As the Media Soap Opera Turns

 [Image by Raphael W. from Pixabay]

"Holy Spirit, please show me how I am being part of the problem."

I agree there is a lot of confusion and I have seen it come from the good intentioned US media on both sides, secular and Catholic. I conscientiously no longer keep up with any news.  And I have avoided all entertainment media for a long time. Psychological emotions and subjective feelings do not determine what is true or false. To believe that something is true or false based on what we feel is a major form of Relativism.

When Bishop Strickland was removed as Bishop of Tyler Texas, a close friend sent me one of the Catholic media headlines, with video, that was written in the form of media standard procedure to get the most attention the fastest. "Bishop Strickland Forcibly Removed by Pope Francis" Words matter, have objective definitions, and are used subjectively. This being the first time I heard any media reports about Bishop Strickland at all, I was concerned about the vocabulary used and so I looked up the subject across the internet. I then saw that every single news source, both secular and Catholic was regurgitating almost the same talking narrative headline. That, I had learned from the virus subject media lying, is a red flag.

So I did more investigating and came across the unfortunate video (publicized as a good) of Bishop Strickland at the "Rome Life Forum" fostering slander and schism by reading and agreeing with a letter claimed to be written to him from his friend. A friend who is slandering and fostering schism against the legitimate Pope. There are no presented facts or otherwise facts to support what this letter is saying about Pope Francis. Time Stamp 2:27 to 11:55

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntEpR8aQUwM&t=717s

To make public claims agreeing that 1) the Pope is not a legitimate Pope, 2) scriptural reference to the Pope being the anti-christ, and 3) the Pope is teaching heresy,...is objectively fostering (aiding the development of) a separation, division, and formal breach of union...aka schism.  And to do so publicly without presenting documented facts of the accusations, is slander.  Anyone who is fully loving and obeying Jesus Christ, and properly discerning directly with Him, would NOT do this. We all fall short, sin, and make mistakes. 🙏

Bishop Strickland making this mistake, doesn't negate what is objectively true about either the Pope or about Bishop Strickland, most of which most of us, who do not know either of them personally, do not know.  What it shows however, is that the dramatic attention seeking exaggerated narrative about both of them, is manipulative and lacking Truth.  And we need to stop falling for it.

Over the last few years, if not longer, we Catholics have been manipulatively lied to by our own media through "humans accidentally" and "the demonic deliberately", by only being given parts of the Truth that follows dramatic exaggerated attention grabbing headlines. The priority presents itself to be "immediate views" based on dysfunctional drama and not based on the full Truth.

This is what happens with an entertainment media addicted culture riddled with Relativism, which yes, most Catholics unfortunately suffer from as well. For too long the news, even the Catholic news, has been just another attention seeking soap opera drama to distract us all from doing God's priorities of daily actively working on taking the sinful logs out of our own eyes, spending daily quality time with The Trinity in order to receive Truth/Love/Virtues. Too many Catholics and non-Catholic Christians are media entertainment addicts/idolators.  And when "But everyone I know is doing it", then "No one thinks it's wrong".

Over the years I have been sent and shown a lot of American Catholic media opinions regarding the supposed evils of Pope Francis.  At first I automatically believed it because I believed the American Catholic sources to be credible.  Then I was reality checked it may not be true.

Me being a Spanish speaker, I took an English speaking only credible Catholic media source and searched for the actual video footage of the Pope speaking Spanish of what was being claimed the Pope had scandalously said.

Guess what I found out...huge translation and interpretation discrepancies, which lead to major assumptions, none of which were directly verified with the Pope as to what he meant, nor was he being given the benefit of the doubt.

See "Lovers vs Haters of Pope Francis", https://theologyofthesoul.org/blog-portal-2-answers/lovers-vs-haters-of-pope-francis

In other concerns, did you know that Pope Francis directly confronted the sins of the Mexican Bishops to their faces?  If you don't speak Spanish and didn't see the Mexican news reporting it, then of course you wouldn't know.  Did you know that Pope Francis charitably responded to former Mexican president Peña Nieto that he and the majority of Mexicans are disobedient Catholics by calling them "very Guadalupanan" in response to the former president seeking praise from the Pope for how practicing Catholic the country supposedly is?  If you don't speak Spanish and didn't see the Mexican news reporting it, then of course you wouldn't know.  And if you are not a practicing Catholic living in Mexico you wouldn't know that the Pope was right.  This begs the question, What is the Pope actually doing with the supposed dissident German Bishops that we don't know about because we don't speak German, don't follow the German news, and don't live there?

We Americans believing we need, have the right to demand, and are owed explanations for everything others do or don't do is irrational.  It would behoove us to stop the dramatic dysfunctional triangulating of playing the Savior, Persecutor, Victim game that our media promotes.

I have spent the last 11 years living in a Latin American country.  I understand many different cultural perspectives on reality and reactions that Hispanics, including Latinos, have that we native born Americans do not and vice versa.  The Pope is Latino; he is Not Caucasian Germanic.  It would be sinful of me to expect the Pope to be sinless and perfect as I am not.

See, "Ichin for Another Schism", https://theologyofthesoul.org/blog-portal-2-answers/ichin-for-another-schism

As much as we Americans are being accidentally lied to about the Pope through the media we trust and believe while failing to do proper discernment directly with Jesus Christ, it is highly likely that the Pope is being lied to about Americans, especially the Catholic TLM attendees.

I love and prefer the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) and I will Not protest the Novus Ordo, which has been deemed an accepted liturgical form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by the legitimate authority of Jesus Christ's Catholic Church of Rome.

Those who refuse to attend a Novus Ordo Mass even when no TLM is available or refuse to receive Jesus the Eucharistic because of the behavior of the priest, sadly do Not understand their grievous errors founded in the sins of pride, including perfectionism and hypocrisy.  I have learned, after years of justifying my sinful reacting and finally getting them healed, to tolerate when priests are either irreverent and/or disobedient in both the TLM and the Novus Ordo liturgies.

I have a growing list of repeated "heresies" I have read, written by good priests, or heard in homilies by too many good priests during the Novus Ordo Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in both the US and Mexico, lies that either the priests were taught in childhood, by the media, in seminary, or by demons directly through their own sins. I have spoken to these priests directly personally charitably; I have planted seeds. I have reported some to their superiors. They all have disagreed even when I showed scripture to prove the Truth. None of this makes any of them the "anti-christ" or "not a legitimate" priest or bishop.  Nor does it mean that they are a "malicious heretic".  I pray and sacrifice for them all daily.  

I teach the laity who I hear believing and repeat the lies, what the Truth is, and how to do proper discernment directly with Jesus Christ about everything they hear and read. The rest is God's responsibility. God will mercifully serve justice when and as he perfectly sees fit. There is no reason for us to react with sinful emotions or try to control what we cannot...It has taken me years of working on my sins to come to this. One Truth never negating another and God's Justice and Mercy prevailing, it is also each individual person's responsibility, above the age of 7, to learn and do daily proper discernment directly with Jesus Christ in all things and to Not believe the unrealistic hypocritical expectation that any human will always know and speak the Truth.

I support both Pope Francis and Bishop Strickland; praying for both of them. They are both our legitimate authorities of the Catholic Church of Rome, with no facts to prove otherwise. I, like the overwhelming majority of humans on the planet do not have enough information to "pick a side". Nor do any of us need to be playing "Team Francis" against "Team Strickland". We all need to prioritize minding our own business of fighting the evil within our own intellectual souls, doing proper discernment with Jesus Christ, and leave what is beyond our control to God. If we all did so, I believe there would be little to No trying time of faith among Catholics.