I don't think so, Poodle.
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I noted on one or two other blogs suggestions the Holy Father may have 'rebuked' some Catholics on his pastoral visit to Germany - although I didn't get that sense in any of his homilies. Elsewhere, I came across a post reporting that he actually commended the German bishops as 'good shepherds'. Ach der lieber schatzie!
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I think many people want the Pope to start cracking the whip and hurling rebukes and condemnations all over the world - calling down fire upon those who resist/dissent from Catholic teaching. Just like the disciples in today's Gospel, we always want a fight: "Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?"
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It was only then that Jesus rebuked them - in another place he tells them they do not know from what spirit they speak. Christ pretty much kept his rebukes for those of us who consider ourselves religious people... hypocrites and those of us without charity and mercy.
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I'm probably a heretic for saying that however.
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Photo source.
The Pope doesn't publicly rebuke. Because he knows the effect that usually has: makes the rebuked victims and martyrs and entrenches them.
ReplyDeleteRather he does two things:
1) he invited everyone into closer Communion with Christ - with complete faith that at some point, if we are in Communion with Christ, we will be Communion with truth, and we'll get it.
2) He turns the would-be-rebuked's mottos on their heads. Read him. You'll see what I mean. As in: Okay, yes, we need to be aware of ecological problems and the integrity of creation. And by the way - did you know that there's an ecology to human life as well? And an integrity to the way human beings were created by God? And to violate that (via homosexual acts/contraception/abortion) is a violation of that integrity? It's un-ecological?
He does that ALL the time.
M
"Tell him we are faithful. That is enough."
ReplyDeleteAll the idiots who want him to call down fire and brimstone do not realize that one of his most important jobs is preventing schism, and the Austrian and German clergy are just about there. Heresies, while fearfully dangerous, will usually die out in a few generations. Schism, on the other hand, last a very, very long time - and brings whole swathes of clergy, as well as church structures with it.
ReplyDeleteImagine going to Austria and finding nothing but a bunch of heretic priests. Now imagine going to Austria and finding nothing but a bunch of heretic priests who are not even in union with Rome and who have control over all of the diocese in the area. See what I mean? It would be even harder than it is for orthodoxy to make inroads.
Good points, Mercury -- I'm going to remember what you've said the next time my Dad goes off an a "why doesn't he get rid of those blankety-blank bishops" rant.
ReplyDelete(Not that I don't understand him -- he has lived long enough to see the Church he grew up in change drastically. Me, it's what I grew up with.)
Austringer - your dad's rants are probably justified. But remember - the Church he grew up in (I assume earl 20th century) was probably more the exception than the rule when it comes to Church history.
ReplyDeleteI think in the past, most bishops were careerists and flirted with all kinds of Zeitgeist b.s. It's not for nothing that St. John Chrysostom said "The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops".
Still, I think we do owe them obedience - which is why wicked bishops are all the more hard to stomach. But the whole "we need to protect the faithful from the Bishops / do not trust anything from the USCCB" is a particularly nasty temptation, I think.