A “Flop Era” is a period of time during which someone suddenly finds themselves going through a lot of failure, whether self-induced or otherwise. Often it’s applied to athletes and actors—sometimes by them, sometimes by others.
Pope Francis is definitely deep into his. Last week he went on 60 Minutes and made a massive (and clearly off the cuff) policy statement, saying that women cannot be ordained even to the diaconate, despite having himself convened a number of groups to study the question and the ongoing conversations on this top of the Synod on Synodality, which he also called.
(And, as I tried to understand myself last year—and ended up talking an excessive amount about cole slaw—the whole point behind that Synod was that the Holy Spirit works in everyone, and therefore when we’re considering questions like women’s ordination we should hear from lots of different people, not just shoot from the hip with Norah O’Donnell.)
In that conversation he also walked back what was his own decision that it’s okay for priests to agree to bless gay couples, saying this has nothing to do with gay marriage, he was just saying if two gay people who happen to be married come up to you and say, hey, could we each get some blessings, Padre, a priest can say yes. Which, to be clear, was already true.
Some might argue that the Francis Flop Era actually began with the announcement of the gay blessings in December.
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