Pope Francis says church cannot focus only on abortion and gay marriage
Excerpts from Pope Francis’s interview
- On himself: “I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”
- On what the Church needs: “I see the church as a field hospital after battle… The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules.”
- On priests: “The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them…but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.”
- On homosexuals: “It is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.”
- On confession: “The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better.”
- On sexual morality: “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods…I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that.”
“We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”
- On women: “I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of ‘female machismo,’ because a woman has a different make-up than a man… Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed… The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions.”
- On traditionalist Catholics: “Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists-they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.”
He is right about balance. Unfailing love and uncompromising truth must always be kept in balance. Most of us err when we emphasize one over the other. I have erred in both ways at different times. Jesus, of course, is our perfect example in keeping these in perfect harmony.
Wayne,
I think I agree with your intent, but not the way you have articulated it here. There is no tension between unfailing love and uncompromising truth that must be balanced. You don’t have unfailing love if you have compromising truth, and you don’t have uncompromising truth if your love is faltering. I think the new evangelical approach to Christianity has created this false concept of trying to balance the two in an effort to downplay truth in order to promote a feel-good pseudo-love. The reality is that the biblical position is one of both unfailing love and uncompromising truth, full-bore. Any reduction on either side of the equation is really less than scripture instructs.
Why is it that my voice always seems to be loudest when I am saying the dumbest things?
But… that’s not what we see so often Chip… Let me first say that I agree with what you are saying. We need to have unfailing love and uncompromising truth together, but we are really bad at doing this (at least I am). It seems easy to say, but VERY difficult to practically live out. I think that conservative Christianity (and I don’t mean to generalize, but I can’t avoid it in this example…) has a bit of a reputation for steadfastly standing for one (rightly so!) while missing the boat with the other. Some would say that reputation exists because people don’t like to be told that their behavior contradicts God’s word and that it really has nothing to do with a lack of “unfailing love”. I’m not convinced that’s true…
[Chip Van Emmerik]Wayne,
I think I agree with your intent, but not the way you have articulated it here. There is no tension between unfailing love and uncompromising truth that must be balanced. You don’t have unfailing love if you have compromising truth, and you don’t have uncompromising truth if your love is faltering. I think the new evangelical approach to Christianity has created this false concept of trying to balance the two in an effort to downplay truth in order to promote a feel-good pseudo-love. The reality is that the biblical position is one of both unfailing love and uncompromising truth, full-bore. Any reduction on either side of the equation is really less than scripture instructs.
I agree with you 100% brother. By balance, I don’t mean losing any part of either…but fully maintaining both. We’re off balance if we forsake love in promulgating the truth, and we are off balance if we let love diminish truth in any way. That is my intent.
Since when has the RCC ever kept anything in balance? Everything it believes is out of balance with the Word of God. Mary sits atop the Trinity in most RCC art. The Bible is interpreted only in conjunction with Church Tradition and Papal Encyclicals. Prayer is directed more consistently to the Virgin Mary than to Christ. The value of the Cross is diluted by a continual Mass which negates the “once for all” expiation of Jesus Christ. The Church is subject to man’s rules and ordinances rather than being subject to the Word of Christ and His twelve Disciples. Salvation is not by grace alone, but it is dependent upon the sacraments of the Church. Earthly leaders are justified in violating the very teachings of Christ. The list could go on and on, showing that the RCC has reached an imbalance with biblical Christianity that is shocking and deplorable. One can only hope that some of its adherents may somehow find enough allusion to truth to experience eternal life. The RCC claims to have some 1 billion followers. No other so-called Christian institution is more responsible for larger numbers of “professing Christians” going to perdition.
Of course, we’re talking about “balance” in the context that the Pope is using it. Nobody here is saying the Roman Catholic church is biblical in much of its theology. And in the narrow sense we’re discussing it, most of us are frequently out of balance.
The press frequently finds what it wants to in papal statements. Often the representation is wide of the mark and simply gets repeated many times over. Here is a good article on the recent controversy: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359142/popes-news-carl-anderson
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