This from Maureen Mullarkey at the First Things website:
"The pope, too, has a pen and a phone. Has Francis’ motu proprio trumped the Synod? Or handicapped conservatives? Hard to say. But one thing now is certain: Marriage is indissoluble except when it is not. Put another way, indissolubility is revealed to be more soluble than we had previously understood.
"Analyses of this latest twist of the mercy spanner have been piling up. Papal apologists offer their expected apologias; critics beg to differ. Among those with differences are some very serious, informed voices. Some insist nothing has changed; neater and kinder is all. Others discern a material shift: The language of endurance—until death do us part—still stands but the substance can be had gluten-free. Annulments are on track to be dispatched in short order; even, according to some commentators, in cases where one spouse contests. And a slam dunk is anticipated if both parties want out. Craft the right narrative, and your marriage never existed.
"It is better to leave judgments on the complexities of canon law to others. But impressions are admissible. And, given the range of responses, the overriding impression is one of calculated incoherence and premeditated chaos. It is disquieting, this sense that the confusion is intended—that the Year of Mercy is a feint. Disarray begins to look like the opening move in an endgame designed to bring the Church into more congenial conformity with the world it was charged to leaven." READ MORE HERE
REMNANT COMMENT: We have had our differences with First Things in the past, true enough, but this outstanding article offers further proof that many former neo-Catholics are simply done trying to prop up the great façade. At this point, any "conservative" Catholic who is still defending the indefensible antics of Pope Francis is as anti-Catholic as many of the Church's declared enemies on the outside.
Pope Francis is out of control. This is obvious to us, it's obvious to First Things, and it should be obvious to every intelligent Catholic in the world. As Maureen Mullarkey notes of this the latest papal sabotage of Church teaching, "the divorced and remarried have been rebaptized as a victim class, like the poor. This pushes papal politics beyond leftism. We are into crackpottery now."
Indeed. Crackpottery that will destroy the human element of the Church for decades to come if it is allowed to continue. Pope Francis must be stopped, and all sincere and faithful Catholics must come together and work to achieve that end before it's too late.