As Críticas dos Esquerdistas ao Papa Francisco

A frase acima é de Eclesiastes 10:2, eu acho que é uma ótima passagem da Bíblia para ilustrar o tema do post de hoje.

Durante as celebrações de dois anos de pontificado do Papa Francisco, achei relevante observar o que a esquerda pensa sobre o Papa.

É muito importante isso, especialmente pelo seguinte aspecto. Ainda se debate se o Papa Francisco é esquerdista ou não, mas parece-me claro que doutrinariamente ortodoxo ele não é.  Não é conhecido pela defesa da Doutrina da Igreja, mas sim por uma abordagem chamada de "pastoral", que é basicamente a abordagem teológica usada pela esquerda dentro da Igreja.

Por vezes, especialmente quando se atém ao texto preparado anteriormente, ele defende pontos da Doutrina, como a luta pela vida (contra o aborto e a eutanásia) e também realça a presença do demônio entre nós, coisas "da direita". Mas é bem mais comum, ele ter uma abordagem dita "progressista" que estimula o ecumenismo, a liberdade sexual e reduz a liturgia da missa para "se aproximar do povo".

Bom, se ele é esquerdista, o que mais importa para o Papa Francisco são as críticas de esquerdistas. São estas críticas que ele procurará responder e as que mais atingirão seu ego. O que viria da direita não o incomoda. 

O site Pewsitter coletou o que disseram dois jornais esquerdistas, um americano (Huffignton Post) e outro inglês (The Guardian), sobre os dois anos de pontificado de Francisco.

Observem as seguintes características quando lerem estes jornais: eles não levam em consideração nem os Evangelhos, nem a vida e as palavras de Cristo, nem a Tradição da Igreja e nem a Doutrina da Igreja. Tudo isso é abandonado em nome do "progresso cultural". 

O Huffungton Post está desapontado com o Papa Francisco, pois para o jornal o Papa não tem luta com firmeza pela mudança doutrinária da Igreja. O The Guardian discute se o Papa Francisco é ou não a favor da comunidade LGBT.

Vejamos partes dos textos abaixo. Primeiro Huffungton Post.

Pope Francis Delighted Us When He Embraced People Of Other Faiths -- And No Faith At All ...

Just one month after he was elected, Pope Francis knelt down to kiss and wash the feet of a Muslim man on Maundy Thursday. Since then, he’s made it clear that he’s willing to engage with people of other faiths.

He's reached out to the world's Orthodox Christians, to Hindus and Buddhists and even to atheists. He’s silently prayed inside Turkey’s Blue Mosque, saying soon after that it was wrong to equate Islam with violence.

It’s true that Francis doesn’t believe that non-Christians can attain salvation. Still, his efforts to find common ground with other faiths have been remarkable.

... But He Disappointed Us When He Said “Who I Am To Judge?” And Then Judged Anyway.

While he's willing to reach out to people of other faiths, Pope Francis still hasn't extended a wholehearted welcome to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of his own church. On the flight back from a trip to Brazil in 2013, Pope Francis spoke the words that LGBT Catholics around the world would immediately take up as a rallying cry.

"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” he said.

But since then, lesbian and gay members of the church have come to realize that this change in tone did not necessarily signal a change in doctrine.

Last October, Pope Francis gathered Catholic bishops together to talk about family-related issues and to produce a document with recommendations. A first draft of the report from this conference extended an extraordinary welcome to LGBT people -- but that section was later edited. Francis’ bishops couldn’t muster the two-thirds majority needed to keep even the watered-down welcome in the final report.

To his credit, the pope was willing to include the controversial paragraphs in the next round of discussions, showing he's open to continuing the dialogue. He’s also said that the Catholic church should help parents stand with their gay children. But that doesn’t mean that LGBT Catholics in committed same-sex relationships will be welcomed into the fold anytime soon. Francis continues to champion a “love the sinner, hate the sin” approach. He has criticized gay marriage, even showing support for efforts to block marriage and adoption rights for gay couples.

3. Pope Francis Delighted Us When He Encouraged Open Debate And Conversations ...

Francis has been doggedly enthusiastic about creating spaces for open dialogue -- both within the Catholic Church and outside it. Within the church, he’s circumvented tradition by reaching out to the peripheries of the Catholic world for new cardinals and for advice. Last year, he asked the world’s bishops to survey their local congregations on controversial topics like gay marriage, divorce and birth control to get a clearer picture of what today's Catholics believe.

According to RNS, Francis has “reinvigorated the synod system, calling regular meetings of bishops from around the world to debate issues and set the agenda; previous popes discouraged debate and had the Curia carry out their orders.”

Outside the Catholic Church, Francis has had an impact as well. He brought togetherIsraeli and Palestinian leaders for a special prayer summit for peace. He also played a key role in urging President Barack Obama to normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuba and securing the release of American subcontractor and longtime prisoner Alan Gross.

... But He Disappointed Us When He Refused To Have A Conversation About Women’s Ordination.
The pope is clearly interested in dialogue. But when the topic drifts to the ordination of women to the priesthood, he firmly agrees with his predecessors in saying, “that door is closed.”

In fact, Francis' remarks about women can seem patronizing at times -- like the timehe referred to female theologians as “strawberries on the cake.”

He has said that the church must give women greater responsibility and visibility so that they “will not feel like guests but as full participants in various social and church environments.” But the “freedom of choice” he claims to offer women is counterbalanced by what he calls the “irreplaceable role” of women as mothers in the home. In the past, he’s firmly shot down proposals to invite lay female members into the College of Cardinals. John Allen Jr., a journalist who focuses on the Catholic Church, explains Francis’ reluctance this way:

In [Francis’] mind, conceding that the only way to elevate the role of women is to make them clergy feeds the mistaken notion that clerics are what’s most important about Catholicism, when he sees his mission instead as exalting the role of the laity. When he talks about a “deeper theology” of women, this is likely part of what he has in mind—a sort of Copernican revolution in Catholic consciousness, with laity and women the real protagonists of the Church’s mission in the world and the clergy a supporting cast.

Still, for a pope who appears willing to engage in so many other debates, it is disappointing that Francis is so firmly opposed to even considering the idea of women as priests.

Agora The Guardian:

This all changed on 13 March 2013, when he was selected as pope. I made my way to the cathedral that day, photographing jubilant worshippers flocking to the building, even if their now famous leader was in Rome, waving from a balcony. I myself was struck by the fact that I now knew the man in the Holy See, something I could never have dreamed possible. I assumed that Pope Francis would be the same as Bergoglio, backwards on LGBT and other progressive issues, his church sliding ever more into irrelevance. But was I wrong. Bergoglio as Francis fooled me. Indeed I believe, he fooled us all.

While not changing doctrine, the pope made his famous declaration: “Who am I to judge?” in reference to gay clergy. He has spoken of including the children of gay families and the divorced in communion. He met and embraced a transgender man, Diego Neria Lejarraga. I know through social networks that he has met with members of the Argentine LGBT community, though whether those were merely handshakes or more substantial occasions isn’t clear to me. What is clear is that we could never have imagined Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, doing the same. Yet nor could I have ever imagined Archbishop Bergoglio, the very same man in different vestments, doing the same either.

However, my own meetings with Italian politicians and gay activists for New York’s Gay City News have shown me they are more sceptical than the rest of the world. They’ve been through the church’s Machiavellian manoeuvres before. Andrea Maccarrone, head of Circolo Mario Mieli, Rome’s main gay rights group, told me the church will pretend to change with the times. “They are very good at this, to adapt to the situation,” he said, explaining that’s how they’ve lasted for more than 2,000 years. Sergio Lo Giudice, an openly gay senator of the Democratic party, thinks the rhetoric is merely image. “There has been no opening on the doctrinal, so homosexuality remains for the Catholic church a sin as well as a moral disorder.”

Whether or not doctrine changes in the future, a dialogue that never existed before has begun. During WorldPride 2000, held in Rome, an event that directly challenged the Vatican and Pope John Paul II, I tried writing about gay Italian issues for an Italian-American magazine. At the time, the editor said the topic was untouchable because of conservative “spaghetti pot-stirring grandmothers,” among her readers. I would argue that even without doctrinal change, under Pope Francis those same grandmothers are serving spaghetti and having conversations with gay relatives because of his words.

Yes, as Pope Francis of Rome, the Bergoglio I knew in Buenos Aires has fooled me. The pope still has his conservative leanings on longstanding doctrine, most notably on ordination of women, a particular issue in the United States as nuns take on expanding roles. Conservatives are also cautious, if not worried, about changes the Pope might enact; the New York Times writer Ross Douthat haswarned of schisms in the church and how real doctrinal change contradicts the notion of papal infallibility.

I am not the only LGBT journalist who finds the new pope both refreshing and surprising. Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal, long aware of the damage the Catholic church has wreaked on the LGBT community, has written a column thanking Pope Francis for his stance, in contrast to “Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput [who] now seems to be leading a campaign of opposition,” against the pope’s progressive attitude. The pope’s views on these issues will become clearer when he visits the city of brotherly love this September for the World Meeting of Families, but perhaps this always was Bergoglio’s true self. There’s no one above him any more telling him how to behave, unless you believe in the big guy in the sky.