Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:28pm

PopeWatch: Rigidity

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Our Pope thanks God that he is not like those rigid people:

 

Francis said: “beneath rigidity there is something hidden about a person’s life. Rigidity is not a gift of God. Meekness is; kindness is; benevolence is; forgiveness is. But rigidity is not! Beneath rigidity there is always something hidden, in many cases a double life; but there is also some sort of disease lingering there. How the rigid suffer: when they are sincere and they acknowledge this they suffer! Because they are unable to feel the freedom that God’s children feel; they do not know what it is like to walk in the Law of the Lord and they are not blessed. And they suffer so much!” They seem “good because they follow the Law; but beneath that there is something not so nice about them: either they are bad or they are hypocrites or they are ill. They suffer!”
 
The Bishop of Rome recalled the parable of the Prodigal Son: the elder son’s attitude of indignation shows what lies behind some forms of goodness; “The arrogance of believing oneself to be right”. “Beneath one’s good actions lies arrogance. He knew he had a father and in his darkest hour he went to his father; he had only ever seen his father as a master not as a father. H ewas rigid; he walked in the Law in a rigid way. The other one set the Law aside and went off without the law, against the Law but there came a point when he remembered his father and came back. And he was forgiven. It is not easy walking in the Law of the lord without drifting towards rigidity.”
 
The Pope concluded by invoking God and inviting faithful to pray “for our brothers and sisters who believe that walking in the Law of the Lord  means becoming rigid. May the Lord show them that He is the Father and He likes mercy, tenderness, kindness, meekness and humility. May he teach us all to walk in the Law of the Lord, adopting all of these attitudes”. 

Go here to read the rest.  Translation:  If you take the teachings of Christ seriously, except for mercy, our Pope really thinks you are a sinful jerk.  Note how the same fear of rigidity does not influence the Pope’s view of global warming, Islamic immigration, economic redistribution or any of the long laundry list of leftist political positions that the Pope has thrown the weight of the Church behind.  Apparently to be rigid in the eyes of the Pope is to oppose him.  Mark PopeWatch down as proudly rigid in that case.

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Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 6:08am

From today’s Gospel:

“Jesus passed through towns and villages,
teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem.
Someone asked him,
“Lord, will only a few people be saved?”
He answered them,
“Strive to enter through the narrow gate,
for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter
but will not be strong enough.
After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door,
then will you stand outside knocking and saying,
‘Lord, open the door for us.’
He will say to you in reply,
‘I do not know where you are from.’
And you will say,
‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’
Then he will say to you,
‘I do not know where you are from.
Depart from me, all you evildoers!’
And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth
when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God
and you yourselves cast out.
And people will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the Kingdom of God.
For behold, some are last who will be first,
and some are first who will be last.”

Clearly this brings to mind that not only the Jews will be saved. Jesus’ message is for all. But it is also clear that not all will accept that message. The struggle is hard and subject to failure. But we must strive to enter through the gate that is Christ and not through humans (even Francis). That gate is the very life and being of Christ. This being includes his “Law” that Francis belittles. This Law, far from being a rigid imposition by men upon men, is an opening to the very life of God. It is a reflection of His very being – the gate to eternal life.
The belittling of this Law which is a reflection of the very life of God belies the idiocy of Francis’ attempts at theology.

ken
ken
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 6:57am

Perhaps he should read the Bible, but it’s probably too rigid for his tastes.

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 7:51am

Who needs the Bible when we have the humble Pope to discern new revelation?

David Spaulding
David Spaulding
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 8:06am

I actually entirely get the Pope’s objection to the loveless application of rules. Man was not made for the Sabbath, after all.

I have the same two problems here that I have with many of his pronouncements:

1) His Holiness cuts deeply with his knife and offers no help in fixing the fault.

You sell firearms… You are doomed. You overtly oppose abortion and homosexual action… You are doomed. You think Vatican II is a mess of radical reinterpretation and poor execution… You are doomed.

That isn’t Christ-like and isn’t even Christian. It is demoralizing and forces a false choice of either accepting that everything about us is wrong or the Pope is… Instead of causing us to say “there is something to this that I should pray on.”

2) His Holiness only finds fault with the orthodox.

I know plenty of folks who are dedicated to the poor and don’t participate in the sacraments. I know folks who proclaim themselves “modern,” whatever that means, Catholics and actively support Planned Parenthood. I know folks who have never read the Scriptures, have no idea what the Catechism is, blame the Church for most of the wars in history, and have consciences formed exclusively by popular media… Quite a lot of them, actually. Is there any condemnation here? Are there any calls for those who care nothing for the Church but pretend to be Catholic to explore the faith?

What the orthodox, the Traditionalist is called to do is abandon what we are and embrace… Well, nothing at all. We should just stop being us because we are so awful. What the Cafeteria Catholics are called to do is… Well, nothing at all.

Foxfier
Admin
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 8:08am

…no, the brother was wrong because he threw a hissy when his little brother turned up not dead.
And the younger brother had screwed up, yeah, royally– but he really was seriously going to die, with no family support network.
It wasn’t that he was “rigid,” he was wrong. And he WAS blessed– the part about “everything I have is yours”?

Foxfier
Admin
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 8:20am

2) His Holiness only finds fault with the orthodox.

I think that may be him not realizing that he’s eating the seed corn, so to speak.
Part of why things are getting nastier in “public discourse” in the US is that we’ve used up a lot of the residual manners/reflexive helping we had back in the 60s, which made it so we could “carry” the relatively tiny hippy movement. There were the massive number of volunteers to feed and save those making the mistake of ‘following their bliss’ at Woodstock, and the number of deaths were kept down.
******
It’s like… after generations of setting up the prodigal son as good, without the repentance, and the loyal son as entirely bad, rather than unloving in his reaction that his brother wasn’t DEAD, they’re shocked that folks think being the loyal son at all is a bad thing– and doing all the horrible stuff that the Prodigal son did was good.

Foxfier
Admin
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 8:21am

It’s sad, because the local Catholic radio had a decent talk on it… it’s so simple. You’re supposed to be happy when folks turn their lives around….

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 8:34am

“I actually entirely get the Pope’s objection to the loveless application of rules. Man was not made for the Sabbath, after all.”

But its not about rules, those Laws the Pope talks about are expressions of the life of God. The prohibition of divorce and communion for those in adulterous affairs is not equivalent to the micro-regulations of the Pharisees in observing the Sabbath. For example, marriage is a reflection both of the Trinitarian life and the love Christ has for his Church. These are Divine realities we are called to reflect in married life. Hard? Yes. Something Christ Himself in Revelation requires? Yes.
The failure to live up to these commands of Christ distort the individual and society as well as damage the Body of Christ.

c bryant
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 8:34am

show the pope a picture of the ten nuns being driven to execution in a cart during the French revolution. above the nuns write the caption ‘rigid’ and above the crowd write ‘flexible.’

David Spaulding
David Spaulding
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 8:41am

Foxfier, that is really well said.

Phillip, I agree. I was trying to express the sentiment I so often hear from fellow Catholics: “I am not opposed to correction.”

His Holiness paints with a roller and then seems to wonder why the result isn’t the Sistine Chapel.

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 8:57am

“His Holiness paints with a roller and then seems to wonder why the result isn’t the Sistine Chapel.”

Thanks. I’m going to steal that line. 🙂

bill bannon
bill bannon
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 11:24am

Here’s that always merciful God killing Herod for not being rigid with the crowd who called him god….in the New…New Testament in Acts12:

” 21
On an appointed day, Herod, attired in royal robes, [and] seated on the rostrum, addressed them publicly.
22
The assembled crowd cried out, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.”
23
At once the angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not ascribe the honor to God, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.

Don L
Don L
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 12:21pm

Am I imagining it, or is the Holy Father implying that those who follow the laws of the Church tend to be sinful? And this “two lives” judgmental accusations against those law followers sounds a lot like more of his patented ambiguity to me.

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 2:52pm

One of the comforts of God is that He is unchanging- not even a shadow of change. No caprice, capeesh?
I don’t know if that makes Him rigid. But we live under a tyranny of relativism, which leaves no room for ideologies who resist change. “Ideologue” is like a dirty word today because you are not supposed to have an idea that you believe is unshakably true and stick to it despite the billows and waves of the cultural sea.

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Wednesday, October 26, AD 2016 2:58pm

The Father in the story of the prodigal conformed to the image of His Maker and did not change.
He saw what his sons went through though, and he loved them.
He would ‘t have been much a a dad if he didn’t try to teach them. Look at Colossians 3:12-17– we are supposed to admonish and teach each other Christian principles.
Uh oh that could even mean proselytizing or trying to attract them to our Christian Way.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Thursday, October 27, AD 2016 2:09am

All this is just more evidence that the Pope is a hypocrite and a bully. He is not fulfilling his mission but rather damaging the Church. Clearly he is misguided or worse. The best part of the Pope’s soliloquie is he inadvertently invites us to review Catholic teaching. The worst part is that he is leading many astray or confirming them in their sin. Let us pray his reign ends soon.

gabriel
gabriel
Thursday, October 27, AD 2016 6:22am

The Pope did not define exactly what he means by “rigidity.” There are attitudes, like the scriptural ones that he cites, that Jesus condemned. To read any more than that into this is a temptation in the strict sense of that word.

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