At Some Point, This Will Be Very Serious Indeed

I have been trying to write this post for weeks.  Heaven knows there have been many incidents to spark it.  In fact, there is one nearly every day.I know that this will be too much for some of you, and too "duh" for others.  Forgive me, but I need to say it anyway.At a certain point, what Francis is doing and saying may cross a line that no rationalization can rationalize away. And we will be forced to make decisions based upon them, in a way that calls our Catholicity, or his, into question.  If that day occurs, it won't be nice.  Pray I'm wrong.  I am not predicting anything.  Call it a horrible feeling.We all know the principles:  there is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  Peter and his successors are the visible heads of this visible Church.  Where Peter is, there is the Church.  Easy. Except sometimes it isn't.After the Great Western Schism was ended, and everyone agreed on just who the actual Pope was (of a group that included at one time three claimants), it became easy to understand that there really wasn't a schism at all, in the strict sense.  Because all Catholics adhered to the Pope-- the person they believed to be Pope.  Hence, it really was a mistake of fact.  There were canonized Saints who adhered to one or the other of the claimants, some Saints actually following an anti-pope, through no fault of their own and in good faith.I mean, we can read now in history books just who the rightful Pope was during that time, and it seems nice and clinical.  But it was a horrible mess at the time.Is the Synod in October the line that can't be crossed and yet rationalized?  We must pray not. But stories like this from CNS are just as discouraging as can be, and it isn't the only one:  Families need prayers, mercy, courage, including from synod, pope says  GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (CNS) -- Even if a pastoral proposal for helping a Catholic family with problems seems scandalous at first, it is possible God could use that proposal to bring healing and holiness, Pope Francis said.Encouraging and celebrating family life during a Mass July 6 in Guayaquil, Pope Francis asked people to pray for the October Synod of Bishops on the family, and he tied the synod to the Jubilee of Mercy, a yearlong celebration that will begin in December.The synod will be a time for the church to "deepen her spiritual discernment and consider concrete solutions to the many difficult and significant challenges facing families in our time," the pope said.Celebrating Mass with as many as 1 million people gathered under the hot sun in Los Samanes Park, Pope Francis asked them "to pray fervently for this intention, so that Christ can take even what might seem to us impure, scandalous or threatening, and turn it -- by making it part of his 'hour' -- into a miracle. Families today need this miracle!"[...]As with the guests at the Cana wedding, who were offered the finest wine at the end of the celebration, Pope Francis insisted, so, too, for families today "the richest, deepest and most beautiful things are yet to come." "The time is coming when we will taste love daily, when our children will come to appreciate the home we share and our elderly will be present each day in the joys of life," he said. "The finest of wines will come for every person who stakes everything on love." Pope Francis said he knows "all the variables and statistics which say otherwise," but "the best wine is yet to come for those who today feel hopelessly lost."[...]With all respect, if this does not refer to the Kaspar proposal to sanction public adultery, wink at sodomy and encourage sacrilegious communion, to what can it refer?  This type of speech is so typical as to numb the senses.  I am at a loss. Prayer is all that I can think of.