Catholic and Enjoying It!
It is truly bizarre to live in a time when self-described faithful Catholics seriously seem to believe that God has laid it on their humble shoulders to defend the Faith from the Pope. What massive hubris.
So. About that latest interview. You know. The one where the pope said all those allegedly horrible and indefensible things. Personally, I didn’t find anything he was reported as saying as incompatible with the Tradition. But here’s the thing:
Respected French Vatican writer Jean-Marie Guénois confirmed with Scalfari that he didn’t tape the interview, nor did he take notes, so the text was an after-the-fact reconstruction.
He didn’t tape the interview. He didn’t take notes.
He didn’t tape the interview. He didn’t take notes.
He didn’t tape the interview. He didn’t take notes.
Now the genius of the Conservative Anti-Charism of Discernment, which is well on the way to anointing Francis the Heretic Pope for his failure to say the correct shibboleths and code words, and his crime of making conservatives have to think, is that as Simcha points out, everything he says and does can and will be used against him in the Combox Star Chamber. When it turns out that, at best, what we have is the memories of an 88 year old man recounting the conversation he had, the strategy for the Freakouters will be simple:
WHY DOES THE POPE ALLOW HIMSELF TO BE MISUNDERSTOOD????!!!! IT’S A VERY BAD SIGN THAT THE POPE IS CONSTANTLY HAVING TO HAVE HIS WORDS EXPLAINED!!!!!!!
Yeah. Totally unlike, say, Jesus Christ, whose words have only had to be explained every single day for 2000 years by the Church. What, after all, could be clearer than “Why do you call me good? There is none good but God” or “The Father is greater than I” or “There are some standing here who shall not taste death before the Kingdom of heaven comes” or, well, almost anything else he said and did. Heck! “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” was used to obtain a death sentence against him.
Seriously, people should really attempt the radical experiment of actually listening to Francis and trying to understand him in light of the Church’s teaching instead of perpetually worrying about how somebody they don’t like will misunderstand him. It could be (O horrible thought!) that in coming to understand what Francis is actually saying that we and the person we dislike will actually find something to agree on.
Or is tribalism (that is, heresy) really that important to us that we will seriously delude ourselves that God has laid it on our humble shoulders to defend the Church from the Pope?
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