Laura Wood, "The Thinking Housewife" on "Bergoglio’s Ideology”

Alan: The following post was written by Laura Wood, a professedly devout Catholic, who blogs at The Thinking Housewife.  Like many Catholic conservatives, Pope Francis has had such unhinging effect on Ms. Wood that she calmly calls him "anti-Catholic." I am re-posting a sampler of Ms. Wood's "sedevacantist" rants, both to reveal her outré view of the pope, but also to reveal the inescapable trap and ultimate uncharitableness of conservative absolutism. There is also The Presumption that prompts Ms. Wood to say: "It is obvious what he meant." You could run the Pope's Vatican Radio passage (below) past a thousand Catholics and I would not be surprised if none of them reached the same conclusion that Ms. Wood deems "obvious."

N.B. "The Thinking Housewife" begins her anti-Francis rants with images of jet fighters and missile launchers to illustrate what she calls "Bergolio's Bomb of The Day." Projection much? http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2013/10/bergoglios-ideology/#more-61543 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

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JORGE Bergoglio, the so-called pope, spoke of the dangers last Thursday of Catholics who become “disciple[s] of ideology.” What did he mean by “ideology?” If we read his words closely and interpret them in context, it is obvious what he meant. The ideology this anti-Catholic pope warned against is nothing other than Catholicism. In fact, if we read him correctly, he calls Catholicism a “serious illness.”

Imagine that. A “pope” tells Catholics they are seriously ill for being Catholic.

Vatican Radio reported:

“When we are on the street and find ourselves in front of a closed Church,” [the pope] said, “we feel that something is strange.” Sometimes, he said, “they give us reasons” as to why they are closed: They give “excuses, justifications, but the fact remains that the Church is closed and the people who pass by cannot enter.”

Today, the Pope said, Jesus speaks to us about the “image of the [lock]”; it is “the image of those Christians who have the key in their hand, but take it away, without opening the door.” Worse still, “they keep the door closed” and “don’t allow anyone to enter.” In so doing, they themselves do not enter. The “lack of Christian witness does this,” he said, and “when this Christian is a priest, a bishop or a Pope it is worse.” But, the Pope asks, how does it happen that a “Christian falls into this attitude” of keeping the key to the Church in his pocket, with the door closed?

“The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology. And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’

The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements.”The Pope continued, Jesus told us: “You burden the shoulders of people [with] many things; only one is necessary.” This, therefore, is the “spiritual, mental” thought process of one who wants to keep the key in his pocket and the door closed:

“The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh? Already the Apostle John, in his first Letter, spoke of this. Christians who lose the faith and prefer the ideologies. His attitude is: be rigid, moralistic, ethical, but without kindness. This can be the question, no? But why is it that a Christian can become like this? Just one thing: this Christian does not pray. And if there is no prayer, you always close the door.”“The key that opens the door to the faith,” the Pope added, “is prayer.”

Who are the people the Church has turned away? No one who has any real-life contact with Catholic churches today could reasonably argue that the repentant sinner or the poor are locked out of the Church.

The woman who has had an abortion and is repentant is not turned away. The sodomite, even someone who has engaged in homosexual activism, who is repentant is not turned away. In fact, he is warmly welcomed. The divorced person who is repentant is not turned away, though he cannot receive Communion if remarried. Those who have committed any number of other serious sins are not turned away. Their repentance is entirely a private matter and social ostracism is virtually non-existent in the relativistic atmosphere of the modernized Church.

The idea that the poor are turned away is laughable. The only sense in which they are turned away is that they have fewer churches because of the destructive, rationalistic ideology of Vatican II that has stripped the Church of its mysteries and decimated priestly vocations.

But that is plainly not the ideology to which Bergoglio is referring. So who is it that this “rigid” and “moralistic” ideology is unforgivingly turning away? There are only two possible categories if one looks at the Church as it is: unrepentant sinners and those from other religions who reject Catholic doctrine. They are the only people turned away. Notice that he says that a pope must not lock the door either.

Bergoglio is clearly urging Catholics to stop being Catholic.