It’s the little things that count, don’t you think? It says, “…fast or slow, all divorcees who request it will be admitted” to Holy Communion.

True to his pattern, Francis is already talking to his buddies and giving the game plan away in plain terms. Which no doubt will immediately be vigorously denied by everyone but him. Scalfari has been the first to hear it from the pope’s own lips, and the choice of outlet was perfect since Scalfari has already created the plausible deniability so beloved of the North American Catholic bloggers. I can hear them already: “But he doesn’t take notes! He doesn’t make recordings! The pope totally could not have said that! You Trads are always trying to stir up trouble!”

Yawn. OK, so if he’s so unreliable, why does the pope keep going back to this old reprobate and confirmed enemy of the Church?

Oh, what’s that? He’s trying to convert him?

Do you guys stay up at night working this stuff out ahead of time, or does it just come naturally?

Rorate comments

There is no reason to doubt its general accuracy. We are way past the time of doubting the general accuracy of the Scalfari quotes. Not now, that the papal interviews to Scalfari have been published on the Vatican website, that they have been occasionally published by the Vatican publishing house (LEV) itself – for instance, as part of the book to the right.

It was a direct quote by Scalfari, as the Pope explained to his dear Atheist friend what the Synod had decided (in fact as an answer to another editorial on the Synod Scalfari had published in Repubblica).

The quote is the following:

In the same phone conversation of the past Wednesday, he declared himself very interested in the article I had dedicated to him two Sundays beforehand. He asked me what I thought of the conclusions of the Synod on the family. I responded – as I had already written – that the compromise that the Synod had reached did not seem to take into account the changes had had taken place in the family in the past fifty years, [and] therefore pointing towards the recovery of the traditional family was an objective that was completely unthinkable. I added that the open Church willed by him finds herself before a family that is open both in its goodness and in its wickedness, and that it is this that the Church finds before her.

“It is true — Pope Francis answered — it is a truth and for that matter the family that is the basis of any society changes continuously, as all things change around us. We must not think that the family does not exist any longer, it will always exist, because ours is a social species, and the family is the support beam of sociability, but it cannot be avoided that the current family, open as you say, contains some positive aspects, and some negative ones. … The diverse opinion of the bishops is part of this modernity of the Church and of the diverse societies in which she operated, but the goal is the same, and for that which regards the admission of the divorced to the Sacraments, [it] confirms that this principle has been accepted by the Synod. This is bottom line result, the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths,

all the divorced who ask will be admitted.“

[Rorate translation]

…

So, here we go again for another turn on the Pope Francis Bergoglio Roundabout:

Pope says something heretical to his best Marxist atheist pal; Catholic world explodes in outrage; American neo-catholic papologists dive for their keyboards to – at the same time – insult the Trads for getting upset and explain why whatever obnoxious crap the pope has spewed this week is in fact perfectly orthodox; Ed Pentin calls Fr. Lombardi asking for a clarification; Lombardi first denies, then issues a second statement neither denying nor confirming, then issues a third saying that Scalfari’s interpretation of what the Holy Stepfather said is not completely disconsonant with his thought on the matter; Catholic journalists walk away trying to work out what that means; New York Times and Newsweek publishes another story headlined “Pope to change Catholic Church forever!!!” …

Round and round we go…

where we’ll stop, nobody knows.

Oh wait, yes we do.

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UPDATE:

Ooop! We’ve already started. Ed just sent me the link to his thing in the Register, and Lo! there’s Lombardi in fine fettle, already issuing the first denial:

…”All divorcees” admitted to the sacraments… “cannot be considered the Pope’s thinking”…

Father Lombardi said he would not be issuing a statement about the matter as those who have “followed the preceding events and work in Italy know the way Scalfari writes and knows these things well.” Over the past two years, Scalfari has written several such articles following conversations with Pope Francis, each of which has drawn controversy.

This exchange appears no different, which raises the question: why does the Pope continue to speak to someone such as Scalfari, and discuss such sensitive subjects with him, when he knows he is unreliable but likely to report his words without reference to a recording or transcript?

Interesting isn’t it? Lombardi and Jimmy Akin more or less doing exactly the same thing: “Oh, he couldn’t possibly have said that… that guy’s notoriously unreliable. I’m sure the pope’s really a Catholic! I mean, he’s the freakin’ pope, right? What else could he be?”

Aaaannd… Scalfari interview posted to the Vatican website in four… three… two…

But note what he didn’t say: “I spoke with the pope/his secretary this morning, and he wanted me to tell the world that that Scalfari guy keeps getting the quotes wrong and making stuff up! We keep giving him second chances because we’re hoping to bring him to the light of Christ…”

Given Fr. Lombardi’s previous record on diving in and offering his personal interpretation of the pope’s words or intentions, one wonders why he’s being paid a Vatican salary, when he could be growing a big beard and developing a pot belly and blogging from home.

Oh… wait again… rumours are recycling that Lombardi’s had enough and will be retiring soon. Would that we were all so privileged.

 

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