{"id":4807,"date":"2015-01-23T19:53:09","date_gmt":"2015-01-24T00:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?p=4807"},"modified":"2015-01-24T09:38:04","modified_gmt":"2015-01-24T14:38:04","slug":"pope-francis-cracked-interviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2015\/01\/pope-francis-cracked-interviews.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis’ Cracked Interviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Unlike my fellow Patheosi, I did not remain cool and collected in the wake of the latest papal interview. Actually, I was pissed off, and I spent two days writing and re-writing a post that \u2014 try as I did \u2014 never evolved into anything more than a petulant rant about Pope ~~Stupidhead<\/del> Francis.<\/p>\n~~

Honestly, I was just gonna go with it, since it\u2019s been a while since a I threw a good blog tantrum. Then last night, the Ogre and I were talking about his dissertation. His adviser had given him a quote to think about, and he played the song the quote was from for me:<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\nListening to the song made me realize how small and petty I\u2019d allowed myself to become. I\u2019d spent hours sifting through the interview to find all the negative threads and unravel them, only to patch them back together using criticism and snark.<\/p>\nBloggers do that a lot. I\u2019ve done it myself. It\u2019s a real temptation, partly because it\u2019s fun to be snarky and people like to read snark, but partly because it\u2019s much easier to be destructive rather than constructive. It\u2019s so much easier to point out what\u2019s not good in someone else\u2019s words than it is to write good words of my own. Sometimes \u2014 some rare times \u2014 that can actually be a good thing, when it leads to fruitful dialogue with necessary distinctions. All too often, though, what I end up doing is pointing out all the edges of a crack to prove to the world how cracked it really is.<\/p>\nBut the world<\/em> is cracked. We\u2019re all cracked in some way, and some of us are downright broken. Christ, for example. He allowed Himself to be broken for us. In a splintered, fragmented world, grace works like that. Not through perfection and holiness, but through pain, suffering, blood, tears\u2026in all imperfect things, grace will be there. Every crack lets in the light \u2014 even on the papal plane. Especially<\/em> on the papal plane.<\/p>\nThis song is incredible because it\u2019s what our faith should look like on the street, in our homes, on the internet, and yet it\u2019s so far from what it usually looks like. I know that I, at least, do not often \u2014 or ever \u2014 ring the bells that still can ring. I don\u2019t know that I even see them. I\u2019m usually far too busy lamenting the ones that are broken, because I\u2019m not good enough to fix them, and there\u2019s no point in even trying if I can\u2019t do it right. Like confession. I need to go to confession. I thought twice this week about going to daily Mass or stopping in at the adoration chapel, but decided against it, because I need to go to confession \u2014 there\u2019s no point in seeking God until I\u2019m forgiven, right?<\/p>\nAnd love \u2014 love should be done only the right way, according to the Catechism and the Summa, because anything less than that is not actually love, right? It has to be properly ordered, or it\u2019s not love. If, for example, a friend or relative is struggling with addiction, or in the throes of mortal sin, it\u2019s better to tell them like it is and then keep my distance, right? Because if I don\u2019t, it\u2019ll be like I\u2019m enabling them. Better to let them know I\u2019ll always be here for them, and then be somewhere else until they figure it out and get back into a state of grace.<\/p>\nSometimes I can\u2019t believe myself. I, of all people, should know better than to think \u2013 even for an instant \u2013 that grace waits on perfection. I think grace has a hard time with perfection, actually, because perfection doesn\u2019t exist outside of the Triune Source of grace. The rest of us sometimes think we\u2019re perfect. or even just doing okay, and that\u2019s when we tend to block out grace \u2014 precisely because if we\u2019re doing okay, we don\u2019t really need more light. We just need to fix that crack.<\/p>\nIn my life, when things have been broken and I\u2019ve been shattered, grace has been so thick that it\u2019s practically tangible. Those are the moments when I\u2019ve learned what love is, even though no one\u2019s love for me was ever completely perfect or rightly ordered at every moment. The Ogre\u2019s love for me was all kinds of disordered in the beginning, as was mine for him. But it was a refuge. It was cracked love, but it was love nevertheless. It still is. Even in a sacramental marriage, even when we\u2019re both trying to love each other perfectly, our marriage still looks like a shattered plate our 4-year-old tried to glue back together. Full of cracks.<\/p>\nAnd light.<\/p>\nEverything is like that, and everyone is like that. Pope Francis is not perfect, and he\u2019s definitely going to keep saying all kinds of cracked things. That\u2019s good, though. The more cracks there are, the more light will come through.<\/p>\nI just have to learn to see the light instead.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nphoto credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/chidorian\/12685805215\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">chidorian<\/a> via <a href=\"http:\/\/photopin.com\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">photopin<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">cc<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike my fellow Patheosi, I did not remain cool and collected in the wake of the latest papal interview. Actually, I was pissed off, and I spent two days writing and re-writing a post that \u2014 try as I did \u2014 never evolved into anything more than a petulant rant about Pope Stupidhead Francis. Honestly, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Pope Francis' Cracked Interviews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unlike my fellow Patheosi, I did not remain cool and collected in the wake of the latest papal interview. 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