You know I am really starting to think that Pope Francis does not like the model of the Church being like another NGO (Non-governmental organization).

Here are just some examples:

We may become a charitable NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of the Lord.

We are not an NGO, and when the Church becomes an NGO she loses her salt, she has no savour, she is only an empty organization.

The parishes, the schools, the institutions are made for going out … if they don’t, they become an NGO, and the Church cannot be an NGO.

A functionalist approach has no room for mystery; it aims at efficiency. It reduces the reality of the Church to the structure of an NGO.

The Church is an institution, but when she makes herself a “centre”, she becomes merely functional, and slowly but surely turns into a kind of NGO.

The Church – I repeat once again – is not a relief organization, an enterprise or an NGO, but a community of people, animated by the Holy Spirit, who have lived and are living the wonder of the encounter with Jesus Christ and want to share this experience of deep joy, the message of salvation that the Lord gave us. It is the Holy Spirit who guides the Church in this path.

These are important corrections to one of the major errors of our time. Of reducing the salvific mission of the Church to just merely social work. Yet this flattening of the Church seems to me to be quite common in so many organizations tied to the Church. A narrowing and political secularization that looses sight of preaching the Gospel. Organizations willing to make compromises in promoting what they now see as their main mission. A loss of the fullness of the Catholic faith with not much both/and-ing going on. An easy temptation to fall into when pursuing a worthy cause and subsequently loosing sight of the larger context of the great commission.

Blessed Mother Teresa put this quite well when she said:

Without out suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the Redemption. All the desolation of the poor people, not only their material poverty, but their spiritual destitution, must be redeemed. And we must share it, for only by being one with them can we redeem them by bringing God into their lives and bringing them to God.

This is I think the same problem the Pope identifies in seeing the Church as just another NGO. This is a no go.

Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain will take on his “other” job next week, flying to Florida as the Vatican’s point man in a bid to make the largest organization of American nuns toe the Vatican line.

Sartain will be present in Orlando for the entire annual assembly of the Leadership Council of Women Religious, and will speak and answer questions at the gathering of approximately 900 women religious. The LCWR speaks for about 80 percent of the Catholic nuns in America.

“We’re going into this assembly knowing that there’s a cloud over our head and that we are being investigated and they are going to be monitoring us,” Sr. Theresa Kane, a former president of the LCWR, told National Catholic Reporter.

Sartain is “showing up and he’s staying for the entire assembly. It’s monitoring. There’s a cloud … and we’re living through it,” Kane added.

Ever see an older car driving along that obviously had not had a tune up for years or emission repair? The driver seems to be oblivious to the semi-noxious cloud spewing from his car and just driving along. This is the LCWR.

In a article like this you don’t have to wait long for a gratuitous Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI swipe coming in 3…2…1.

With the advent of Pope Francis, the Catholic Church has put on a far more friendly and merciful face. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, was a former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and was informally nicknamed “God’s rottweiler” for crackdowns on theologians.

Although I have to give them props for restraint in not connecting the CDF to the Holy Inquisition, a history lesson often repeated. I do wonder if unsympathetic reporters covering religion have a quota regarding the word crackdown. Perhaps editors reject stories on the Catholics Church unless the word crackdown or slam was used somewhere.

“I think however he (Sartain) presents himself — and especially however he presents what he has learned this year in engaging with LCWR — that will be key: How does he see fidelity to our mission?” Sr. McDermott added.

Ah but the problem is their mission to fidelity.

Sartain can also look around his own diocese and the pivotal role women play in holding it together.

With fewer and fewer priests, there are cases where two Seattle parishes are “twinned” and share a priest, as well as priests in their late 70’s continuing to serve.  Women administrators are running several parishes.

Exactly how is this statement have anything to do with the content of the article? I guess the syllogism goes:

• All members of the LCWR are women
• This is an investigation of women
• Thus all women are being investigated and this is an attack on women.

This is exactly the red herring they always throw in and in this case considering the Bishop it must be at Pike Place Market. It is always framed as an attack on not only women in religious life, but an attack on women in religious life throughout history.

The article ends with another red herring thrown in:

Lately, the Archbishop has received petitions asking that he repudiate a Bremerton pastor who took his parish out of the Boy Scouts after it permitted gay youths to belong.

Still it is interesting to see all the negative comments I have seen by members of the LCWR regarding the attendance of His Excellency J. Peter Sartain.

Still I might suggest tongue-in-cheek to these upset members of the LCWR that Jesus ate with sinners so surely they can put up with an Archbishop. Instead they treat him like the Dean of Faber College after their being put on “double secret probation.”

(Source)

Wow you check the news at lunch and find out that the Church has reconsidered the whole anthropology of the human person and that documents are to be rescinded and a new Catechism issued.

Or at least that is what catechesis by headline would have us believe.

Last week speaking to journalists on the flight to Brazil he said:

It is true that I do not give interviews, but why, I do not know, I can’t, it’s just like that. For me it is quite an effort to do so, but I thank all of you here.

Previously I had commented on this thinking really regardless of the reason this is a good policy since for the most past nothing good comes of these interviews. Mainly journalist gotchas to generate pageviews.

So I was a bit surprised that he did give an informal interview when leaving Brazil.

The part generating the most heat:

“A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will – well, who am I to judge him?” the pope said. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons, they must be integrated into society. The problem isn’t this (homosexual) orientation – we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else, the problem is lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby.”

Somehow this has both outraged some within the Church and also became a cause for jubilation within and without the Church.

My first reaction was the Pope should have stuck to not giving interviews for the reasons mentioned above and that his off-the-cuff articulation of this is easily misunderstood. Although he could have read passages directly from the Catechism and from the CDF’s Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons and it would have been misunderstood. Most of the world is unused to both/and thinking. Treating with respect and love those who suffer from same-sex attraction while also condemning homosexual acts as intrinsically evil. This lack of both/and thinking makes everything seem as a contradiction where none exists.

Jimmy Akin as usual has a helpful article on the subject 7 things you need to know about what Pope Francis said about gays.

So mostly my thinking is the press and revisionist Catholics misconstrues what the pope says, in other words the sun rose again today.

One thing I could wish for is that Catholics not use the word “gay” because of all the baggage now associated with it. I try to avoid it myself, but I can understand how it easily becomes a short-hand term for person with homosexual attraction. Looking at the Spanish language report of what he said the Pope used the English word “gay” which I guess has become the same across languages. Much of our language describing this is rather clumsy and even the tern “homosexual person” found in Vatican documents can imply more than it intends by equating sexual identity as the primary focus of the human person.

Watching Twitter over the day I saw some rather odd things. For one a Traditionalist site retweeting Fr. James Martin, SJ in some-what agreement.

“Anyone who says nothing has changed in the church today is nuts. From “No gay priests” in 2005 to “Who am I to judge?” is a sea change.”

Well call me nuts for actually believing the faith hasn’t changed since yesterday.

“But my dear fellow, this is the twentieth century!” It is worth having a little training in philosophy if only to avoid looking so ghastly a fool as that. It has on the whole rather less sense or meaning than saying, “But my dear fellow, this is Tuesday afternoon.“ – G.K. Chesterton ”The Common Man"

This is what happens when you become an agenda Catholic and see everything via a filtered lens that blocks out part of the truth. In Fr. James Martin’s case this is a bit of a hobby horse for him (or is that gay lobby horse?). He often comments on stories regarding homosexuals while letting you read into it his own opinion. He never comes out directly and says homosexual acts are not intrinsically evil, but to me he seems to dance around it a lot.

While a Tweet does not have room for much nuance, his interpretation is purely wishful thinking. Fr. Martin also seems to have a problem with both/and thinking. So again if Fr. Martin thinks that this is actually a sea change (Holy See change?) and that those with deep-seated homosexual tendencies will now be specifically accepted to the priesthood than he just might want to reflect on his “nut-calling.” That he can believe that the same man who in opposition to Argentina’s move to legalize same-sex marriage said:

“Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill (a mere instrument) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

Or in his first Encyclical approved of or wrote the line “stable union of man and woman in marriage” is now going to approve of homosexual acts needs to check his water supply for contamination.

Moving on, while the media concentrated on the one paragraph there was also many other things discussed in the 80 minute interview.

This is the Google Translate version of a Spanish article on the interview:

Q. You have not spoken yet about abortion or about marriage between same sex. Brazil has passed a law extending abortion rights and another that includes marriages between persons of the same sex. Why has not talked about that?

A. The Church has already expressed perfectly on that, it was necessary to go over that, nor talked about cheating, lying or other things about which the Church has a clear doctrine. No need to talk about it, but the positive things their way to the boys. Moreover, young people know exactly what the position of the Church.

Q. But where you stand on these issues?

A. of the Church, I am a son of the Church.

Funny how “I am a son of the Church” did not make it into headlines or when the Pope reaffirmed the teaching regarding ordination to the priesthood or concerning Communion for civilly divorced Catholics who remarried without a declaration of nullity. We will not be seeing a headline saying “Pope affirms Catholic teaching” anytime soon.

Media coverage of the Pope is mostly good for a laugh. At times it is so awkward when the reporter has no frame or reference or even basic understandings of what is common to Catholicism.

Latest example is from Time in an article titled “Like a Rock Star, Pope Francis Calls For “Disorder” In Rio”

A giant cross—without a Christ’s body—hung front and center.

Surely the words crucifix or corpus or something else could have been worked into that clumsy sounding sentence.

What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses! […] I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!

The English translation of his speech to the young people of Argentina who had travelled to World Youth Day:

Let me tell you what I hope will be the outcome of World Youth Day: I hope there will be noise. Here there will be noise, I’m quite sure. Here in Rio there will be plenty of noise, no doubt about that. But I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out, I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves. The parishes, the schools, the institutions are made for going out … if they don’t, they become an NGO, and the Church cannot be an NGO. May the bishops and priests forgive me if some of you create a bit of confusion afterwards. That’s my advice. Thanks for whatever you can do.

Although looking at Google Translation of the speech as it was delivered in Spanish, the translation into “noise” might tone down the words used.

Regardless the Pope intends that things be shaken up by knowing and living our faith. From the same speech comes a plea to not water down the faith and to realize what that faith means:

Among the Argentine people, I ask the elderly, from my heart: do not cease to be the cultural storehouse of our people, a storehouse that hands on justice, hands on history, hands on values, hands on the memory of the people. And the rest of you, please, do not oppose the elderly: let them speak, listen to them and go forward. But know this, know that at this moment, you young people and you elderly people are condemned to the same destiny: exclusion. Don’t allow yourselves to be excluded. It’s obvious! That’s why I think you must work. Faith in Jesus Christ is not a joke, it is something very serious. It is a scandal that God came to be one of us. It is a scandal that he died on a cross. It is a scandal: the scandal of the Cross. The Cross continues to provoke scandal. But it is the one sure path, the path of the Cross, the path of Jesus, the path of the Incarnation of Jesus. Please do not water down your faith in Jesus Christ. We dilute fruit drinks – orange, apple, or banana juice, but please do not drink a diluted form of faith. Faith is whole and entire, not something that you water down. It is faith in Jesus. It is faith in the Son of God made man, who loved me and who died for me. So then: make yourselves heard; take care of the two ends of the population: the elderly and the young; do not allow yourselves to be excluded and do not allow the elderly to be excluded. Secondly: do not “water down” your faith in Jesus Christ. The Beatitudes: What must we do, Father? Look, read the Beatitudes: that will do you good. If you want to know what you actually have to do, read Matthew Chapter 25, which is the standard by which we will be judged. With these two things you have the action plan: the Beatitudes and Matthew 25. You do not need to read anything else. I ask you this with all my heart. Very well, I thank you for coming so close. I am sorry that you are all penned in, but let me tell you something. I experience that myself now and then. What an awful thing it is to be penned in. I openly admit it, but we’ll see. I understand you. I would have liked to come closer to you, but I understand that for security reasons, it just isn’t possible. Thank you for coming, thank you for praying for me; I ask you from my heart, I need it. I need your prayers, I need them very much. Thank you for that. Well then, I want to give you my blessing, and afterwards, we will bless the image of the Virgin that is to travel all over the Republic. And also the Cross of Saint Francis, which will travel on that same missionary journey. But do not forget: make yourselves heard; take care of the two ends of life, the two ends of the history of peoples: the elderly and the young; and do not water down the faith. And now let us pray, so as to bless the image of the Virgin, and then I will give you the Blessing.

As far as the coverage of World Youth Day goes, it is par for the course. Phil Lawler in his article Invisible people popping up in Rio notes:

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the crowds at World Youth Day (WYD) in Rio are much larger than the mainstream media predictions.

Just last week we were hearing that WYD might be a disappointment. Early registrations were lagging behind expectations. The Brazilian government didn’t want to kick in extra funding. Lots of young Brazilians disagreed with the Pope. Those gloomy predictions didn’t even take into account the spectacularly bad weather that has turned outdoor meeting places into bleak acres of ankle-deep mud.

Doom! Disaster! But wait. When the curtain rose on WYD, there were 500,000 enthusiastic young people standing patiently in the rain. When the Pope made his first appearance last night, 1 million people were cheering and waving banners. If this is gloom, let’s have more of it! How many of the world’s celebrities would be disappointed by a crowd of 1 million?

… Could it be that faithful Catholics are invisible to the secular media? Reporters are familiar with the young people who watch MTV, who love rock concerts, who buy the latest fashions, who go bar-hopping on Friday nights. You’ll see them all in the Style section. But you won’t see the kids who go to Mass, say the Rosary, or slip off to Confession. They won’t be in this week’s newspaper. They’re missing. Maybe they’re in Rio.

Part of the Special world of Pauline Kael syndrome.

Spanish version