CERTAINLY, A WELL FORMED PERSON, LAY, RELIGIOUS OR CLERY, IS A PERSON WELL GROUNDED BUT FLEXIBLE: INFELXIBITY LEADS TO BREAKAGE

My frustration with Pope Francis is that I never completely get what His Holiness is saying. For example he gave a talk to seminary rectors but gets very muddled when he turns to his one true obsession, rigidity.

This is what the pope said yesterday to these rectors of seminaries and religious houses:

(Pope Francis) added: “One of the most serious temptations that the Church faces today, as you know better than me, is when they come to you with rigid formation schemes … Religious congregations have arisen that are a disaster, which had to be closed little by little, congregations of rigid ‘no, no, no, no...’. And that in the background, behind that rigidity, there is real rottenness hidden … Nowadays, ready-made answers are of no use to the young; we have to accompany them, with clear doctrine, of course, but we have to accompany them in different situations.”

My Comments first: First of all, thank you Pope Francis for saying that priests and religious must accompany people with clear doctrine! I will forget everything else and hold to that!

I am not a psychologist, but the little I do know tells me that the person who complains about particular moral peccadilloes, usually has that “demon” within him. Pope Francis always complains about gossip in the Church, but in the paragraph above, he gossips about rigid people and their rottenness. Really!

He always complains about psychological rigidity which I know is a problem for a small minority of priests. Yet this pope can be quite rigid as well and  I suspect he was that way in his pre-Vatican II version of himself. He speaks about dialogue, meets with a heterodox priest who promotes active homosexuality, yet won’t meet with any of the Cardinals that challenged him with the dubia questions. Rigidity anyone? 

Pope Francis gossips about closing rigid new religious orders, which to give him credit, may have needed it. But he fails to call out the liberal ones, now of life support, for their flexibility that leads to all kinds of immorality and individualism. I have had the unfortunate misfortune to have met and allowed one of the most notorious Jesuits in his order, a serial sex abuse of minors, which his Jesuit brothers knew about and did nothing, to give a mission in my parish in Augusta in the early 1990’s. In that brief encounter of a day or so, he had about 10 young men/teenagers accompanying him to take care of his needs. It raised my eyebrows and I didn’t know him at all. Mercifully he was convicted of his crimes, sent to prison and has since died. Jesuits, heal thyself before healing everyone else. 

He meets with all kinds of people who live in opposition to the teachings of Christ, yet won’t meet with Cardinal Zen of China, who may well be sentenced to prison in China and is being persecuted by Pope Francis and China! It is mind  boggling to say the least.

I have known rigid priests who look down at everyone else, can’ relate to anyone and underneath may be fighting their very own demons. They are in a minority and yes, seminaries have a duty to challenge it, offer formation that leads to some kind of sane flexibility, or release them to the secular world and let him find his place there. 

Most priests I know are so flexible and celebrity oriented, that they won’t rock the boat, don’t want to damage their own popularity and will do anything to win the praises of those to whom they minister. They are the buddy-priests who use the liturgy to enhance their celebrity and offer no real counter-cultural witness but in fact witness to the culture of celebrity and what it takes to remain a celebrity in the eyes of those they want to please. 

I do think, in today’s world and Church, we need to be clear with what the Catholic Church, believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God while being compassionate with those who don’t accept all of it, live lives that are complex in their mix of virtue and sin.

A wise priest told us seminarians in the 1970’s, “challenge don’t crush, be flexible but not like a reed blowing in the wind because rigidity always causes a person to break even in a breeze.”