Editorial: Who is Really Trying to Replace Doctrine With Ideology? by Carl E. Olson

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Pope Francis holds a press conference aboard the return flight from Portugal (VATICAN MEDIA Divisione Foto)

By Carl E. Olson Editorial, Catholic World Report, Aug. 28, 2023

Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?, Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”?, co-editor/contributor to Called To Be the Children of God, co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax (Ignatius), and ….

The timing of Pope Francis’s recent Q&A with Jesuits in Portugal is just as notable as the recycled and now all-too-familiar clichés about those who are “rigid,” “go backward,” and are “superficial”.

“There you go again.” — Ronald Reagan, 1980

Pope Francis, addressing a group of Jesuits recently, said: “When you abandon doctrine in life to replace it with an ideology, you have lost, you have lost as in war.” He is correct. But not, I think, in the way he apparently thinks.

On August 5, 2023, while in Portugal for World Youth Day, Francis met with Jesuits at the Colégio de São João de Brito. His question-and-answer session with them was published today in the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica by editor Antonio Spadaro, SJ, who has a long history of working closely with Francis. There are a number of interesting remarks in the lengthy conversation, providing plenty of red meat for the usual faux Catholic crowd—“Pope Francis blasts reactionary American Catholics who oppose church reform”—and worthless media outlets—“Pope Francis blasts ‘backwards’ U.S. conservatives, ‘reactionary attitude’ in U.S. church”. …

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