….

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Pope Tells America: Time to Reject Abortion and Accept Life at Every Stage

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

The same day that he was chosen as TIME magazine’s Person of the Year – Pope Francis exhorted North and South America to “accept human life at every stage, from the mother’s womb to old age.”

Amid misinterpretations of the pontiff’s pro-life stance in the mainstream media, the Holy Father continues to affirm his unwavering belief, completely united to that of the Catholic Church, that human life is sacred from conception to natural death.

He said (emphasis added):

Tomorrow is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Americas. I would like to greet all my brothers and sisters on that continent, and I do so thinking of the Virgin of Tepeyac.

When Our Lady appeared to Saint Juan Diego, her face was that of a woman of mixed blood, a mestiza, and her garments bore many symbols of the native culture. Like Jesus, Mary is close to all her sons and daughters; as a concerned mother, she accompanies them on their way through life. She shares all the joys and hopes, the sorrows and troubles of God’s People, which is made up of men and women of every race and nation.

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Pope Attacks Mega-Salaries and Wealth Gap in Peace Message

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Photo Credit; REUTERS/GIAMPIERO SPOSITO

Photo Credit; REUTERS/GIAMPIERO SPOSITO

Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.

In his message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace, marked around the world on January 1, he also called for sharing of wealth and for nations to shrink the gap between rich and poor, more of whom are getting only “crumbs”.

“The grave financial and economic crises of the present time … have pushed man to seek satisfaction, happiness and security in consumption and earnings out of all proportion to the principles of a sound economy,” he said.

“The succession of economic crises should lead to a timely rethinking of our models of economic development and to a change in lifestyles,” he said.

Francis, who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year on Wednesday, has urged his own Church to be more fair, frugal and less pompous and to be closer to the poor and suffering.

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Rush Limbaugh Goes Off on ‘Pure Marxism Coming Out of the Pope’ (+audio)

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Photo Credit: YouTube Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday said he was “befuddled” to hear Pope Francis bashing “unfettered capitalism” as a “new tyranny” in a papal proclamation.

“It’s actually unbelievable,” he began. “The pope has written, in part, about the utter evils of capitalism. And I have to tell you, I’ve got parts of it here I can share with you. It’s sad because this pope makes it very clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism and so forth.”

He went on to argue that the Catholic Church wouldn’t even exist without capitalism and the “tons of money” that funds the church and Vatican.

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Pope Francis: Catholic Church Will Never Compromise on Abortion (+video)

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Photo Credit: LifeNews Today, the Vatican released the text of Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”), an Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Francis that specifically addresses pro-life and pro-family issues.

The text of the message makes it clear that the Catholic Church cannot and will not compromise on its pro-life teachings on abortion.

214. Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”. It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life. On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty. Who can remain unmoved before such painful situations?

Continuing that pro-woman theme, Pope Francis says the Catholic Church must do more to help women in various pregnancy situations and following an abortion.

213. Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenceless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this. Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church’s effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative. Yet this defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems. Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the defence of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of the powers that be. Reason alone is sufficient to recognize the inviolable value of each single human life, but if we also look at the issue from the standpoint of faith, “every violation of the personal dignity of the human being cries out in vengeance to God and is an offence against the creator of the individual”.[176]

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Pope Francis: ‘We Won’t Resign Ourselves to a Middle East Without Christians’

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Photo Credit: AP/ Karim KadimPope Francis expressed new concern Thursday for the situation faced by “Christians who suffer in a particularly severe way the consequences of tensions and conflicts in many parts of the Middle East.”

“Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other areas of the Holy Land sometimes overflow with tears,” he told a gathering at the Vatican of leaders from Eastern rite churches that have links with the Roman Catholic Church.

“We won’t resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians who for two thousand years confess the name of Jesus, as full citizens in social, cultural and religious life of the nations to which they belong,” he said.

The pope appealed for “everyone’s right to a dignified life and to freely profess their faith [to] be respected.”

He also said he would “not rest as long as there are men and women, of any religion, affected in their dignity, deprived of life’s basic necessities, robbed of a future, forced to the status of refugees and asylum-seekers.”

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GOP Eyes Pope Francis for Divine Inspiration

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Photo Credit: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty For his party to survive, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich believes the GOP needs to broaden its appeal beyond “the infamous 47 percent.” Conservative activist Ralph Reed would rebrand the Republican Party as a force of compassion – feed the poor and clothe the naked. Republican strategist John Feehery says the GOP craves a populist leader – “a happy warrior.”

Their model: Pope Francis.

“What Francis is doing,” Reed said, “is rebalancing the Catholic Church’s message to stress the pastoral mission of good works and service to people before getting to ideology. What he’s not doing is jettisoning the Catholic doctrine. What about that is not a model for the Republican Party?”

For top Republicans, Catholics in particular, the pontiff’s headline-seizing efforts to reverse negative stereotypes of one of the world’s oldest and most ossified institutions – almost exclusively through symbolic gestures – stands as an example for the GOP. The Republican Party, according to polls, is viewed by many in the United States as insular, intolerant and lacking compassion for the poor while consorting with the rich.

The Catholic Church has the same “brand problem” – and since his election in March, Pope Francis has ruthlessly tackled it. Here are four lessons Republicans should take away from the pope’s early success…

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Conservative U.S. Catholics Feel Left Out of the Pope’s Embrace

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Photo Credit: Kendrick Brinson for NYTWhen Pope Francis was elected in March, Bridget Kurt received a small prayer card with his picture at her church and put it up on her refrigerator at home, next to pictures of her friends and her favorite saints.

She is a regular attender of Mass, a longtime stalwart in her church’s anti-abortion movement and a believer that all the church’s doctrines are true and beautiful and should be obeyed. She loved the last two popes, and keeps a scrapbook with memorabilia from her road trip to Denver in 1993 to see Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day.

But Ms. Kurt recently took the Pope Francis prayer card down and threw it away.

“It seems he’s focusing on bringing back the left that’s fallen away, but what about the conservatives?” said Ms. Kurt, a hospice community educator. “Even when it was discouraging working in pro-life, you always felt like Mother Teresa was on your side and the popes were encouraging you. Now I feel kind of thrown under the bus.”

In the eight months since he became pope, Francis has won affection worldwide for his humble mien and common touch. His approval numbers are skyrocketing. Even atheists are applauding.

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Pope Expels German ‘Luxury Bishop’ from Diocese (+video)

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Pope Francis expelled a German bishop from his diocese on Wednesday pending the outcome of a church inquiry into his 31 million-euro ($43-million) new residence complex.

The Vatican didn’t say how long Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, 53, would spend away from the diocese of Limburg but it refused calls to remove him permanently. It gave no information on where he would go or what he would do.

The Vatican said the bishop was leaving pending the outcome of a German church investigation into the expenditures and his role in the affair. Fellow bishops and lay Catholics in the diocese, however, expressed doubt that he would ever be able to return.

“This is a crisis of confidence that will be hard to overcome,” said the dean of the cathedral chapter, Guenther Geis.

Limburg’s vicar general, the Rev. Wolfgang Roesch, who had been due to start Jan. 1, will instead begin work immediately and will run the diocese during Tebartz-van Elst’s absence, the Vatican said.

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Bishop: Pope Leading Church to ‘Disaster’

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Photo Credit: WNDCiting the famous prophecies of Fatima, traditionalist Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard Fellay warned in an address in Kansas City that Pope Francis is precipitating the church’s decline and could be a herald that the world is entering the age of the Antichrist.

Fellay, who leads a society that has no canonical status in the Roman Catholic Church, said the “modernist views” professed by the pontiff are at odds with traditional Catholic teaching.

“The situation in the Catholic Church is a real disaster and the present pope is making it 10,000 times worse,” Fellay charged Oct. 12 at the Angelus Press Conference in Kansas City.

Fellay is superior general of the Society of St. Pius X, whose ministers, according to the Vatican, do not legitimately exercise ministry in the church.

Fellay, in his address, drew heavily from the Third Secret of Fatima, which many Catholics believe was given by the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, to Lucia Santos, one of three poor children who claimed to experience a series of six apparitions of Mary in Fatima, Portugal, between May and October in 1917.

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