‘If you don’t think Francis is the cure, you don’t grasp the disease,’ CL head says
Are you saying that those faithful Catholics who criticize Pope Francis, for instance over Amoris Laetitia, haven’t understood what’s at risk in this culture?I think so. I think what’s missing sometimes is a deep understanding of the human challenge we’re facing. Sometimes [critics] just want [the pope] to repeat certain phrases, certain concepts, but they’re empty for most people and have been for a long time. Or, they want a list of rules to follow, as if that’s going to heal the human person or lead anyone to ‘verify’ the faith in their experience. The problem, and we suffer from it too, is that often we’re not able to transmit faith in the future to our colleagues at work, to our friends. Only if we’re audacious about recognizing the situation, without always feeling the need to defend ourselves, maybe we’ll learn somethin
- John L. Allen Jr. and Ines San MartinJune 21, 2017
- Father Julián Carrón, leader of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. (Credit: Communion and Liberation.)
7 comments:
The article does a nice job in white washing the fact that in AL this pope, in a round about way, is saying that people living in objective mortal sin (adultery) can remain living in that situation without amendment of life or sacramental confession. That isn't mercy. It's evil.
If Francis, Mr. Dialogue, really believes all the stuff he is saying and doing then why be afraid to meet with the four cardinals and answer their questions. Who was it that said "Say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. Anything else is from the Devil". Gee I can't remember. I read that that in some book by somebody pretty important in the Church. But I guess that has to be reinterpreted in light of modern Jesuit thought.
Francis is a scandal who refuses to teach and uphold the Faith clearly. He is leading people down the road to perdition. But like I said the article was a nice job in white washing the evil that's going on.
So what is next....accepting contraception and homosexual relations. If they can be tolerated then why not abortion? Can we tolerate racism? Can we tolerate oppression of the poor? Can we tolerate homophobia? Why no? Or is it up to Francis which mortal sins can be rationalized and excused.
Another lame and wordy defense of Francis...yawn.
Fr. Hunwicke:
http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2017/06/cardinals-collegiality-and-amoris.html
"The time has surely come for the Four Cardinals who intervened last year with their Dubia to revisit the question. And the time for Bishops, Successors of the Apostles according to the teaching of Leo XIII and of Vatican II and not mere vicars of the Roman Pontiff, to speak with courage, clarity and unanimity. And for clergy, laity, and academics to do the same. Remember that, at the height of the Arian Crisis, it was not among the Bishops or even in Rome that the Faith was most conspicuously preserved and defended. Remember the careful and lucid teaching of Blessed John Henry Newman, beloved Patron of our English Ordinariate, on the Suspense of the Magisterium."
According to this person, the culture results in a human challenge that is seemingly overwhelming to many people; therefore, the simple repetition of doctrine is of no avail. People need more than just rules to follow.
The answer that this apologist (and the pope) is looking for is the Person of Jesus Christ. He incarnated in a culture that allowed divorce due to the inability for people to meet the human challenge of lifelong monogamy, which was part of God's plan for humanity. In fact, that challenge is overwhelming to all mankind. That is why Christ died on the Cross, meriting for us a superabundance of graces that allow us to cooperate with God's plan even if it is humanly impossible. We only need to ask God for the graces to do so and cooperate with those graces by frequenting the Sacraments and doing penance.
Not only did Christ give us the Law, He fulfilled that law and, thereby, won for us the graces to live in accordance with the Law. He is the answer to every human challenge, both as our model and the cause of our redemption and sanctification. In that way, He heals us.
Nicely put, Marc. Whenever I read some silly reference to the "human condition, " or the "human situation," or something about our "common humanity," my only response is 'Hey, it is called sin and disobedience, dummy." But, the secular/progressives can only seek social answers to spiritual problems and are doomed to failure...and damnation.
Even though you may disagree with this or that detail of Pope Francis’ approach, can one really disagree about the accuracy of the author’s diagnosis of the fundamental ailment facing humanity in the conditions of advanced modernity and his suggested general prescription for this ailment? The following passages seem key:
Carrón argued that what’s happened in modernity is that people have lost sight of what it means to be a human being, so the crisis is much deeper than simply the rejection of this or that ethical precept, and that what’s needed now is not so much moral exhortation or theological argument, but the attractive power of a fully Christian life. . .
So many people are looking for meaning in their lives, for a reason to go to work, to raise a family, to face reality, and often they don’t find it and try to escape in different ways. The fundamental question is, in a moment in which the basic value for we moderns is liberty, the only possibility of not falling back on force to constrain the freedom of others is to have a space where people can meet each other freely, to share what it is life means to be, what they think it means to live fully. If that doesn’t happen, then the vacuum that leaves behind will keep generating conflicts.
People can’t live without meaning, and if the vacuum persists, we’re going to keep generating people who, sooner or later, will feel the temptation of violence … at home, at work, and, in some cases, ending up in terrorism. The problem is how to respond to the vacuum of meaning we find many times today in society. It’s possible to overcome it only in a free society, in a free space, in which people can meet and make comparisons among the ways in which people choose to live and how they make choices differently.
[Pope Francis is] very conscious that the first question is the nature of the crisis, because it’s often reduced merely to an economic crisis, or a problem of values, but it’s much deeper. It regards what makes us human, the passivity we see in so many young people who don’t seem motivated even to leave the house …
. . . [T]his emptying out of humanity, which leaves people incapable of really being interested in anything [is] a problem that has its roots in indifference, in apathy. Too often, we try to respond to it with rules, with procedures, to at least try to limit the violence that’s often born from such indifference. But that only responds to the consequences, it doesn’t get to the roots of the problem. Unless we respond to the real needs of the human person, reawakening people’s capacity to find meaning that makes life livable, it’s inevitable that we won’t be responding to the real nature of the crisis. Its roots are in this reduction of what it means to be human.
That’s the reason why I’m optimistic, because I’m convinced that Christianity can offer its greatest contribution precisely in this situation. Christ began it all by meeting people who looked at him and said, ‘We’ve never seen anyone like that,’ and turned around. There was no alternative to his presence, and that encounter launched the greatest revolution in history. The only question is whether we’ll realize what incredible grace we have as Christians.
Marc:
In other words, I don’t think the author or Pope Francis would disagree with anything you say regarding the desired destination (indeed destiny). The question is how best to get there under current conditions.
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