Pope Francis Has an Urgent Warning for Social Media Warriors

TRANSCRIPT
 

It seems the Vatican is annoyed at criticism on social media aimed at it, the hierarchy and Pope Francis. So a few days ago Rome dropped a "polite" document advising Catholics not to be divisive on social media, but rather behave "not so much as 'individual influencers,' but as 'weavers of communion': pooling our talents and skills, sharing knowledge and contributions."

Well, that's all well and good and certainly has some merit objectively, but (and this is a big — really big — "but") when you have people within the Church who are "influencers" in their own right and they are dividing the faithful and depriving them of actual Church teaching and making it up as they go along, what are faithful Catholics supposed to say in response?

Does the Vatican want us talking about how lovely the parish bake sale was after the 10 a.m. Mass and that the Smiths are very excited about helping plant the parish vegetable garden?

Give me a break. 

This is war — spiritual war — and the only difference now (and which is likely eliciting the document from the Vatican) is that the true believers are pushing back against modernism and all its evils. Shut up and build community? Seriously?

Either some folks in the Vatican are incredibly naive, or they sense, rightly or wrongly, they may be beginning to lose the initiative and so are resorting to the "be nice and sweet" strategy, shorthand for "shut up and stop drawing attention to our agenda."

This maneuver runs a close parallel to the Marxist Democrats' strategy of recognizing the danger to their agenda posed by so-called conservative influencers on social media and doing everything possible to shut them down, up to and including weaponizing the Justice Department, working in cahoots with Giant Tech, cooperating with corporate America and linking arms with their comrades in Big Media, all to shut down criticism by labeling it "conspiracy theories" and "misinformation."

While there is no substantial evidence of the Vatican employing that degree of censorship, this latest document certainly smacks of that mentality. It just makes it appear more spiritual and less political. But the funny thing is this is one of the most political papacies you could imagine.

Francis and his appointees' high level of cooperation with globalists on a huge range of issues (illegal immigration, phony man-made climate change, anti-capitalism, for example, you name it) point to the scales definitely tipping in favor of that agenda.

That faithful Catholics, rightly fed up with the shenanigans, would be the ones to draw the penalty flag is ludicrous. It's kind of like a football game. One player takes a swing at another in between plays, the refs don't notice, and, then, the other guy swings back and he gets the penalty flag thrown at him.

It's always the dude who reacts who draws the ire.

The same dynamic is at play here, mostly. The notable exception is that the bad guys are the ones in control and throwing the flags — kind of the textbook definition of an unfair fight.

So, frankly, what does the Vatican or even Pope Francis himself expect to happen? The Faith is either betrayed, undercut, soft-pedaled, distorted, or presented in such a watered-down way that it is attractive to no one.

The promoters of all this are, like James Martin, the "polite bullies" who attack but get a pass. We respond and get a flag on the play.

Word to the Vatican: Stop promoting the heresy of modernism in its multiple arenas and we will go back to talking about the parish bake sale. In the meantime, this is war. Knock it off with the "be polite and not divisive" crap. It's spiritual and emotional abuse meant to intimidate the less plucky and those whose personalities are already predisposed to be soft and confrontation avoiding. Forgive us for trying to whip up the troops.

Many of them need a good kick in the pants to force them to wake up to the heresies and schisms being promoted, ignored and allowed to run rampant. If the effort to do that smacks of division and being offensive, well, so be it.

Our Lord said the same thing: "I have come to bring the sword," and as St. Mark records, they took offense at Him. We kind of think the Vatican would issue some sort of social media document against both Our Lord's and John the Baptist's Twitter feeds.

But they give a pass to @JudasTraitor because, well, you know, gotta be polite and not divisive.