Kissy-Face's Lame Attempt At Damage Control

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, aka Kissy-Face, issued yesterday what he claims to be a "clarification" of Fiducia Supplicans.  In reality, it seems nothing more than a lame attempt to throw smoke and dust into the eyes of those who clearly see the diabolical nature of the screed.

Look at section 4 of that letter.  The "theological reflection" as he calls FS, is, according to him, "a real development from what has been said about blessings in the Magisterium and the official texts of the Church".  Substitute the word "divergence" for "development" and you have a halfway-true statement.  Then he said that "the text requires an effort to think serenely, with the heart of shepherds, free from all ideology."  Italics mine.  Let's unpack that double-speak, shall we?  What is meant by "ideology" in this context is the doctrines and dogmas of the Church as handed down through the centuries, because they ultimately come from God Himself.  By the way - Kissy Face should be delighted to know that there is a place that is free of all that "ideology".  It's called hell.

He goes on to betray his disdain for the Church's teaching by saying that Francis "proposed that we think of a way of blessing that does not require the placing of so many conditions to carry out this simple gesture of pastoral closeness, which is a means of promoting openness to God in the midst of the most diverse circumstances."   These conditions are the moral teachings of the Church.  How can a desire to be free of those not be its own serious sin?   Now substitute for the phrase "most diverse circumstances" the more accurate phrase "inherently sinful situations".

As we all know by now, entire bishops' conferences and religious orders see FS for the cow plop that it is and are refusing to implement it.  So now in section 5 the arm-twisting of these clerics is underway.  In section 5, of these so-called "blessings" he says, "we are talking about something that last about 10 or 15 seconds.  Does it make sense to deny these kinds of blessings to these two people who ask for them?"  Ladies and gentlemen, when have you ever seen this kind of pouting and whining in a Church document?  What difference does it make that this act of cooperating with sin lasts only a few seconds?  Most murders take about the same amount of time.

I have neither time nor stomach to analyze this entire tome.  GloriaTV has done a nice job, as has Peter Kwasniewski in Crisis Magazine.  I will say this, though.  I dubbed Cardinal Fernandez "Kissy Face" because of that less-than-theological masterpiece (cough!) that he wrote called "Heal Me With Your Mouth - The Art Of Kissing".  After wading both through Fiducia Supplicans and this pig-slop of a "clarification", I'm glad that I didn't subject myself to the torture of reading that book.