Plan B Forum

Six million to attend Pope Francis's Philippines mass

Some six million worshippers are expected to attend Pope Francis's Sunday Mass at Manila's Rizal Park.

That beats the previous record crowd for a single-day religious event of five million set during Pope John Paul II’s World Youth Day Mass in 1995, also in the Philippines.

Manila has a population of 12 million. The former Spanish colony has an overall population of 100 million.

Before the Sunday Mass, 500,000 people are expected to line streets to view the pope’s motorcade as it travels from Villamor Airbase to the Vatican Embassy in Manila on Thursday.

People have been congregating on the seven-mile stretch for hours. He is expected to arrive at 5:45pm local time.

1,500 Catholic Filipino schoolchildren have been rehearsing their 15-minute series of dances to welcome Pope Francis on the tarmac of Manila’s Villamor Airbase.

This is Pope Francis's second visit to Asia in 6 months, but his first time in the Philippines.

50,000 policemen and troops will be deployed to protect the pontiff.

Bangkok: Pope Francis cut short his visit to typhoon-hit Tacloban on the Philippine island of Leyte on Saturday as another storm churned across the Pacific towards the Philippines.

"I apologise to you all," the Pope told 150,000 rain-soaked worshippers in an open field where he celebrated mass.

"I am sad about this, truly sad, because I had something prepared especially for you," he said.

Worshippers standing in puddles, some of whom cried when they saw the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, appeared to take the news in a good humoured way, reporters in the crowd said.

The approaching Typhoon Mekkhala with wind gusts up to 150 kilometres per hour was an eerie reminder of Super Typhoon Haiyan that hit the central Philippine islands on 8 November, 2013, leaving 7300 people dead or missing and displacing 4 million mostly poor Filipinos.

Why not throw in stem cell research

oldr_n_wsr wrote:That's their doctrine. I don't agree with it, but they can believe what they want. No skin off my nose.

Big RR wrote:The RC church sure treats these issues as different from other doctrinal positions, like, say, the necessity of attending church on Sunday or receiving communion periodically; I've see no legislative initiatives to impose them on non-catholics .

They are not content to tell the faithful that they should avoid having an abortion, but want to tell me the same by force of law; ditto with same sex marriage

Since the release of Evangelii Gaudium there have been countless articles and commentary about the economic portions of Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation. Some of the commentary has been downright bizarre, such as Rush Limbaugh denouncing the Pope as a Marxist, or Stuart Varney accusing Francis of being a neo-socialist. American conservatives grumbled but dutifully denounced a distorting media when Pope Francis seemed to go wobbly on homosexuality, but his criticisms of capitalism have crossed the line, and we now see the Pope being criticized and even denounced from nearly every rightward-leaning media pulpit in the land.

Not far below the surface of many of these critiques one hears the following refrain: why can’t the Pope just go back to talking about abortion? Why can’t we return the good old days of Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI and talk 24/7/365 about sex? Why doesn’t Francis have the decency to limit himself to talking about Jesus and gays, while avoiding the rudeness of discussing economics in mixed company, an issue about which he has no expertise or competence?

There are subtle and brash versions of this plea. At “The Catholic Thing,” Hadley Arkes has penned a characteristically elegant essay in which he notes that Francis is generally correct on teachings about marriage and abortion, but touches on these subjects too briefly, cursorily and with unwelcome caveats of sorts. At the same time, Francis goes on at length about the inequalities and harm caused by free market economies, which moves Hadley to counsel the Pope to consult next time with Michael Novak. The upshot—be as brief as the Gettysburg Address in matters pertaining to economics, and loquacious as Edward Everett when it comes to erotics.

On the brash side there is Larry Kudlow, who nearly hyperventilates when it comes to his disagreement with Pope Francis, accusing him of harboring sympathies with Communist Russia and not sufficiently appreciating Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II. (R. R. Reno, who is briefly allowed to get a word in edgewise, wisely counseled Kudlow not to fight the last war—or, the one fought three wars ago, for that matter.) Revealingly, Kudlow counsels the Pope to concentrate on “moral and religious reform,” and that he should “harp” instead on “morality, spiritualism and religiosity,” while ceasing to speak about matters economic. Similarly, Judge Napolitano, responding to a challenge from Stuart Varney on why the Pope is talking about economics, responded: “I wish he would stick to faith and morals, on which he is very sound and traditional.”

These commentators all but come and out say: we embrace Catholic teaching when it concerns itself with “faith and morals”—when it denounces abortion, opposes gay marriage, and urges personal charity. This is the Catholicism that has been acceptable in polite conversation. This is a stripped-down Catholicism that doesn’t challenge fundamental articles of economic faith.

And it turns out that this version of Catholicism is a useful tool. It is precisely this portion of Catholicism that is acceptable to those who control the right narrative because it doesn’t truly endanger what’s most important to those who steer the Republic: maintaining an economic system premised upon limitless extraction, fostering of endless desires, and creating a widening gap between winners and losers that is papered over by mantras about favoring equality of opportunity. A massive funding apparatus supports conservative Catholic causes supporting a host of causes—so long as they focus exclusively on issues touching on human sexuality, whether abortion, gay marriage, or religious liberty (which, to be frank, is intimately bound up in its current form with concerns about abortion). It turns out that these funds are a good investment: “faith and morals” allow us to assume the moral high ground and preoccupy the social conservatives while we laugh all the way to the bank bailout. .... "

A senior American cardinal in the Vatican says that under this pope, the Roman Catholic Church is "a ship without a rudder'' and the faithful "are feeling a bit seasick.''

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput complains that a recent Vatican conference called by Pope Francis produced "confusion,'' adding, "Confusion is of the devil.''

A group of conservative lay Catholics say they felt "betrayed" by a preliminary report from the conference that proposed a more welcoming attitude toward gay men and lesbians.

Turnabout is supposed to be fair play, but for these and other U.S. Catholic conservatives and traditionalists, the papacy of Francis also seems to be infuriating, worrying or just plain puzzling.

"The conservatives had it all their way for about 30 years, and now the shoe might be on the other foot,'' says the Rev. Paul Sullins, a priest who teaches sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. "Now they feel on the outside a little bit, which is exactly how the progressives used to feel.''

That was during the papacies of John Paul II (1978-2005) and Benedict XVI (2005-13), doctrinal conservatives who brooked little discussion and less dissension when it came to church teaching on issues such as ordination of women and compulsory priestly celibacy.

Many conservatives struggle to get a handle on Pope Francis, who since taking office last year warned against an "obsessive" concern with culture war issues, such as abortion and gay marriage; encouraged discussion of church teaching on things like contraception and divorce; and asked, regarding gay men and lesbians who profess religious faith, "Who am I to judge?''

There's a world of difference between a bishop suggesting that person who votes a certain way probably shouldn't get communion and a bishop announcing that anyone of his flock who vote for Joe Biden will be refused communion. How would he know who voted for what - even the Roman church doesn't require voting disclosure in the confessional (yet).

rubato wrote:By the way, my prediction that the former pope resigned because he was unable to deal with church corruption, because of physical frailty, moral frailty or personal taint, appears to be correct.


yrs,
rubato