Msgr. Charles Pope: Love Without Kindness?

As I have written many times on this blog, the great division in the Church is between the law-and-order traditionalists, who believe that showing people their sins and judging them is the most important duty of the Church, and Pope Francis, who believes that the true mission of the church is bringing people to salvation in Christ by preaching the mercy and love of Our Lord without condemnation.  Pope Francis believes Our Lord's statement as recorded in John 3:17:  "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." The traditionalists, by their words and actions, have shown that they reject this teaching.  They believe their job is to condemn the world, and that this condemnation will somehow save the world.

This attitude was shown clearly in a recent post by Msgr. Charles Pope, a traditionalist who has often criticized Pope Francis and other members of the Church hierarchy.  In his recent post, Msgr. Pope tells us that "Kindness Is Not Love."

Msgr. Pope feels that kindness is not love because the ultimate purpose of kindness, as Msgr. Pope sees it, is to help people escape suffering.  How is this opposed to love?  Msgr. Pope believes that truly loving others will paradoxically result in less kindness because, contrary to kindness, love actually desires the suffering of others.  Why would we desire other people to suffer?  Because suffering can be salvific, whereas kindness allows people to become even more sinful.

Where does Msgr. Pope get this idea of kindness? From definitions of kindness given to us by CS Lewis and by Peter Kreeft. CS Lewis defines kindness as "the desire to see others happy. . . .Kindness, as such cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering." Peter Kreeft defines kindness as "sympathy, with the desire to relieve another’s suffering."

Msgr. Pope sees kindness as "an aspect of love but it is necessarily distinct from it" because kindness, in Msgr. Pope's definition, means never saying "no."  Kindness means caving in to all the demands and desires of others, whereas love means allowing others to suffer so that they will be saved.  It would seem that for Msgr. Pope, another word for kindness is "enabling."  But is that true?
Msgr. Pope expounds on these definitions as follows:

Kindness generally seeks to alleviate suffering and negativity, but love understands that suffering often has a salvific role. My parents disciplined me out of love. Had they been merely kind to me, I would likely have been spoiled, undisciplined, and ill-prepared for life.

Paradoxically, the more we love, the more we see mere kindness diminish. Consider how kind we can be to strangers. We may sometimes give money to strangers with no or few questions asked, but if our children ask for money we want to know why. And even if we give it to them, we may lecture them about being more responsible with their money. The interaction may be less kind, but it is more loving because it seeks to solve the underlying problem rather than merely relieving the symptom.

I personally have never used or seen these definitions of kindness.  CS Lewis's definition of kindness makes no sense to me because how can it be kind to allow someone access to anything that we know will harm him or her?   As I said, that is not kindness.  That is called enabling, and contrary to this definition, kindness and enabling are very distinct from one another.  

As far as Peter Kreeft is concerned, his definition of kindness is actually that of compassion, as shown in the Cambridge Dictionary:  "a strong feeling of sympathy and sadness for other people’s suffering or bad luck and a desire to help."  And that is bad because . . .?  As you can see, the problem with Msgr. Pope and the quotes he uses from CS Lewis and Peter Kreeft are that none of this is about kindness at all.  As I said above, Msgr. Pope is actually talking about enabling, and trying to equate that with kindness.  I always thought one of the stupidest definitions of love is "never having to say you're sorry."  I also think one of the worst definitions of kindness is "never having to say no."  In fact, Ps. 141:5 defines kindness as this:

Let a righteous man strike me—that is a kindness; let him rebuke me—that is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it, for my prayer will still be against the deeds of evildoers.

So what is true kindness?  The Cambridge Dictionary offers this definition of kindness:  "the quality of being generous, helpful, and caring about other people, or an act showing this quality."  Generous, helpful and caring.  That is certainly not how CS Lewis, Peter Kreeft or Msgr. Pope see the act of kindness.

Msgr. Pope does not use any quotes from the Written Word of God.  That should always be our go-to source, and I think it is very telling that Msgr. Pope, a Catholic priest, completely ignores the Bible.

I guess Msgr. Pope doesn't care for St. Paul's admonition to us in Ephesians 4:32:

 "And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."  

Or I Corinthians 13;4, in which St. Paul tells us that kindness is an integral part of love:

 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud." 

St. Paul also wrote of the importance of kindness in Colossians 3:12:

"Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience."

St. Paul tells us in Galatians 5:22-23 that kindness is actually a fruit of the Holy Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

St. Peter tells us to be kind in I Peter 2.  Like Msgr. Pope, St. Peter makes a distinction between love and kindness, but unlike Msgr. Pope, St. Peter feels that kindness is just as essential as love:

And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

And how does the Great God of the universe deal with sinful human beings?  Isaiah 54:8:

In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD your Redeemer.

According to Msgr Pope, since Our Creator has chosen to have compassion on us "with everlasting kindness", He doesn't really love us at all.

The true subject of Msgr. Pope's post is the traditionalists' war with Pope Francis.  Traditionalists believe that you cannot be kind to sinners.  The only way to deal with hardened sinners is to show them their sin, tell them that unless they repent, they will go to hell, and then leave them to deal with it.  Traditionalists are always complaining about the "mercifulness" of Pope Francis.  They call it "faux mercy."  They feel Pope Francis is just too lenient, too forgiving, too kind, too compassionate.  To the traditionalists, love means saying no, and saying it all the time.  Compassion, mercy, and now even kindness, are just not a part of their vocabulary.

The traditionalists hate Pope Francis.  This is from an article in the Guardian entitled, "The War Against Pope Francis":

Pope Francis is one of the most hated men in the world today. Those who hate him most are not atheists, or protestants, or Muslims, but some of his own followers. Outside the church he is hugely popular as a figure of almost ostentatious modesty and humility. From the moment that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became pope in 2013, his gestures caught the world’s imagination: the new pope drove a Fiat, carried his own bags and settled his own bills in hotels; he asked, of gay people, “Who am I to judge?” and washed the feet of Muslim women refugees.

But within the church, Francis has provoked a ferocious backlash from conservatives who fear that this spirit will divide the church, and could even shatter it. This summer, one prominent English priest said to me: “We can’t wait for him to die. It’s unprintable what we say in private. Whenever two priests meet, they talk about how awful Bergoglio is … he’s like Caligula: if he had a horse, he’d make him cardinal.” Of course, after 10 minutes of fluent complaint, he added: “You mustn’t print any of this, or I’ll be sacked.”

The traditionalists truly are the Pharisees of our time, and just as the Pharisees wanted to get rid of Jesus Christ, they traditionalists want to rid the world of Pope Francis.  The priests are among the worst because most of them will not say any of this publicly, as quoted above, but almost everything they write and say has this undertone, constantly swiping at the Pope.

That is why I reject the traditionalists.  I pray for them and hope they will realize the dangerous road they are on.  But they are basically becoming their own church.  I prefer to stay with the Church founded by Jesus Christ.  And like Jesus Christ, I hope I will always show kindness and compassion to others.