Notes from a rigid young Catholic

In the midst of a Culture of Death, being counter- cultural means being unabashedly pro- life. In dioceses run by aging Boomers, making lio means being a young radical traditionalist. What the current Pope doesn't seem to realize is that when his predecessor was elected, it was young cassocked seminarians and young habited CMSWR sisters who cheered the loudest that day. The people who have returned to the faith under Pope Francis are aging Boomers still rigidly clinging to a 1970s paradigm of liturgical hedonism and a social justice that ignores children in the womb. By appointing leaders like Tobin and Cupich, he has shown that he favors a return to the status quo, wherein doctrinally soft bishops accommodate to the point of oblivion, LWCR sisters continue to erode vocations, and liturgical blandness carries the day. Under his papacy, being subversively countercultural means rooting for leaders like Chaput and Sarah. Under his papacy making lio means facing east, it means confronting the seamless garment weavers who would quietly sideline the Abortion issue, and it means being more open minded than establishment liberals who tolerate all points of view except those that are not their own.

Carl Olsen articulates the many ironies in this viewpoint of Pope Francis.