The Family is Being Bastardized

Part of his Machivellian scheme, said a friend, parodying certain Catholics who are convinced no matter what he says or does that Francis is a liberal dedicated to remaking the Church. “The family is being hit, the family is being struck and the family is being bastardized,” he told an audience of several thousand members of the Schoenstatt movement on Friday. CNA reported:

“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.”

He also spoke on the reform of the Church. In Vatican radio’s summary:

Asked about reform of the Church, the Pope said people describe him as a revolutionary but went on to point out that the Church has always been that way and is constantly reforming itself. He stressed that the first revolution or way of renewing the Church is through inner holiness and that counts far more than more external ways such as reforming the Curia and the Vatican bank. Pope Francis also spoke about the importance of having a freedom of spirit and warned against closing ourselves up in a mass of rules and regulations, thus becoming a caricature of the doctors of law.

Relating this idea of holiness to our witness to the Church, he said, according to the CNA report:

Witness is key to spreading the Gospel, he said, explaining that true witness means living “in such a way that the will to live as we live is born in the heart of others. . . . Living in a way (so that) others are interested and ask: ‘why?’”

However, the Bishop of Rome emphasized that although we are called to give this witness, “we are not the saviors of anyone,” but rather are the transmitters of Jesus, who is the one that already saved us all.

True witness propels us out of ourselves and into the streets of the world, the Pope continued, repeating his common declaration that a Church, movement or community that doesn’t go out of itself “becomes sick.”

Living “in such a way that the will to live as we live is born in the heart of others.” Francis does that. The rest of us should be asking ourselves if we do it and if we do it as well as we can. I would have to admit I’m not. I’d add that part of living that way is showing love and not suspicion for the Holy Father.