Clement XIV, pray for us.

More foolishness from the Jesuits.

From America, the organ of the Jesuits:

Pope Francis was finally asked the question we have always wanted to hear him answer—what would he say to a woman feeling the pain of a sincerely discerned and unfulfilled call to priesthood? Unfortunately, when asked that pastoral question by executive editor Kerry Weber, the pope did not give a pastoral answer. Instead, he gave a clumsy theological discourse on Marian and Petrine theories, which the average Catholic would be forgiven for not knowing by heart. . .

It’s a shame the authors of this piece didn’t put down a few words explaining exactly what “average” Catholics are capable of knowing, but they obviously place themselves above them. Bickerstaff, a convert, can report his catechesis included the study of Marian and Petrine “theories” (doctrines would be a better word and besides, Marian doctrine is dogma, hence immutable) and had little difficulty understanding them. Neither apparently did any other of his fellow catechumens.

Francis’ suggestion that “woman is more, she looks more like the church, which is mother and spouse” relies on a literal interpretation of the “spousal metaphor” that reduces the extravagance of one’s relationship with God and discipleship to plastic figurines on a wedding cake.

How so? Please explain. How else should the spousal metaphor be interpreted? Ah, yes, in a way accommodating your desire for the ordination of women. We’ll take the literal interpretation, if you please, rather than some sort of plastic one (to use a word from the essay), bending and twisting it so as to bring it into accord with fashionable twentieth-century opinions.

That this blog is no fan of our present pope should be obvious, but Francis does deserve credit for resisting the exhortations of feminist extremists in the Catholic Church. Even he knows were he to acquiesce to their demands, it would lead to chaos, schism, and worse in Holy Church. History supports this view. Read the superb piece in the New Oxford Review titled, “The St. Louis Congress after 45 years,” by William Tighe, which recounts in sad detail the all-but-demise of the once mighty Episcopal Church, brought on by her surrounding to demands precisely those America’‘s editorial staff and other liberals in the Catholic Church make of our Pope.