What the Pope said ...

Today's homily makes total sense to me.

The Pope pointed out that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews gave some very important practical advice: ‘Do not absent yourself from your own assemblies, as some do.’ He said this happens when we’re at such assemblies, in the parish or community and we judge the others, when there’s this kind of scorn towards the others. This, Pope Francis stressed, is not the new and living way of Jesus.

“They scorn the others, they stay away from the community as a whole, they stay away from the people of God, they have privatized salvation: salvation is for me and my small group, but not for all the people of God. And this is a very serious mistake. It’s what we see and call: ‘the ecclesial elites.’ When these small groups are created within the community of God’s people, these people believe they are being good Christians and also are acting in good faith maybe, but they are small groups who have privatized salvation.” - Vatican Radio

Now to whom do you think the Pope was expressing this teaching?  Who is he talking about?  Who is he talking to?  Me, for sure - and maybe you.   How can we be ecclesial elites?  We see it all the time online when we use our labels for one another, add our academic or religious initials/credentials behind our names, proclaim ourselves, attributing to ourselves some authority, correcting and admonishing - even the Pope ... and so on.  When we look around our parish we see the same dynamic.  We ourselves can be guilty of this notion of elitism.

Getting tired of what the Pope says?

No one is forcing us to listen, much less comment on what he says.  Who has appointed any of us his spokesman?  That said, as I responded last night on another blog, I simply do not understand the confusion, nor the anxiety over what the Holy Father says and does, explaining:

I don't know what is not to get or to be upset by? I see Francis in continuity with his predecessors - he's just more accessible and candid. I wonder if the confusion could be the result of many Catholics being unfamiliar with the Scriptures. Certainly they may have some scholarship - but do they read and ruminate the Scriptures?   

St. Therese carried a small New Testament with her always - Francis suggests we do the same - something he has done and continues to do. I think he lives the Gospel very simply. I do not believe for a minute there is any artifice or any duplicity in him whatsoever. 

I really do feel badly that otherwise faithful Catholics find him so troubling. I often think of how the many very devout Catholics, those follow apparitions and who read private revelation which speak of a warning and an illumination of conscience and a chastisement to come, are acting now. Protesting and complaining, calling the Pope out as an abusive father. For me Francis has been warning us, he has laid bare the conscience and hearts of many; something I find especially moving for myself, inspiring compunction and repentance in myself, and I think in others. It seems he has been calling us all to repentance - almost daily, often urging the faithful to go to confession.  What is the call of the Gospel?  Repent and believe the Good News.  Yet so many seem to be stopping their ears and ripping their garments in response. 

Francis is the man who occupies the Chair of Peter as Vicar of Christ, he follows in his predecessors footsteps, after him, another will take his place. - My comment on another post.

Again - I don't know why I involve myself in these discussions.  Ignorant, steeped in sin since birth, who am I to say anything?

Exhausted?