PopeWatch: Big Heart
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Pope Francis has a big heart but lacks the necessary intellect to accompany it. He is sentimental without logic and that is as bad as cold, hard logic without sympathy.
The respective roles of the heart and the head were very neatly summarised by Pascal
“We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The sceptics, who have only this for their object, labour to no purpose. We know that we do not dream, and, however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from reasoning. And reason must trust this knowledge of the heart and of instinct, and must base every argument on them. The heart senses that there are three dimensions in space and that the numbers are infinite, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double of the other. Principles are intuited, propositions are inferred, all with certainty, though in different ways.”
Another person who had a big heart, but also occasionally lacked intellect- St Peter. Indignant when told by Jesus he would deny him. But ran like a coward when Christ was arrested. Sobbed immensely when he realised his utter weakness.
A big heart will save this Pope. God Bless the Holy Father.
I can worry about his other lacks, but yes– he has a very good heart.
While I think the Pope reaching out to this girl in the way he did was commendable, the real story here is this young girl. She was bullied, but yet did not subscribe to the victim mentality that permeates much of the anti-bullying movement. Kids who are bullied, like any other kid, need inspiration to rise above their rough circumstances, not self-pity.
Pope Francis bore witness to this to a level he may not have realized. For that he deserves praise.
Thanks Michael ! I love that rascal Pascal.
Anzlyne wrote, “I love that rascal Pascal.”
Me, too. It seems almost a sin to translate him. His heart was certainly in the right place. What can you say of someone, who died on a friend’s sofa, because he had lent his own apartment to a sick man and his family?
« Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. On le sent en mille choses. C’est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison. Voilà ce que c’est que la foi parfaite, Dieu sensible au cœur » – The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which knows God, and not the reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.
The heart is the one thing we should not judge. It is private between each of us and God. I must step back from temptations to effrontery and simply apply the rule of kind interpretation. Being rather opinionated, I find this very hard to do.
The pope has a big heart? Is that the big heart that trashes traditional Catholics with a stream of disparaging remarks? Or is he always projecting an image? Mass in Spanish in DC. Chair made by ‘migrants’ in NY. Visiting prisons in PA. Saying Mass in Cuba next to an idol of a murderous atheist before coming to US. Big heart my a…