Pope Francis Not Stupid; Knows What Marriage Is

If you can see something that’s obvious, it’s a pretty sure bet that the Pope can see it, too.:

In an audience with members of an international Marian movement, Pope Francis warned that the sacrament of marriage has been reduced to a mere association, and urged participants to be witnesses in a secular world.

“The family is being hit, the family is being struck and the family is being bastardized,” the Pope told those in attendance at the Oct. 25 audience.

He warned against the common view in society that “you can call everything family, right?”

“What is being proposed is not marriage, it’s an association. But it’s not marriage! It’s necessary to say these things very clearly and we have to say it!” Pope Francis stressed.

He lamented that there are so many “new forms” of unions which are “totally destructive and limiting the greatness of the love of marriage.”

Noting that there are many who cohabitate, or are separated or divorced, he explained that the “key” to helping is a pastoral care of “close combat” that assists and patiently accompanies the couple.

Pope Francis offered his words in a question-and-answer format during his audience with members of the Schoenstatt movement, held in celebration of the 100th anniversary of its founding in Germany.

Read the whole thing, because it’s really good, and pay particular attention to Pope Francis’ remarks on the value of a peripheral perspective, which echoes Chesterton (I wish I could remember which book) and his notion that when you’re sitting atop the middle of a thing, you have no idea of its size or what it even is, because it is too large and too close to be seen.

Interesting.

Anyhow, today we may rest easy in the knowledge that the pope knows what marriage is, and also that he has read Chesterton at some point.

So, we need not hang ourselves, today.