Michael Voris Has Jumped The Shark

I was once a loyal follower of Michael Voris. At that time I saw the Catholic Church as being in a state of chaos.  It seemed that many Catholics were hardly even aware or caring about the teachings of the Church. I saw priests and bishops who didn't seem to teach the truths of the Church anymore. Along came Michael Voris, excoriating them all with no holds barred. Bring it on!!! Voris came up with what I perceived to be the perfect label to describe the contemporary Catholic Church, the "Church of Nice", where everyone is always "nice", but there is no real preaching of the truth because they don't want to offend anyone.  According to the Gospel of Michael Voris, fear of offending people should never be the guiding force in our lives. We are the Church Militant, and that means we need to be spiritual warriors, fighting for the Truth of the Gospel, basically burning and slashing our way through the world.

After doing a total consecration of my life to the Blessed Mother, my perceptions and attitudes began to change, and I came to realize that Michael Voris did not have it completely right.  I have come to realize that our job as lay people is not, contrary to the Gospel of Voris, to right every wrong in the Church or society.  Our job is to right all the wrongs in ourselves, to be as brutally honest and uncompromising with ourselves as we can be.

Michael Voris often shows himself holding a sword, symbolizing that he is part of the Army of God and the Church Militant.  As he said in a Vortex from January 3, 2013:  "[The Church's] role is to fight .. its charter to attack and tear down the kingdom of Satan .. the empire of lies and falsehood and heresies that so dominate the world today .. in short .. the mission of the Church and Her member is to slay dragons."

Venerable Fulton Sheen, for whom Michael Voris claims a deep devotion, had a different take on this. He also spoke about the sword and war, but he said the sword needs to be pointed inward, not outward, and that the war is not with others, but with ourselves. The following is a quote from Bishop Sheen from a retreat he gave on St. Therese of Liseux:

We are fond of talking peace today, but all we mean by peace is lack of disturbance. Our Lord said, "I came not to bring peace." God HATES PEACE in those who are destined for war! And we are destined for war, spiritual war. We've forgotten that we're in a combat. We are in genuine combat. When our first parents were driven out of the garden of Paradise, God stationed an angel with a flaming sword, a two-edged sword that turned this way and that. Why? To keep our first parents from going back to eat of the Tree of Life and thus immortalize their evil. And the only way we can ever get back again into paradise is by having that sword run into us. It's flaming because it's love. It's two-edged because it cuts, and it penetrates. It's not the sword that's thrust outward to hack off the ear of the servant of the high priest as Peter did. It's the sword that's thrust inward to cut out all of our seven pallbearers of the soul, the pride and covetousness, lust, anger, envy, gluttony, and sloth.

In one of the recent interviews given by Pope Francis, he was asked, "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?"  His reply: "I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner."  We must all come to the same personal realization in our own lives.  We must turn the sword of God upon ourselves.    

As far as calling out other people as sinners, I refer to the words of our Lord:  "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."  (Matt. 7:5).  Does this mean never denouncing the evils in society? Absolutely not. I regularly pray in front of abortion clinics and I will continue to do so as long as I am able. I have written many times on this blog about the many evils in our world and will continue to do so. Again, quoting Bishop Sheen (from his 1932 book, Moods and Truths):

Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to principles. Intolerance applies only to principles, but never to persons. We must be tolerant to persons because they are human; we must be intolerant about principles because they are divine. We must be tolerant to the erring, because ignorance may have led them astray; but we must be intolerant to the error, because Truth is not our making, but God's. And hence the Church in her history, due reparation made, has always welcomed the heretic back into the treasury of her souls, but never his heresy into the treasury of her wisdom.

Denouncing evil is far different from setting myself up as judge and juror over other individuals. Yet I fear that is exactly what Michael Voris and many like him have done.   Although Michael Voris often talks about the evils in society, he reserves his harshest judgment for the hierarchy of the Church, often calling them "cowards" and worse.

In a recent Vortex episode released on September 11 and entitled, "Self Destruction", Voris quoted Pope Paul VI (not someone he normally lauds) in which the Pope said. "It is as if the Church were destroying herself."  This is from a speech given on December 7, 1968 by Pope Paul VI to Members of the Seminary Lombardo.  It is important to realize that this is a few months after the release of Humanae Vitae, in which many in the Church basically revolted against the Pope.   In my own opinion, the rejection of Humanae Vitae is the reason we have seen so much upheaval and chaos not only in the Church, but in the entire world.  You can read my post on this here.  

However, Michael Voris uses Pope Paul VI's statement as an indictment against Church leadership, as seen in this excerpt from the aforementioned Vortex episode:

Some are naïve yes. They don’t have the constitution of real men to stand up and call out what needs to be called out. So they profit, interiorly – in their own weak and damaged psyches by remaining in place where they perceive themselves to be popular and well liked.

Others refuse to see the damage because to do so would mean effectively the end of their clerical careers and advancement. They are perhaps aware in a dim fashion of the murder of the faith going on, but like their counterpart priests in the parable of the good Samaritan, they just cross over lanes on the road and walk on by the victim. So they too profit.

Then there are the real conspirators. These people HATE Christ and HATE the Church – they hate what She preaches, what she stands for and they are determined to destroy her from within.

You must understand, Michael Voris is not talking about those enemies who openly profess their hatred for the Catholic Church. He is talking about our ordained priests and bishops, the ones for whom we should be praying every day. In the very next sentence, he says they are "following in the line of apostolic succession from Judas." Michael Voris, who professes his love for the Catholic Church, makes his living by openly and unhesitatingly condemning, in the harshest of tones, the hierarchy of the Church he says he loves. He compares them to Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus Christ. I wonder if Voris realizes that although Our Lord was intimately aware of Judas' true intentions, he never once openly criticized or condemned him.

This is what St. Thomas said in the Summa Theologica regarding correction of prelates (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II, II, q. 33, a. 4):

A subject is not competent to administer to his prelate the correction which is an act of justice through the coercive nature of punishment: but the fraternal correction which is an act of charity is within the competency of everyone in respect of any person towards whom he is bound by charity, provided there be something in that person which requires correction.

Now an act which proceeds from a habit or power extends to whatever is contained under the object of that power or habit: thus vision extends to all things comprised in the object of sight. Since, however, a virtuous act needs to be moderated by due circumstances, it follows that when a subject corrects his prelate, he ought to do so in a becoming manner, not with impudence and harshness, but with gentleness and respect. Hence the Apostle says (1 Timothy 5:1): "An ancient man rebuke not, but entreat him as a father." Wherefore Dionysius finds fault with the monk Demophilus (Ep. viii), for rebuking a priest with insolence, by striking and turning him out of the church.

All would have to agree that "gentleness and respect" are not hallmarks of Michael Voris when it comes to the bishops. Would Dionysius strike Michael Voris and turn him out of the Church?

Many use the example of the Apostle Paul correcting St. Peter to justify public and harsh criticism of the Church hierarchy. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that:

Paul would not have withstood Peter then, unless he were in some way his equal as regards the defense of the faith. But one who is not an equal can reprove privately and respectfully.

Michael Voris does not reprove the elders of the Church either privately or respectfully.  It may not be his intention - only God can judge his soul - but Voris is sowing discord among the Church and encouraging the brethren to rebel against those whom God has put in charge of their souls.  

Is there ever a time when a prelate needs a public rebuke?  St. Thomas tell us this:

It must be observed, however, that if the faith were endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his prelate even publicly. Hence Paul, who was Peter's subject, rebuked him in public, on account of the imminent danger of scandal concerning faith, and, as the gloss of Augustine says on Galatians 2:11, "Peter gave an example to superiors, that if at any time they should happen to stray from the straight path, they should not disdain to be reproved by their subjects."

Public rebuke, according to St. Thomas, is to be used only in times of "imminent danger" and "if the faith were endangered."  It is not to be used as a general rebuke on a daily basis, as Michael Voris does.  And again, it should be done "not with impudence and harshness, but with gentleness and respect."

I believe Michael Voris finally "jumped the shark" when he did a Vortex episode entitled, "The New Tone", released on September 25.  In this Vortex, Voris talks about the reaction to the interview Pope Francis did with La Civiltà Cattolica.  Voris starts out with his usual harsh rhetoric:

Lots of cowardly clerics are most delighted at the Pope’s interview because they feel and are even saying .. in so many words .. that they are now off the hook.

Voris then does something that, as far as I know, he has never done before.  He slams the Holy Father:

Unlike John Paul and Benedict .. who many of them just ignored when it came to stressing the importance of defeating these evils .. now they finally have a Pope who they can interpret to mean .. “Phew, glad we don’t have to mention those things anymore” as if they had ever in reality lifted one blessed finger to preach against these evils in the first place.

This statement is subtle, but it become much harsher as he goes along.  Voris then wonders aloud "exactly when and where was this 'obsession' on the part of Church leaders and her clergy on preaching about for example contraception, that so many church leaders are all rushing to the barricades now to foreswear."  I have heard this argument from many conservatives in the Church - we never hear these things from the pulpit anyway, so what is the Pope talking about?  I totally agree that we have not heard these matters discussed from the pulpit as we should.  And that has been harmful to the Church.

But this is a canard, because that is not what the Holy Father was speaking of.  Pope Francis was talking about how to reach out to those outside of the Church, and he was telling us not to keep hitting them over the head with things like abortion and homosexuality, but to reach out to them first and foremost with love and compassion, just as our Lord did.  Our Lord never told sinners how horrible they were.  The only sinners Jesus Christ ever publicly denounced were the Pharisees, and he accused them of hypocrisy. Does that mean there are no other sins? Of course it doesn't mean that. But it does mean that in reaching out to the spiritually wounded, we first of all have to address their wounds, not stand in judgment and pridefully look down upon them.

Remember, our Lord told the religious leaders that "tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you." Pride is the sin of Satan. Hypocrisy is the direct result of spiritual pride, and no sin - not sodomy, abortion, murder or any other sin - is worse than pride because pride says we know better than God.

What Voris calls a "new tone" is the same "tone" used by Jesus Christ when He walked this earth 2000 years ago. It is a tone of love and compassion. Christ's way was to first heal people and only then did He tell them "Go and sin no more." You don't hit someone when they're down. As the Holy Father told us in his next interview, "They have been crushed by the present. You tell me: can you live crushed under the weight of the present?" We first must lift the heavy weight that is literally crushing people, and then we can begin to talk about the sin in their lives.

However,  Voris sees nothing but evil resulting from this "new tone":

The churches are emptying out and closing and yet Church leaders are positively giddy about now being able to stop talking about the sins that send souls to Hell and start speaking with a “new tone”.

Again – how will the new tone, be anything different from the old current tone?

When Jane Fonda and Chris Rock are cheering on you and your new tone, you better watch out.

They aren’t cheering you on because they have suddenly had a Damascus moment and are agreeing with you. They are cheering you on because they hope or actually think that YOU now agree with THEM .. or at the very least can now be persuaded to come over to their side.

Voris doesn't even consider the fact that people like Jane Fonda and Chris Rock are actually now listening to the Pope, which is a huge step.  What caught the attention of the thief on the cross being crucified next to Our Lord?  Dismas had first joined in with the insults from the other thief.  But as Dismas watched Christ and saw that there was no condemnation coming from Jesus, but only love and forgiveness, it affected him so greatly that he was saved right then and there.  Will the world come to a Church that only offers it condemnation, or will they respond to love and acceptance of them as human beings?  Our Lord gave us the answer to that when He walked the earth.

This is what Voris sees:

They aren’t saying thank you for showing us the light so that we can now convert to the truth.

They aren’t saying thank you for bringing us to the realization of the paschal mystery and our path to salvation.

They aren’t saying thank you for bringing to them the light of revelation and the glorious mysteries of the Catholic Church.

They are saying thank you for giving them the moral license to now fire back at pro-lifers and faithful Catholics who have spent decades in front of the abortion chambers praying for the killing to end.

Only one of the two thieves repented and was forgiven.  Not everyone responds to the saving mercy of Jesus Christ.  So yes, there have been and will continue to be those who are trying to say that this Pope doesn't care about issues such as abortion and homosexuality, and they will use the Pope's words as weapons against Catholics. But there are also others who are saying thank you for trying to understand me, thank you for not condemning me. They are sensing a true love and acceptance, just as the sinners in Christ's time did, and they will be much more open to hearing the true Gospel than they have ever been before. An excellent example of this was an editorial in The New York Times, which I wrote about here.

Voris then makes a statement with which I could not agree more:

The issue is about saving souls. Every action done, every word uttered must be measured against this standard.

This is exactly right.  It all comes down to saving souls.  How do the words of Michael Voris stand up against this measure?

From Voris:

Will this encourage Jane Fonda to REPENT and become an authentic Catholic? Will she hang up her weapons of mass contraception and renounce a lifetime strategy of global population reduction through abortion and contraception?

Just what part of the “good news” has she suddenly embraced, so much so that she is praising the Vicar of Christ on earth? Same types of questions for Chris Rock and all the other cultural elitists who have lived against and even actively fought against the truth with every fiber of their beings for most of the lives.

Michael Voris, do you think your method of accusing and attacking them will bring them to Christ? Doesn't seem to have worked so far, and there is no evidence it ever will. But Pope Francis, following in the footsteps of Our Lord, has gotten their attention. They are listening to him, just as sinners listened to our Lord. That is HUGE and should not be dismissed.

The following statement is where I feel that Voris has finally jumped the shark.  He is now not only attacking the bishops as he has always done, he is going after the Holy Father as well:

But at the end of the day .. the Church is Christ’s. Not the pope’s .. not the bishops or any other cowardly clerics.

In the above statement, Voris is saying that we don't need to listen to the bishop or even the Pope.  Voris is including Pope Francis with the "cowardly clerics." Voris is right when he says the Church is Christ's. And no, the Pope did not speak ex cathedra in these interviews. But does that mean we can just dismiss these words as if they were never said and go right on as we always have with no reflection? The Pope is not just another politician, he is not just another man. He is the Vicar of Christ, the actual human representative of Christ on earth. Whenever he says anything, be it ex cathedra or not, it is important that we listen to him and reflect on the meaning of his words. We should never dismiss the Pope because he says something that doesn't fit in with our way of thinking. Maybe, just maybe, there is something we need to learn.

This is how Michael Voris ended this Vortex episode:

She is His Bride .. and He will not suffer forever Her mourning in the marketplace and desecration of Her altars and confessionals.

He is allowing this scourge of contradiction and humiliation .. of being mocked and laughed to scorn by Her enemies .. to bring about salvation for some souls .. some where at some time.

In the meantime .. amidst all the verbal and emotional stoning going on .. stand fast –while the faith is full of mystery, it is also quite simple.

Loving God means more than just feeling a certain way. He Himself has told us what it means – if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Yes, Michael Voris, Our Lord did say that if we love Him we will keep his commandments.  He also said the two most important commandments are to love God with our whole mind and heart, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Is a barrage of constant condemnation a way of loving our neighbor, or is it more loving to reach out to them on a level they can understand as our Lord did?  Jesus never condemned sinners, and yet during His physical lifetime, He saved more sinners than we will ever know.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, Our Holy Mother gave us the example of how to react to things we don't understand. Most of the time she did not understand the events in her life or the words or actions of her Son. Did she sit in criticism? Did she protest and say, you know, there really is a better way of doing things. Why can't you wait until I'm married before I become pregnant? Why don't you allow me to give birth at home where it is more comfortable? Why do I have to flee to Egypt when you could just stop Herod from killing the babies? Why do you answer me so harshly when I ask you to help out at the wedding when the wine runs out?

The world is in a terrible state. Billions of souls are at stake. Obviously whatever we have been doing up to this point hasn't been effective enough. Do we follow the example of people like Michael Voris and attack other Catholics, including our bishops and even our Holy Father? Our Lord warned us that "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand." (Matt. 12:25). Do we continue to listen to those who are dividing us against one another?

Or could it just possibly be that the Holy Spirit is trying to point us in a new direction? Are we so prideful that we can't listen to the Vicar of Christ on earth and ponder his words as our Holy Mother showed us?

I am not questioning the sincerity of Michael Voris and his followers and all who think like them. I was one of them not that long ago. But think about it: is " trapping and exposing lies and falsehoods" what the Gospel is about? "Gospel" literally means "good news." Lies and falsehoods are not good news.

It is our job as the recipients of God's forgiveness and mercy to bring that same forgiveness and mercy to the rest of the world. That is what our Holy Father is trying to tell us. Is it merciful to expect a man with crippled legs to walk? Is pointing at him and telling him that he has useless legs going to convince him that we have the answers he is looking for?

Or is the answer to make ourselves available to the saving and transforming Grace of Christ into our lives, allow that flaming sword of the Holy Spirit to cut away all in us that is opposed to God, and then draw people to us when they see us living a life of grace?

The Little Flower gave us these words which we would do well to contemplate:

O Jesus, my whole strength lies in prayer and sacrifice; these are my invincible weapons, and experience has taught me that the heart is won by them rather than by words.

A Traditionalist Defends Pope Francis

Jesus Christ said the identifying sign of his followers would be that they would love one another.  "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."  (John 13:35) If that is the case, then I would suggest the many of those who run Catholic blogs and websites do some real soul searching because you are not displaying a whole lot of loving at the present moment, especially when it comes to our Holy Father, Pope Francis.

The Catholic blogosphere has lit up with rants and raves against Pope Francis in light of his two recent interviews. There have been those who have written favorably of the Holy Father, but I would estimate that they are outnumbered by about 50 to 1. Many have gone right up to the edge of accusing Pope Francis of being a heretic.

Pewsitter.com has gone out of its way in gathering together many of the posts by Catholic bloggers who are on a rant about the Pope. From a blog called "Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II" (I don't think this particular blogger likes Vatican II):

Having absorbed the bitter reality of yet another revealing papal interview, one that somehow managed to offend Catholic sensibilities even more than the last, all but the most detached among us are now struggling to come to terms with what the future holds under a Bergoglio papacy.

Let’s be honest; modernist popes aren’t exactly the exception to the rule in this post-conciliar age. Hell, we’re even gearing up for their canonization!

So why then are Catholics today reeling in what appears to be an unprecedented way?

Simply put, because they should be.

I think it's obvious where that particular blogger is going.

Pewsitter also linked to a Catholic blogger by the name of Steven Skojec who titles his post, "It Doesn’t Take a Rigorist: Why All Catholics Should Be Concerned About Pope Francis."  It doesn't take a genius to guess what that post will say.

Pewsitter also linked to a gem by a blog called "Mundabor's Blog" in a post entitled, "Letter To A Proddie Friend":

You read now everywhere about the scandal caused by the disgraceful Pope Woodstock, and perhaps you think the man’s antics expose the intrinsic weakness of the Church. Perhaps you even think – in your lack of proper knowledge of Catholicism – that Francis may change the tenets of what you call the Roman (meaning by that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic) Church.

Dear friend, you couldn’t be more wrong. Allow me to explain to you why.

The Pope doesn’t own the Church. He isn’t her CEO, either. He is merely the custodian and the caretaker of the enormous edifice entrusted to him; an edifice he has the duty to transmit, intact and properly maintained, to the next custodian.

The caretaker of a huge palace cannot decide that a wing should now be demolished, and a new one built in its place. He cannot add, or take away, anything from the real estate entrusted to him. His job is to care that everything looks good, everything works properly, the walls remain solid, the garden is properly maintained, and so on.

Granted, the caretaker could be a lazy man. Or he could be corrupted, and steal the money meant for the maintenance. The palace will, at some point, look shabby. The light bulbs will not work, the doors will start to squeak, mildew will appear in the basement, and the gardens will be a proper mess.

In extreme cases – like, well, now – the caretaker will be a kind of socialist hothead, a Che Guevara fan not only uncaring, but outright resentful of the splendour of the palace; a splendour that he considers offensive to the poor outside, living in their small cottages. Don’t ask me why he applied for the job of caretaker, or why no one tells him the poor living in the college love the palace and its splendour, and know that the Palace embraces and makes place for all the good villagers. This letter is not about these issues.

The socialist hothead caretaker will, then, do his work as… badly as he can. The palace will look miserable when seen from the road, and its state of disrepair will be evident to the blind. The caretaker will, in the meantime, go around in the village, boasting that he has brought the palace nearer to the people and clearly implying if he could he would knock down the whole thing and build a sanitised favela instead, where everyone can do pretty much whatever he pleases provided he loves.

This post is dripping in disrespect for the Holy Father, not even trying to understand what he was saying.  Just total condemnation.

Then there is "Ches" who does a blog called, "The Sensible Bond."  He has actually done a few posts about Pope Francis, all involving a large amount of hand wringing, with statements such as the following, which do nothing to add clarity but only to turn people against the Holy Father:

The most visible wreckage of what has just happened lies in the confusion, disillusion and demoralization of faithful men and women - small ones and those at the very top of the Church's life - whose battles against the culture of death or with the perversity of post Vatican II liberal Catholicism was travestied by Francis's radically ahistorical portrayal of the Church as doctrinally obsessive, imbalanced and small minded.

Father Z has tried his best to point out to his mostly Traditional Catholic readers what he feels is positive about the Pope's remarks.  But he does so with statements such as this:  "Sigh… are we going to have to do this everyday? Is this now my fate?"

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands more blog posts like these out there, but they all say basically the same thing.   The Pope has gone off the rails and doesn't even sound Catholic anymore.

But there was one blogger in particular who really intrigued me.  His blog is called ebougis.wordpress.com, and entitled, "FideCogitActio:omnis per gratium."  He entitled his post, "Catholic Is As Catholic Does", which I guess is a take on the Forrest Gump statement, "Stupid is as stupid does", a subtle message to be sure. His name is Elliott Bougis.  I will call him "Fide" from the title of his blog, fide, I assume, being a shortened version of fidelius, which of course means "faithful". I have no doubt Fide sees himself as a faithful Catholic.  But I believe he needs to rethink his position on Pope Francis, as I will show.

Fide starts out with a couple of quotes, one from Pope St. Pius X condemning modernism, and the other from Cardinal Ratzinger telling us that popes need to be able to take criticism.  Fide has set the stage for what is coming.  He tells us that he does pray for the pope, but that his prayer life "is pretty forced and bleary-eyed these days. I'm fortunate enough to attend a parish that has, so far, been free from the spreading 'Francinsanity.' "  Francinsanity?  Hmmm.  We haven't even started the post yet and already he is being disrespectful.

But we'll keep going.

Fide next tells us:

I admire his warmth and vigor as a “people guy”. I value the softening of hearts that is reported to have happened in some quarters in response to his presence. That’s all good and very good! Praise God!

So, if you’re not interested in reading what follow, maybe I can sum it all up like this and spare you the trouble:

I’m having as hard a time adjusting to Pope Francis’s doctrinal voice as I think many had adapting to Benedict XVI’s pastoral awkwardness.

Okay, I can accept this.  Many Catholics operate from a certain paradigm, and the Pope is saying things that do not seem to fit into their paradigms.  So I can understand having problems with some of the Holy Father's statements.

From Fide:

I realize that Pope Benedict said things very much in keeping with some of Francis’s recent head-scratchers, but he always made a distinct effort to speak as carefully as was necessary in virtue of his office. By contrast, I, along with others, can’t shake, and can’t simply abide, Pope Francis’s almost willful obscurity on key matters, since his basic approach is that the details don’t matter as long as people feel loved and the Church looks more “attractive.”

A turnstyle jumper

I have a little different take on that. Bear with me while I explain. New York City had an extremely high crime rate back in the crack cocaine days of the 1980's and into the 1990's. At one point, our murder rate was over 2000 people a year. Neighborhoods were in shambles and people were afraid to walk the streets. Rudolph Giuliani was elected mayor in 1992, and his crime fighting style was to go after "little" crimes like subway turnstyle jumpers. What? People are being gunned down in the street and you're going after people who jump the turnstyles? (Sound anything like "millions of babies are being aborted and you're worried about unemployment?") Well, it turned out that many of those jumpers were also big time criminals. The cops couldn't catch them in the big crimes, but were able to catch them in the "little things" and get them off the street that way. The theory is, take care of the "little problems" and the big problems will take care of themselves. This tactic drove crime down drastically in New York City, and NYC is now the safest big city in the United States.

It seems to me that this is exactly what Pope Francis is doing on a spiritual level. There is no "willful obscuring" going on with Pope Francis. Do you really believe that Pope Francis has no concern about the Culture of Death? He has condemned such things as abortion and same sex marriage many times. But let's face it, the world has not and will not listen to the church on these matters. Abortion and same sex marriage are now accepted worldwide. Even Ireland, once the most Catholic country in the world, has legalized abortion.

So Pope Francis is concentrating on "little" things (which really aren't little at all) like "unemployment among the youth" and "loneliness among the elderly" because these are issues upon which everyone can agree. Lots of Catholics seemed to get very upset at these remarks, but the world at large nodded their head in agreement to these words:  "The old need care and companionship; the young need work and hope but have neither one nor the other, and the problem is they don't even look for them any more. They have been crushed by the present. You tell me: can you live crushed under the weight of the present?"  Because many in the world connected with these words, the Catholic blogosphere pointed to that as proof that the Pope had completely lost it.

The reason Catholics and other people of faith care about issues such as abortion is because we have hope, which we receive from our faith. This hope helps us see the value of life. Pope Francis pointed to two issues which not only destroy hope but actually engender hopelessness and despair in people. When people see only bleakness in the future, why should they care about anything else? Nothing makes sense. What difference does it make if babies are being killed and families are being destroyed? It's all hopeless. As Pope Francis says, "they have been crushed by the present." If a person is being crushed under a rock, do you think he is going to care about anything else? But if we can give people a sense of hope and help them discover the true value and dignity of life, then they too will start to care about the "big" issues. Only then will things start to change.

Back to Fide and his blog post.  Fide tells us that he is actually doing Pope Francis a favor by being critical of him because:

The intransigent feeling I have about Francis comes from Luke 6:26, “Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” Thus, the hand-wringing by many of his conservative brethren is, in a very real way, saving Pope Francis from the “woe” of being liked by the world for bearing a corpseless Cross.  [The "corpseless Cross" attack is going too far and is a very unfair and untrue attack on His Holiness. Pope Francis has never backed down from the Suffering Christ.  See below]  I express my “extreme” disasppointment [sic] with Pope Francis on some matters precisely because I esteem him as the Pope.

Huh?? I'm afraid this statement shows Fide's confused state of mind. Beating someone up is doing them a favor? Especially when that someone is the Vicar of Christ?  As far as the "corpseless Cross" comment, here is what Pope Francis said about the Cross on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (from Vatican Radio):

At the Mass for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Pope Francis said the mystery of the Cross is a great mystery for mankind, a mystery that can only be approached in prayer and in tears.

In his homily, the Pope said that it is in the mystery of the Cross that we find the story of mankind and the story of God, synthesised by the Fathers of the Church in the comparison between the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in Paradise, and the tree of the Cross:

“The one tree [tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden] has wrought so much evil, the other tree [the tree of the Cross upon which Our Lord hung] has brought us to salvation, to health. This is the course of the humanity’s story: a journey to find Jesus Christ the Redeemer, who gives His life for love. God, in fact, has not sent the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. This tree of the Cross save us, all of us, from the consequences of that other tree, where self-sufficiency, arrogance, the pride of us wanting to know all things according to our own mentality, according to our own criteria, and also according to that presumption of being and becoming the only judges of the world  This is the story of mankind: from one tree to the other.”

Hmmm.  "Self-sufficiency, arrogance, the pride of us wanting to know all things according to our own mentality, according to our own criteria, and also according to that presumption of being and becoming the only judges of the world." Now why would His Holiness use these words?

Back to Fide.  He admits he has gone against I Tim. 5:1 which says not to rebuke an elder but exhort him as a father, and I Thes. 5, which says to respect those who labor among you.

I admit that I have erred against the above counsels by excessive sarcasm here and there, and that I need to trust as much as I can in God’s redemptive power over the power of scandal and compromise.

Well, I’m trying.

So, without further ado…

Fide then tells us that he is a Catholic convert, but not a Traditionalist.  He actually sees some benefits of the Second Vatican Council (some benefits?) and doesn't have a "strong hankering for the Tridentine Rite."  So this seems to be his way of saying he is not an "extremist."   (BTW, I love the Traditional Mass and all things traditional Catholic and I have very little problem with Vatican II.  And no, that is not a contradiction.)  But he says that "As a convert, though, I am extremely sensitive to the distinctive realities of being Catholic."  He wants Catholics to be Catholic and not try to be anything else just to please the world. That is why he is upset with Pope Francis' statement that "there is no Catholic God." Fide ties himself up into knots over this. He tells us in a very confusing statement, "If, then, there is no Catholic God, and if God is the One who calls the Church into being, then there can be no Catholic Church as, precisely, that communion called by the God known in Catholic teaching."

Fide, you wrote this:

Indeed, I have no recollection of a Pope, much less any Catholic priest or orthodox theologian, ever saying, "there is no Catholic God," full stop. This is yet another case of the Pope resorting to needlessly abstruse and scandalous phrases when just a few extra words would have clarified his point. HELP! WHAT AM I MISSING? In what follows, I want my analysis to be shown to be faulty, based on translation problems, dogmatic teachings, etc.

What are you missing?  Read on if you really want your "analysis to be shown to be faulty."  It is actually quite faulty.

The Catholic Church's teachings are a direct reflection of God, and that cannot be said about any other religion in the world. But does reflecting God in our teachings make God Catholic?

The Catholic Church was
born from the side of
Jesus Christ

I don't know how much Church history you have studied, Fide, but it is obvious from your post that you are very intelligent, so I'm sure you know that the Church was founded in 33 A.D., at the time that the spear was thrust into Christ's side and blood and water gushed out. There was no Catholic Church prior to that time. If God was Catholic, He would have to be a convert like you. Up to that time, God was working through the Israelites, which is why He came to us as a Jew. Does that mean God was a Jew? Of course not. Jesus was a Jew in his human form, but was his Divine nature Jewish? Obviously not. God predated the Jews and the Israelite nation. He predated the Catholic Church. He existed before time itself!!!! God always was and always will be, no beginning and no end. We as human beings have a beginning and the Catholic Church also had a beginning, meaning there was a time when the Church did not exist.

No, Fide, God is not human and God is not Catholic. God is not subject to the rules and regulations of the Catholic Church. Unlike we sinful human beings, God does not need the church in order to exist.  Also, God is not subject to the Pope's authority to which we Catholics are subject (no Pope, no Church).

The reason for founding the Catholic Church is the same reason for the building of Noah's ark. Noah, on the orders of God, built his ark to physically save mankind from the flood. But commanding the building of the ark didn't make God an ark. The ark was distinct and separate from God. Jesus built the Catholic Church to spiritually save mankind from eternal damnation.  We must become Catholics because it is the only way to inherit eternal life with our Creator. But our Creator exists above and apart from the Church. He does not need the Church to inherit eternal life. He founded and built the Church, but that does not make Him Catholic.  His identity is independent from the Catholic Church.

God created Catholicism to save us, but He is much bigger than the Catholic Church, just as He was much bigger than Noah's ark.  He is bigger than the universe, bigger than our finite minds can ever grasp.

You jumped to some pretty startling conclusions because you are trying to reduce God to your level.

For all you fans of “context” these days [context has nothing to do with it], keep in mind that the run up the Pope’s denial of the Catholic God is that he asks Scalfari the following question: “I am asking what you think is the essence of the world, indeed the universe.” Scalfari answers, “I believe in Being, that is in the tissue from which forms, bodies arise,” whereupon Francis, not, mind you, having been asked about religious pluralism or Catholic chauvinism, but as from the bottom of his heart, says, “And I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation.”

The mind reels.

Fide, your mind should not "reel" at this statement from the Holy Father. It does make perfect sense. God is far, far beyond the Catholic Church. God cannot be contained by anything, not even by His own Church. By the way, I do know of at least one other priest who said God is not Catholic: Father Benedict Groeschel. Take a look at the following video from EWTN (less than a minute).  Hopefully, with the explanation I just gave you it will make sense and not send your mind "reeling":



You also wrote this, Fide:

The key here is that Pope Francis explicitly pits a “Catholic God” against “God” per se, and thus implies that we must choose between them: “Are you with me for God, or are you with the restorationists for a Catholic God?” [The Pope nowhere says or implies this]  In Francis’s eschatology, when we finally see God as He is, it will turn out all those Catholic-God features were just accessories, concessions, illusions, and mere metaphors–Praise God, turns out God’s not Catholic, after all! [Again, you are attributing ideas to Pope Francis that he nowhere conveyed] For whatever reason, Francis favors a God of whom the distinctively Catholic theology (theory?) of God is at best only contingently and partially applicable, for if it were wholly and essentially true of God, then God would by his very nature be a “Catholic God.”

Think about it: by saying that he does not believe in the Catholic God, the Pope is saying that he does not believe in the God of Catholicism.

You probably aren't aware of this, but shortly after Pope Francis was elected, he gave a sermon on April 23 in which he said the following (you can read the entire sermon here):

And so the Church was a Mother, the Mother of more children, of many children. It became more and more of a Mother. A Mother who gives us the faith, a Mother who gives us an identity. But the Christian identity is not an identity card: Christian identity is belonging to the Church, because all of these belonged to the Church, the Mother Church. Because it is not possible to find Jesus outside the Church. The great Paul VI said: "Wanting to live with Jesus without the Church, following Jesus outside of the Church, loving Jesus without the Church is an absurd dichotomy." And the Mother Church that gives us Jesus gives us our identity that is not only a seal, it is a belonging. Identity means belonging. This belonging to the Church is beautiful.

Do you think Pope Francis is contradicting himself by saying on the one hand that Christ cannot be found outside the Church, and then saying he does not believe in a "Catholic" God? There is no contradiction here. Who and what is God? Jesus told us He is "the Way, the Truth and the Life" in John 14:6. I John 4:8 tells us, "God is Love." None of these verses say "God is Catholic."

Noah's Ark

What makes us human beings Catholic? How do we identify as Catholics? Why do we need to be Catholics? The reason for Catholicism, as stated above, is the same reason as for the construction of Noah's ark. It is to save mankind. Those who were not in Noah's ark perished, and those who are not a part of the Catholic Church (and that doesn't mean just being on a parish membership role, which actually means nothing in the long run) will perish spiritually. Yes, the Catholic Church proceeds from God and leads us to God, but unlike us, God does not need saving. So why does God need to be Catholic? He doesn't. God didn't need to be saved in Noah's ark, and He doesn't need the Catholic Church to survive, either. God is infinitely bigger than the Church. 

To say God's identity is wrapped up in Catholicism or any other belief is to limit Him to the level of sinful human beings. Do you now understand the faultiness of your statement: "by saying that he does not believe in the Catholic God, the Pope is saying that he does not believe in the God of Catholicism"? A "Catholic God" and the "God of Catholicism" are two different things. To conflate the two as one is to completely miss the meaning of Pope Francis' statement.

Fide then goes beyond the Pope's statement about a Catholic God:

The above analysis concerns only one of the Pope’s statements lately that have unsettled many in the flock. As lengthy as my analysis might have seemed, it’s actually just indicative of the more fundamental worry I have with Pope Francis: he often seems oblivious to, or even to disdainful of, the fact that he is never not speaking on behalf of the Church. [This is your emphasis, Fide].

Which is where what I’ll call the Papal Categorical Imperative comes into the picture:

In light of his duty always to form consciences according to the truth, every word the Pope utters, regardless of the anterior context, and regardless of the interlocutor–but especially when it’s uttered from a global platform–is to be judged based on whether the Church itself could and should consistently speak in the same manner.  [Again, Fide, this is your emphasis]

I mean no disrespect, but the hubris contained in this statement is breathtaking. Do you realize that what you are actually saying is that if the Pope won't agree with you, then he had better just shut up. Do you honestly believe that you know better than the one specifically chosen and led by the Holy Spirit? Or do you believe Pope Francis is a false pope. You can't have it both ways. You either believe Pope Francis is the Vicar of Christ or he is an imposter.  And if you believe he is the Vicar of Christ, then as a Catholic, you owe him respect and allegiance, no matter what your personal feelings are.

Our greatest role model is our Blessed Mother., and certainly no one ever showed as much allegiance and loyalty as she did.  She was often perplexed by the words and actions of her Son and by the events in her life. But never once did she speak out against Jesus or His Father, never once did she question events and circumstances that seemed to make no sense. For example, Christ was lost for three days, nowhere to be found. After being sick with worry, she and Joseph finally found Jesus in the Temple. Mary asked him why he had worried her so. He did not give her an answer except to say He had to be about his Father's business. The scriptures tell us she did not understand this, but she "kept it in her heart."

In 2013, when so many of us have access to the Internet and a public voice, we don't keep anything in our hearts.  We forget the Pope is the Vicar of Christ - Christ's literal representative on earth, answerable only to Christ Himself (which also makes him subject to a much harsher judgment than any of the rest of us will face).  We look at the Pope as just another political figure, and when he doesn't meet our expectations, we feel completely justified in hammering him.  We never stop to think that it may just be possible that we have an incomplete understanding, or that it is possible we don't have the clear picture that the Holy Father has.   We just know he doesn't agree with our thinking and therefore, he must be wrong and he better shut up.

I can only wonder what would happen if Christ walked the earth now and said for the first time to His followers, "You must eat my body and drink my blood or you have no life in you."  What if we saw Christ consorting with prostitutes and the lowest of society.  What if we saw Christ going against the important religious rules of our time, such as picking food on the Sabbath and not washing His hands as commanded in the Law!   We would be no different than the Pharisees.  The blogosphere would light up with condemnation, telling us that this is a mad man.

When I first read the headlines about the interviews with the Pope, I admit to being concerned. The Pope says abortion and same sex marriage aren't important issues? The Pope says all we need to do is follow our own conscience? How can this be? Then I took the time to read the interviews, and was both enlightened and delighted at the message of love and compassion from the Holy Father. I saw the words of a man who truly loves humanity and wants, above all else, to save as many souls as he can. In other words, I saw Christ in Pope Francis.

No, I'm not some soft hearted liberal. I'm about as conservative and traditional as any Catholic you will find. I listen to and read Venerable Fulton Sheen all the time (so much so that I'm beginning to feel like he is a personal friend). My iPad is filled with traditional Catholic prayers and devotions and spiritual reading from 100 years and more ago (right now I'm reading a book by Fr. William Frederick Faber about the Sorrows of Mary). As stated, I love the Traditional Mass. I wouldn't receive communion in the hand for any amount of money or even if my life depended on it. I go to confession frequently and pray the Rosary every day. I'm not stating any of this to impress people, but to let you know that I love the Catholic Church - the traditional Catholic Church - and I love Pope Francis. The two, despite all of the ranting and raving on the Internet, are not only not exclusive, they are very much inclusive.

For all of you who think Pope Francis is a left wing liberal out to do away with the clear teaching of the Church, remember that he says 15 mysteries of the Rosary every day and spends an hour every day in Eucharistic Adoration.  Pope Francis is one of the busiest people in the world, and yet he still manages to do this.  How many of us can say we do as much?  Pope Francis obviously has a deep love for our Lord, for his Church and for people in general.  He is the Vicar of Christ.  We need to listen to him, and like our Blessed Mother, when we don't understand something, we need to keep it in our hearts and ask for the understanding, not announce to the world that Our Holy Father is a crazed lunatic. When it comes to doubt, the first one to doubt is always ourselves.  

Fide ended his blog with this (after sarcastically renaming the Holy Father, "Pope Guido"):

And so I write.

And write.

And keep writing.

But do I defect? Do I renounce the Pope as a heretic?

I do not. I remain Catholic. For that is what being Catholic means: to abide with Christ as revealed in the Scriptures, the Tradition, the Liturgy, the Magisterium, and the brethren even in spite of many headdesks [head aches??] that “the world’s parish priest”, or any other of the brethren, may induce in me. Despair is not an option, but groaning out loud certainly is. (Scroll back up to see the first papal intention for this month.)

When you decide you need to "groan out loud," first remember who the accuser of the brethren is. Make sure you're not aligning yourself with him.

The Church has no other meaning and finality than to witness to Jesus. May we not forget this.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) September 23, 2013

The Message of Pope Francis According to The New York Times

Without question, the most misunderstood person in the entire history of mankind is Jesus Christ. He was misunderstood at the time he lived when the religious leaders of the day called him a devil. Down through history both saints and sinners used his words and teachings to justify their actions, good or bad. Warmongers use the words of the Lord who preached love and mercy to justify war. His words of truth and justice have been used to browbeat people into submission. Rarely is our Lord presented as He truly was - our Creator who came to pour out His Blood for the salvation of mankind. The same has been true of the Church founded by Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church. As the late great Venerable Fulton Sheen once said, “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

I would submit that the most misunderstood person in the world today is Christ's representative and the head of the Catholic Church, our Holy Father, Pope Francis. This papacy could easily be labeled, "The Litmus Papacy". Listening to people talk about Pope Francis doesn't really give one as much insight into Pope Francis as it does into the person speaking about Pope Francis.

THE INTERVIEW (and if you don't know what I'm referring to, it can only be because you were either in a coma for the last couple of weeks or on another planet) is a prime example of how the world sees Pope Francis through their own individual ideas and prejudices.  The Pope covered many topics in this interview, but the one that almost everyone picked up on was the following statement:

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible.

NARAL got so excited over this remark that they posted the following on their Facebook page:

Chris Rock, hardly a conservative Christian, tweeted, "I might be crazy but I got this weird feeling that the new pope might be the greatest man alive."  On the opposite end of the spectrum, many conservative Catholics felt the Holy Father was going off the rails, just another example of the destruction wrought by Vatican II.

The truth is that Pope Francis was not saying anything new in this interview but merely echoing the words of Our Lord from 2000 years ago.  Pope Francis said we should not be concentrating on people's individual sins but more on their spiritual healing and bringing them to Christ.   In making this statement, he was merely following the lead of his Boss, Jesus Christ.

Our Lord with the woman caught in adultery

Our Lord rarely pointed out people's sins. We see this in the story of the woman taken in adultery, as told in John 8, when the Jews were demanding she be stoned. This is what the law demanded, but how does our Lord treat her? Jesus writes on the floor and one by one, the woman's accusers leave. Only then does Jesus address the woman:

Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”“No one, sir,” she said.“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

While certainly acknowledging that the woman taken in adultery was a sinner, Jesus did not condemn her but instead showed compassion and mercy. His only acknowledgement of her sin was to tell her to sin no more. Our Lord did not see a sinner when he looked at this woman. He saw a human being in need of healing. There was no obvious sign of repentance from the woman, no indication that she intended to change her life, but that did not prevent Him from extending His Love and Forgiveness. Pope Francis echoes our Lord's words and actions with these words:

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.

Matthew 9 relates the story of our Lord having dinner at the apostle Matthew's house, which was attended by many tax collectors and sinners.  Not only was he having dinner and socializing with these known sinners, I can assure you he was also not telling them that they were sinners and headed to hell. He was a charming and entertaining guest who made them feel very comfortable and accepted.

Credit:  newdaychurch.info

Think of our Lord having dinner with likes of the heads of Planned Parenthood, the leaders of the homosexual movement, etc. You think he would never do such a thing? From Matthew 9:11-13:

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, summed up this sentiment exactly with these words:

“I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.... And you have to start from the ground up.”

Credit:  www.tillhecomes.org

One of the best interpretations of the Pope's remarks that I have read comes from what many call the Secular Bible, The New York Times. This is an opinion piece, entitled "The Pope’s Radical Whisper", written by Frank Bruni, a very traditional liberal. It can be found here, although I am reprinting the entire editorial below:

IT’S about time. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church has surveyed the haughty scolds in its ranks, noted their fixation on matters of sexual morality above all others and said enough is enough. I’m not being cheeky with this one-word response. Hallelujah.

But it wasn’t the particulars of Pope Francis’ groundbreaking message in an interview published last week that stopped me in my tracks, gave fresh hope to many embittered Catholics and caused hardened commentators to perk up.

It was the sweetness in his timbre, the meekness of his posture. It was the revelation that a man can wear the loftiest of miters without having his head swell to fit it, and can hold an office to which the term “infallible” is often attached without forgetting his failings. In the interview, Francis called himself naïve, worried that he’d been rash in the past and made clear that the flock harbored as much wisdom as the shepherds. Instead of commanding people to follow him, he invited them to join him. And did so gently, in what felt like a whisper.

What a surprising portrait of modesty in a church that had lost touch with it.

This is exactly what Pope Francis is talking about.  As I stated in a previous post, we live in a world in which people have completely lost their way.  Like the people of Nineveh in the Book of Jonah, the world today does not know their left hand from their right.   They are the walking wounded, lost in darkness and not even aware of it.  They feel something is not right, and in their moments of solitude and silence - which they try to avoid as much as possible - they keenly feel this sense of loss. They are not in need of our condemnation but like the woman taken in adultery, they need compassion and love to bring them to the only One who can heal them.

Mr. Bruni notes how different is the tone of Pope Francis compared with the rest of the world:

And what a refreshing example of humility in a world with too little of it.

That’s what stayed with me, not the olive branch he extended to gay people or the way he brushed aside the contraception wars but his personification of a virtue whose deficit in American life hit me full force when I spotted it here, in his disarming words. Reading and then rereading the interview, I felt like a bird-watcher who had just stumbled upon a dodo.

I’m hardly the first to flag this pope’s apparent humility or the fact that it extends beyond his preference for simple dress over regal costumes, for a Ford Focus over a papal chariot, for modest quarters over a monarch’s suite. Less than two months ago, when he answered a question about gay priests with a question of his own — “Who am I to judge?”— the self-effacement in that phrase was widely and rightly celebrated. Was a pope really acting and talking like this?  

But Francis’ tone so far is interesting not just as a departure for the church but as a counterpoint to the prevailing sensibility in our country, where humility is endangered if not quite extinct. It’s out of sync with all the relentless self-promotion, which has been deemed the very oxygen of success. It sits oddly with the cult of self-esteem.

Mr. Bruni continues to contrast Pope Francis with the ways of our contemporary world, and how deeply impressed he is with the humility and sincerity of the Holy Father.  Mr. Bruni doesn't realize it, but what he is really seeing is the difference between the ways of the world and the ways of Jesus Christ:

Humility has little place in the realm of social media, which is governed by a look-at-me ethos, by listen-to-me come-ons, by me, me, me. And humility is quaintly irrelevant to the defining entertainment genre of our time, reality television, which insists that every life is mesmerizing, if only in the manner of a train wreck, and that anyone is a latent star: the housewife, the hoarder, the teen mom, the tuna fisher. Just preen enough to catch an audience’s eye. Just beckon the cameras close.

Politics is most depressing of all. It rewards braggarts and bullies, who muscle their way onto center stage with the crazy certainty that they and only they are right, while we in the electorate and the news media lack the fortitude to shut them up or shoo them away. They disgust but divert us, or at a minimum wear us down. Maybe we get the showboats we deserve.

FOR a textbook case of humility gone missing, consider right-wing Republicans’ efforts to derail Obamacare by whatever crude and disruptive means necessary. The health care law has its flaws, some of them profound, but it was legitimately passed, in accordance with the rules, and to stray outside them in order to make it go away is to believe that they don’t apply to you, that your viewpoint trumps the process itself. It’s the summit of arrogance.

Humility doesn’t work in the cross-fire of our political combat. Certainty and single-mindedness are better fuels.

This is exactly what Pope Francis talked about in his interview when he told us we must always leave room for self doubt:  "Yes, in this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself."

Mr. Bruni then contrasts Pope Francis with the liberal icon of our age, Barack Obama:

How exactly does President Obama fit in? While his Syria reversals may well have diminished him, they had a sort of humility to them, reflected a willingness to yield to the strong feelings of others and deserve some acknowledgment along those lines. Leadership, more art than science, should be a mix of rallying people to your cause and recognizing when you stand too far away from them.

But in Obama there’s a recurrent deflection of criticism and a refusal to abide certain political customs and efficiencies — the stroking, the rewarding, the mantra-style repetition of a simplified argument for a distracted populace — that work against his success and smack of excessive pride. He could take a page from this pope.

Credit:  www.driftwoodandcherry.com

Mr. Bruni next shows how the genuineness of Pope Francis has even helped to heal the wounds so recently inflicted upon the Church, at least in the eyes of the writer:

I never expected to write that. For too many years I watched the chieftains of the church wrap themselves in lavish pageantry and prioritize the protection of fellow clergy members over the welfare of parishioners. They allowed priests who sexually abused children to evade accountability and, in many cases, to abuse again. That cover-up was the very antithesis of humility, driven by the belief that shielding the church from public scandal mattered more than anything else.

For too many years I also watched and listened to imperious men around the pope hurl thunderbolts of judgment from the Olympus of Vatican City. But in his recent interview, Francis made a plea for quieter, calmer weather, suggesting that church leaders in Rome spend less energy on denunciations and censorship.

He cast himself as a struggling pastor determined to work in a collaborative fashion. He characterized himself as a sinner. “It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre,” he clarified. “I am a sinner.”

In his final paragraphs, Mr. Bruni makes it clear that he is not ready to convert, but he is ready to listen, and that is a huge step. Mr. Bruni, unlike too many Catholics, understands that the Pope is not going to change the teachings of the Church. However, he does see Pope Francis as someone who has something to give to the world, and he is open to this message:

He didn’t right past wrongs. Let’s be clear about that. Didn’t call for substantive change to church teachings and traditions that indeed demand re-examination, including the belief that homosexual acts themselves are sinful. Didn’t challenge the all-male, celibate priesthood. Didn’t speak as progressively — and fairly — about women’s roles in the church as he should.

But he also didn’t present himself as someone with all the answers. No, he stepped forward — shuffled forward, really — as someone willing to guide fellow questioners. In doing so he recognized that authority can come from a mix of sincerity and humility as much as from any blazing, blinding conviction, and that stature is a respect you earn, not a pedestal you grab. That’s a useful lesson in this grabby age of ours.

The message of Jesus Christ has mercy and forgiveness at its core, as shown above in the quote from Matthew 9.  Our job is not to condemn the world but to bring to it the healing message of Jesus Christ. That is exactly what Pope Francis has done, and Frank Bruni of The New York Times got this message loud and clear.   My prayer is that those who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ will hear this message as well.

Credit:  fr-fr.facebook.com

The Lesson From Pope Francis On Preaching the Gospel to a Post-Christian World

“I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.... And you have to start from the ground up.” 

Pope Francis

Pope Francis has now given what may be the most controversial interview in papal history, and it also may be one of the most important interviews ever given. The media, as expected, has colored it with their own interpretation. Bloomberg News summed it up with this headline "Pope Says Church Should Stop Obsessing Over Gays, Abortion." The New York Times headline was, "Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control." Many Traditionalists and conservatives were very upset by the Pope's remarks. Others came out trying to defend the Pope's remarks. Bill Donohue of The Catholic League, in trying to defend Pope Francis, said that "people are tied up with these little micro issues on the left and the right." Father John Zuhlsdorf wrote a post, which you can read here, that he is keeping at the top of his blog in defense of the Pope's remarks. As he wrote, "I read what the Pope says. Then I try to figure out what he is really saying, apart from my own preferences about how he should say it." Father Z's basic premise is that the Pope has not said anything new. The Pope is merely repeating what the Catholic Church has always taught, which is basically hate the sin and love the sinner.

I, like most people, really didn't know what to think when this all came out.  The life issues, i.e., abortion and homosexuality and the destruction of the family, are most assuredly very grave issues and intrinsically evil.  So why should our Holy Father say we need to de-emphasize these issues in the Church?

So I took the time to read the actual interview, and I believe that Pope Francis, in this historical interview, is giving us the answers and guidelines we need to preach the Gospel to our spiritually and morally bankrupt world.  Every Catholic should read this interview, which can be found here. 

I think we should first take into consideration the times in which we live.   We live in one of the most morally and spiritually bankrupt of all times in the history of man.  If anyone has any questions about the morality, or lack thereof, of our times, look at the recent release of "Grand Theft Auto 5" which involves graphic violence and sex, including murder and rape, and which pulled in almost $1 billion on its first day of release.

We are now at a point in our culture where the only recognized sins are smoking (this is not even allowed in our entertainment anymore) and "intolerance." "Intolerance" is defined as believing in absolute truth and the difference between good and evil and trying to impose this belief on others. That is no longer accepted in our post-Christian society. Our world has accepted the philosophy of John Lennon: "Whatever gets you through the night, it's all right." The only moral commands in our society are to be "nice" and don't judge others. Nothing else really matters.

Christians, and more specifically, the Catholic Church, are now aliens in society. We are the counter culture. We are the the non-conformists. We are the ones struggling to swim against the tide. Talk of sin and hell and damnation is a language that is completely rejected and no longer understood by those around us. Methods of preaching the Gospel that were effective in a Christian-based society will not work anymore.  

Pope Francis is facing a world that most of his predecessors would not recognize.  Immorality and spiritual bankruptcy are not new.  What is new is that our world considers immorality to be normal and morality to be abnormal.    

So how do we who believe in absolute truth approach those who do not? We are commanded by our Lord to "preach the Gospel to all nations." It is our duty as Christians to bring spiritual salvation to as many people as we can. In the past, when society still believed in the difference between good and evil, we could appeal to them on moral grounds. When the Church told people that it was a mortal sin to be sexually promiscuous, people believed it even if they didn't like it. Sexual promiscuity is now considered a normal lifestyle. Homosexuality was never accepted by our society until recent years. Now you are considered a bigot if you don't accept it.

The Pope tells us that the two of the most important tools we need in approaching the contemporary world with the Gospel are discernment and humility. We should always give great thought and prayer to our actions and words. We should never feel that we have all the answers, that we can never be wrong:

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time. The wisdom of discernment redeems the necessary ambiguity of life and helps us find the most appropriate means, which do not always coincide with what looks great and strong.

In connection with this, the Pope speaks of the importance of humility, of always leaving room for doubt in ourselves:

If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble. Uncertainty is in every true discernment that is open to finding confirmation in spiritual consolation.

“The risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever. Often we seek as if we were blind, as one often reads in the Bible. And this is the experience of the great fathers of the faith, who are our models. We have to re-read the Letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 11. Abraham leaves his home without knowing where he was going, by faith. All of our ancestors in the faith died seeing the good that was promised, but from a distance.... Our life is not given to us like an opera libretto, in which all is written down; but it means going, walking, doing, searching, seeing.... We must enter into the adventure of the quest for meeting God; we must let God search and encounter us.

This next statement from Pope Francis shows his understanding of our spiritually lost world, and that those who wish to return to methods of the past are not seeing the real world of today:

If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists­—they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.

How do we know when we've lost our way, when we are no longer serving other people but our own ideologies?  From Pope Francis:

When does a formulation of thought cease to be valid? When it loses sight of the human or even when it is afraid of the human or deluded about itself. The deceived thought can be depicted as Ulysses encountering the song of the Siren, or as Tannhäuser in an orgy surrounded by satyrs and bacchantes, or as Parsifal, in the second act of Wagner’s opera, in the palace of Klingsor. The thinking of the church must recover genius and better understand how human beings understand themselves today, in order to develop and deepen the church’s teaching.

The great moral truths of the Church can never change, but our understanding of them does grow. And the way in which we present the Gospel must change because the world changes. We must speak in a language and approach people in a way that they will understand.

St. Vincent of Lerins makes a comparison between the biological development of man and the transmission from one era to another of the deposit of faith, which grows and is strengthened with time. Here, human self-understanding changes with time and so also human consciousness deepens. Let us think of when slavery was accepted or the death penalty was allowed without any problem. So we grow in the understanding of the truth. Exegetes and theologians help the church to mature in her own judgment. Even the other sciences and their development help the church in its growth in understanding. There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but now they have lost value or meaning. The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong.

And first and foremost, we must realize that we are dealing with the walking wounded who do not even realize just how wounded they are. We must always remember that just as God extends mercy to us, we must extend mercy to others. Pope Francis made a statement in this interview that we should all take to heart in dealing with those opposed to us. This philosophy was the guiding philosophy of all the great saints, and most particularly of one of the greatest Catholics in the 20th Century, Blessed Mother Teresa:

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.

If we see Jesus in every human being, no matter how degenerate they may be, we will be reaching out to that person with love and devotion, not judgment and damnation.

In this interview, Pope Francis gave us his idea of the way in which the church's ministers should relate to the people:

“How are we treating the people of God? I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess. The church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbor. This is pure Gospel. God is greater than sin. The structural and organizational reforms are secondary—that is, they come afterward. The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials. The bishops, particularly, must be able to support the movements of God among their people with patience, so that no one is left behind. But they must also be able to accompany the flock that has a flair for finding new paths.

“Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent. The ones who quit sometimes do it for reasons that, if properly understood and assessed, can lead to a return. But that takes audacity and courage.”

When we read these other statements of Pope Francis in light of our contemporary fallen world, we can understand why he would make the following statement:

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

I mentioned Mother Teresa above, and I think she is a wonderful example of how to preach the Gospel. Her main mission in life was to live the Gospel, to see Jesus Christ in every human being and treat them with dignity and love. She picked up her Cross daily. She saw Jesus Christ in the world, and, as a result, the world saw Jesus Christ in her. She preached the Gospel more effectively than almost anyone else in our contemporary times. She did it by her actions, by showing love and mercy. Then, when she had occasion, such as when she received the Nobel Peace Prize, she would tell the world where it had gone wrong, and the world listened to her. From her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Let us thank God for the opportunity that we all have together today, for this gift of peace that reminds us that we have been created to live that peace, and Jesus became man to bring that good news to the poor. He being God became man in all things like us except sin, and he proclaimed very clearly that he had come to give the good news. The news was peace to all of good will and this is something that we all want - the peace of heart - and God loved the world so much that he gave his son - it was a giving - it is as much as if to say it hurt God to give, because he loved the world so much that he gave his son, and he gave him to Virgin Mary, and what did she do with him?

As soon as he came in her life - immediately she went in haste to give that good news, and as she came into the house of her cousin, the child - the unborn child - the child in the womb of Elizabeth, leapt with joy. He was that little unborn child, was the first messenger of peace. He recognised the Prince of Peace, he recognised that Christ has come to bring the good news for you and for me. And as if that was not enough - it was not enough to become a man - he died on the cross to show that greater love, and he died for you and for me and for that leper and for that man dying of hunger and that naked person lying in the street not only of Calcutta, but of Africa, and New York, and London, and Oslo - and insisted that we love one another as he loves each one of us. And we read that in the Gospel very clearly - love as I have loved you - as I love you - as the Father has loved me, I love you - and the harder the Father loved him, he gave him to us, and how much we love one another, we, too, must give each other until it hurts. It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbour. St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbour. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live. And so this is very important for us to realise that love, to be true, has to hurt. It hurt Jesus to love us, it hurt him. And to make sure we remember his great love he made himself the bread of life to satisfy our hunger for his love. Our hunger for God, because we have been created for that love. We have been created in his image. We have been created to love and be loved, and then he has become man to make it possible for us to love as he loved us. He makes himself the hungry one - the naked one - the homeless one - the sick one - the one in prison - the lonely one - the unwanted one - and he says: You did it to me. Hungry for our love, and this is the hunger of our poor people. This is the hunger that you and I must find, it may be in our own home.

This is not to say we must never speak of the issue of abortion, homosexuality, etc.  Pope Francis has made that quite clear, when just the day after this interview was published he made a very strong statement about the evil of abortion.  Mother Teresa herself spoke of the evil of abortion on various occasions, as she did when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize:

I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a direct war, a direct killing - direct murder by the mother herself. And we read in the Scripture, for God says very clearly: Even if a mother could forget her child - I will not forget you - I have carved you in the palm of my hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand, so close to Him that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God. And that is what strikes me most, the beginning of that sentence, that even if a mother could forget something impossible - but even if she could forget - I will not forget you. And today the greatest means - the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.

If we want the world to come to Christ, if we want to stop abortion, if we want to save our families, we must show them the Love of Christ, His mercy, His forgiveness.  Father Z put a statement from the Pope Francis interview at the top of his blog:  "I see the Church as a field hospital after battle."  I cannot think of a better way of summarizing the purpose of the Church.  Our job is to care for the sick and wounded, and we are surrounded by them.  From Mother Teresa:

There is so much suffering, so much hatred, so much misery, and we with our prayer, with our sacrifice are beginning at home. Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. It is to God Almighty - how much we do it does not matter, because He is infinite, but how much love we put in that action. How much we do to Him in the person that we are serving.

This, I believe is the message of our Holy Father, Pope Francis. 

I hope you will take the time to read the entire interview with Pope Francis.  It is long, but there is so much to be learned from it.