A Princess and Steve Bannon join forces to topple Pope

[Baba O'Riley]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/world/europe/princess-gloria-von-thurn-und-taxis-francis.html

I'm a recent delurker, so hope I am doing this right.  Very interesting article.  Here are some of the juicier bits for those unable to read the article because of the NY Times paywall.

 

Quote

Princess Gloria [von Thurn und Taxis ] — once christened “Princess TNT” for her explosive years as a hard partying, art-collecting, punk-haired aristocrat — has grown into the sun queen around which many traditionalist Roman Catholics opposed to Pope Francis orbit. Her Regensburg castle is a potential “Gladiator School” for conservative Catholics on a crusade to preserve church traditions.

Her Roman palace overlooking the ancient forum is a preferred salon for opposition cardinals, bitter bishops and populists like Stephen K. Bannon. Many of them are hoping to use the sex abuse crisis that amounts to the greatest existential threat to the church in centuries to topple the 81-year-old pontiff, who they are convinced is destroying the faith.

<snip>

[Steve] Bannon [...] himself sees the pope as a destructive force in the church. He envisions a Gladiator School for the theological and media training of right-wing Catholics hostile to Francis. And he has sought to persuade the princess to invest in it at a monastery in the town of Trisulti, nearly two hours outside Rome, that is operated by Dignitatis Humanae Institute, an anti-abortion group run by his friend Benjamin Harnwell. Cardinal Burke is the president of its advisory board.

<snip>

But before Mr. Bannon helped the cause, Princess Gloria suggested, he first needed to get his own spiritual house in order. 

“I’m there to help, but I’m very strict and I say: ‘O.K., let’s go to church first. Change your life,’” she said. Asked specifically whether she meant she wanted Mr. Bannon to regularly attend church before he tried to fix it, she smiled. “I want to see all of my friends be faithful Catholics first. And then we can start.”

 

So Steve Bannon, apparently a non-practicing Catholic, wants to spearhead an international movement to get rid of Pope Francis and return the Catholic Church to its traditional conservative roots.  Alrighty then!   In my Catholic schoolgirl days -- and maybe it's still a thing in the Church -- it was a mortal sin not to attend Mass on Sunday, and you could burn in hell unless you confessed it to a priest.  If this is the conservative tradition that Bannon wants to return to, he will be in big trouble!

[47of74]

Yeah the more Catholic than the Pope wing of the church has become a bit more active since Francis took over.  Hell they think anyone even the slightest bit to the left of Himmler is too liberal for their tastes.  They were all about the Pope being infallible and someone who had to be listened to no matter how off the fornicating wall he was when Benny or JPII were in charge.  When Francis took over, not so much.