From Pope Francis Wednesday audience today:
Unfortunately, there have often been attempts to obscure faith in the Resurrection of Jesus, and doubts have crept in even among believers themselves. A watered down faith, as we would say, not a strong faith. This is because of superficiality, sometimes because of indifference, occupied by a thousand things considered more important than the faith, or because of a purely horizontal vision of life. But it is the Resurrection that gives us the greatest hope, because it opens our lives and the life of the world to the eternal future of God, to full happiness, to the certainty that evil, sin, death can be defeated. And this leads us to live everyday realities with more confidence, to face them with courage and commitment. The Resurrection of Christ shines a new light on these daily realities. The Resurrection of Christ is our strength!
I wish the Holy Father would be more direct in telling us what are the things that cause us to become superficial in our Catholic faith, what His Holiness calls "a watered down faith."
Is it missing the trappings of the papacy and a particular style of another pope, whichever pope you wish to insert there?
Since he uses the term that Pope Benedict often used, that of "the purely horizontal vision of life" does this refer to those in the Church that want the horizontal aspects of the Church reordered to reflect relativism and the dictators of such, "The Church of the Media?" In this case, I would suspect the watered down faith could care less about following God's laws as understood by Scripture and Tradition and would rather follow fads and trends, no matter how well intentioned, such as abandoning natural law which reveals the moral laws of God. Thus are we speaking of those who want Pope Francis to pass out artificial birth control, abandon the Church's pro-life teachings, promote same sex marriage and women priests?
Pope Francis talk today was very much aligned with Pope Benedict's Book on Jesus of Nazareth. In other words in terms of substance, rather than style, in terms of the vertical rather than the horizontal, Pope Francis and Pope Benedict are on the same page.
Or am I reading too much into the Holy Father's Wednesday audience?
Or is Fr. Z, from WDTPRS, jumping to conclusions in his commentary on Pope Francis talk given today, which you can READ by PRESSING this SENTENCE HERE!
8 comments:
I thought it was a good address. I assumed he meant that there are all sorts of elements that weaken the faith, chiefly the distractions of the modern world, which are legion (pun intended). My guess is he would see Lumen Gentium's admonitions to the laity as the appropriate response to the world's false promises.
I hope the doubters are reading his words...
(And not everything is about the liturgy)
Thus far, Pope Francis preaching is quite good, excellent I would say, in that it is grasped by everyone and keeps their attention Pope Benedict was like a classroom teacher and didn't give many good sound bites except, the dictatorship of relativism and the horizontal closed in circle compared to the vertical that opens us to God, without ignoring the needs of others, since opening oneself to God always leads to faith and good works, whereas good works and fellowship do not always lead to God and right faith.
Pope Francis speaks simply but profoundly. As it concerns his style of celebrating the Mass, it is "ad orientem" in style, he doesn't play to the congregation at all. What is different is his taste in vesture which will be basically what he wears now and not much variation on that, whereas Pope Benedict had an eclectic choice of vestments from simple to Baroque, from Roman to Gothic from beautiful to bizarre.
He liked the vesture of the papacy and brought back things that were discarded by others--all this a part of his hermeneutic of continuity, which I loved, but which is not essential to the Catholic faith, in terms of fashions.
Well said, Father.
Obviously, I think the trappings are important, but they must convey a deeper meaning else they are merely aesthetic. Perhaps the current Holy Father is conveying the deeper meaning without resort to some of the trappings.
I know from discussions with non-Catholics who are interested in Catholicism that this Pope is converting a message of Christ that is appealing to them.
Sure, if he wore a tiara, he would convey an important truth about his office and his person. By doing what he's doing, though, he us conveying an important truth about Christ while speaking clearly about important doctrines like the Resurrection.
Timothy Keller writes about the idols that keep us from living the Faith. His book, "Counterfeit Gods" is subtitled "The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, Power, and the Only Hope That Matters."
We put love of another person before love of God. Keller's insights into the "Sacrifice of Isaac," in which Abraham had to be willing to learn that his love for his son Isaac had come between him and God, is very compelling.
JP2 warned repeatedly the dangers of consumerism which, in turn, leads to materialism.
Particularly in light of Pater’s comments, this would seem an appropriate time to re-post the following extracts from one of Pope Benedict’s homilies in 2008 (given on September 13 at an outdoor papal Mass in Paris):
“In the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, we discover, in this Pauline year inaugurated on 28 June last, how much the counsels given by the Apostle remain important today. ‘Shun the worship of idols’ (1 Cor 10:14), he writes to a community deeply marked by paganism and divided between adherence to the newness of the Gospel and the observance of former practices inherited from its ancestors . . . .
“This appeal to shun idols, dear brothers and sisters, is also pertinent today. Has not our modern world created its own idols? Has it not imitated, perhaps inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity, by diverting man from his true end, from the joy of living eternally with God? This is a question that all people, if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask. What is important in my life? What is my first priority? The word “idol” comes from the Greek and means “image”, “figure”, “representation”, but also “ghost”, “phantom”, “vain appearance”. An idol is a delusion, for it turns its worshipper away from reality and places him in the kingdom of mere appearances. Now, is this not a temptation in our own day – the only one we can act upon effectively? The temptation to idolize a past that no longer exists, forgetting its shortcomings; the temptation to idolize a future which does not yet exist, in the belief that, by his efforts alone, man can bring about the kingdom of eternal joy on earth! Saint Paul explains to the Colossians that insatiable greed is a form of idolatry (cf. 3:5), and he reminds his disciple Timothy that love of money is the root of all evil. By yielding to it, he explains, “some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs” (1 Tim 6:10). Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power and even for knowledge, diverted man from his true Destiny, from the truth about himself? . . . .
“The one God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – created our reason and gives us faith, proposing to our freedom that it be received as a precious gift. It is the worship of idols which diverts man from this perspective. Let us therefore ask God, who sees us and hears us, to help us purify ourselves from all idols, in order to arrive at the truth of our being, in order to arrive at the truth of his infinite being!
(continued)
“How do we reach God? How do we manage to discover or rediscover him whom man seeks at the deepest core of himself, even though he so often forgets him? Saint Paul asks us to make use not only of our reason, but above all our faith in order to discover him. Now, what does faith say to us? The bread that we break is a communion with the Body of Christ. The cup of blessing which we bless is a communion with the Blood of Christ. This extraordinary revelation comes to us from Christ and has been transmitted to us by the Apostles and by the whole Church for almost two thousand years: Christ instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist on the evening of Holy Thursday. He wanted his sacrifice to be presented anew, in an unbloody manner, every time a priest repeats the words of consecration over the bread and wine. Millions of times over the last twenty centuries, in the humblest chapels and in the most magnificent basilicas and cathedrals, the risen Lord has given himself to his people, thus becoming, in the famous expression of Saint Augustine, “more intimate to us than we are to ourselves” (cf. Confessions, III, 6, 11). . . .
“The Mass is the sacrifice of thanksgiving par excellence, the one which allows us to unite our own thanksgiving to that of the Saviour, the Eternal Son of the Father. It also makes its own appeal to us to shun idols, for, as Saint Paul insists, “you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (1 Cor 10:21). The Mass invites us to discern what, in ourselves, is obedient to the Spirit of God and what, in ourselves, is attuned to the spirit of evil.
“To raise the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, is that not the very best way of ‘shunning idols’, as Saint Paul asks us to do? Every time the Mass is celebrated, every time Christ makes himself sacramentally present in his Church, the work of our salvation is accomplished. Hence to celebrate the Eucharist means to recognize that God alone has the power to grant us the fullness of joy and teach us true values, eternal values that will never pass away. God is present on the altar, but he is also present on the altar of our heart when, as we receive communion, we receive him in the sacrament of the Eucharist. He alone teaches us to shun idols, the illusions of our minds. . . . .”
There is much more in the homily, of course, and for those who would like to read the entire homily here again is the link:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20080913_parigi-esplanade_en.html
I have just read Pope Francis’s address in the link to Father Z’s blog. I agree that it is a good Address. I particularly like the emphasis upon the importance of our belief in the Resurrection and the special graces given to women as witnesses to the Faith. This kind of reminder is especially important for a still male-dominated society such as ours in America with its distorted concepts of masculinity on the one hand and faux feminisms on the other.
Man cannot live on sound bite homilies alone...
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