Pope Francis is 1950's America when it comes to Marian devotions, Catholic piety and apparitions.
His Holiness is also of my Dad's pre-Vatican II, 1950's Catholicism not to talk about the Faith with non Catholics or an in your face Catholicism. That short of proselytizing was considered "O so Protestant."
In fact my dad taught me that we should wear our scapular, crosses and medals under our clothes, people should know we are Catholic by the manner of our humble lives not by religious emblems although he allowed a plastic statue of the Sacred Heart on the dashboard of our 1953 Chevy.
My father only sent secular Christmas cards too.
This all ties in with Pope Francis' vision of the new evangelization which is the 1950's version of how to attract people to our Faith, not through coercion of babble but attractiveness of a humble life formed by our Catholic Faith.
Here is a Vatican Radio's reporter articulating Pope Francis' evangelization vision:
That, I believe, is the key to Pope Francis’ visit: his confidence in the message of Fatima – at bottom a call to conversion – to reach a world that sorely needs it, and for the Christian faithful to be the carriers of that message into the world, by means of simple acts of pious devotion that have immense power – not to persuade, but to attract.
3 comments:
The problem with this proposal is that Jesus said, "going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you". Our Lord didn't tell His Church to "go forth, and then just be nice whilst secretly wearing the brown scapular".
Do you think there might be some difference between the sort of evangelization done by lay people and that done by clerics, including the pope? While my coworkers might be put off by my proselytizing them, would they be similarly put off by the head of the Catholic Church talking about the Catholic faith? Or rather, wouldn't they expect him to do so and be put off by his not meeting their expectations?
If the Dalai Lama never mentioned Buddha, for example, after a while, wouldn't you start to think that, just maybe, Buddha isn't all that important to him? And then, maybe, you'd think he doesn't believe in that Buddha stuff, really? And then you might conclude that he's a fraud who is just using his position as world leader to push his personal agenda?
Maybe.
Marc, i one hundred percent agree with you...
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