Whoa! and Woe to Pope Francis

Instead the Catholic way is to affirm the truth wherever it is and discern and point out the error wherever it is.

What drives this discernment process is not some sort of false ideology, but an understanding of the human person and a profound understanding of both the human person’s strengths and weaknesses.

In Cuba Pope Francis put it this way, “We serve people. We do not serve ideas.”

In the Catholic understanding of the human person we understand something called sin. Sin is everything that keeps a person from becoming the perfect individual they can be. On a societal level sin is everything that keeps a society from being the perfect society it could be.

Catholics therefore criticize and condemn anything that keeps individuals and societies from truly flourishing.

Pope Francis might criticize unfettered capitalism, but beneath that he is really criticizing greed, envy and covetousness which leads to violence which destroys peoples lives and bring about war.

Pope Francis might criticize sexual immorality because it leads to broken hearts, broken lives, broken families and eventually to violence: violence against women, violence against children, violence against the unborn, violence against marriage, violence against the children of broken homes.

Pope Francis might criticize ecological crimes because they turn the world into a trash heap. They eventually hurt not just the environment, but the people who depend on the environment for their health, wealth and welfare.

Consequently both conservatives and liberals should come under the prophetic condemnation of the Pope and this should make us squirm.

He’s not picking on the Republicans as this article claims. Nor is he picking on Democrats.

He’s just picking on sin.