Posted on 06/19/2013 4:15:54 AM PDT by markomalley
Christianity is not simply the study of laws or commands: this is an impediment to understanding and living the truth that God is joy and generosity. This was the message of Pope Francis at Mass celebrated this morning in Casa Santa Marta.
The hypocrites who “lead the people of God down a dead-end street” Pope Francis said, are the subject of today’s Gospel. The Pope reflected on the famous passage of Matthew’s Gospel that contrasts the behaviour of the scribes and Pharisees – who make a show of praying, fasting, and almsgiving – with the path indicated by Jesus, Who points out to His disciples the proper attitude to assume in the same circumstances: giving alms and praying “in secret.” “And your Father, Who sees in secret, will reward you.”
Pope Francis criticized not only the vanity of the scribes and Pharisees, but also those who impose “so many precepts on the faithful.” He called them “hypocrites of casuistry,” “intellectuals without talent” who “don’t have the intelligence to find God, to explain God with understanding,” and so prevent themselves and others from entering into the Kingdom of God:
“Jesus says: ‘You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to others.’ They are ethicists without goodness, they do not know what goodness is. But they are ethicists, aren’t they? ‘You have to do this, and this, and this . . .’ They fill you with precepts, but without goodness. And those are some of the phylacteries, of the tassels they lengthen, so many things, to make a pretence of being majestic, perfect, they have no sense of beauty. They have no sense of beauty. They achieve only the beauty of a museum. They are intellectuals without talent, ethicists without goodness, the bearers of museum beauty. These are the hypocrites that Jesus rebukes so strongly.
“But He doesn’t stop there,” Pope Francis continued. “In today’s Gospel, the Lord speaks about another class of hypocrites, ‘holy rollers’ [It: quelli che vanno sul sacro]:
“The Lord speaks about fasting, about prayer, about almsgiving: the three pillars of Christian piety, of interior conversion, that the Church proposes to us all in Lent. There are even hypocrites along this path, who make a show of fasting, of giving alms, of praying. I think that when hypocrisy reaches this point in the relation with God, we are coming very close to the sin against the Holy Spirit. These do not know beauty, they do not know love, these do not know the truth: they are small, cowardly.”
“We think about the hypocrisy in the Church: how bad it makes all of us,” Pope Francis said candidly. Instead he pointed out another “icon” for imitation, a person described in another passage of the Gospel: the publican who prayed with humble simplicity, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, a sinner.” This, the Pope said, “is the prayer we should say every day, knowing that we are sinners” but “with concrete sins, not theoretical [sin].” And this prayer, he concluded, “will help us to take the opposite road,” the road opposed to the hypocrisy that we are all tempted to:
“But all of us also have grace, the grace that comes from Jesus Christ: the grace of joy; the grace of magnanimity, of largesse. Hypocrites do not know what joy is, what largesse is, what magnanimity is.”
The Holy Father concelebrated Mass with Cardinal Marc Ouellet and Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, the prefect and secretary of the Congregation for Bishops; and with Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia and Bishop Jean Lafitte, the president and secretary of the Pontifical Council of the Family. Members of the Congregation of Bishops and of the Pontifical Council of the Family were in attendance at the Mass.
He should go give a seminar at Democrap Headquarters on this...
True, but I think he is taking a swipe at those who have fallen into a modern-day form of Pelagianism
Pope Francis condemns hypocrisy
I'll bet he's a hoot on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Aaaarrr!
Wake me up when the Church is ready to excommunicate the pro-abort politicians who attend Mass and take Communion.
If the Church can't even stand by such a basic principle, the Pope shouldn't be talking about hypocrites.
“Pope Francis criticized not only the vanity of the scribes and Pharisees, but also those who impose “so many precepts on the faithful.” He called them “hypocrites of casuistry,” “intellectuals without talent” who “don’t have the intelligence to find God, to explain God with understanding,” and so prevent themselves and others from entering into the Kingdom of God”
It takes stunning audacity for any Jesuit to refer to others as “hypocrites of casuistry.” In this day of historical and biblical ignorance Francis will not be taken to task for that line, but just WOW!
And while I’m at it the Bible makes it very clear it doesn’t take intelligence to find God, it takes grace.
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 1:27)
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
.....It also takes belief to find God.
Do you have any idea whom he is speaking of here? Is it simply the Pharisees of Jesus's time, or specific people in the Church today? "Ethicists"?
Oh my! How rich...how truly rich! Count the rules. Genuflect, left knee, right knee? With head bowed or not and in whose presence? While kissing whose ring? Bow from the waist or nod of the head? Remember those titles too.
Reverends of the Most, Holy, Father and combinations thereof.
On and on.
Thank you for sharing this!
Abraham believed in the Lord and it was counted to him for righteousness (see Genesis 15), so I would never discount the importance of belief. But no man can savingly believe without grace. Men can give mental assent to a set of historic facts or even doctines, but that isn’t the utterly life-changing belief brought by grace. That isn’t saving faith.
Jesus Himself said that that NO MAN CAN come to the Father unless the Father draws him (see John 6:44). Since we know Hell is real and ever-increasing in population, we also know He doesn’t draw everyone. That drawing necessary for salvation is pure grace. “For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (Romans 9:15) There isn’t one iota of human wisdom or intelligence required to find God. He gives His sheep all they need for saving faith and then He sustains them to the end. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” (Phillipians 1:6) That verse tells us He starts the good work in those who believe and He sustains them to the end.
Remember what Paul wrote in Romans 3: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10-12)
That passage is so clear and it leaves us with the obvious question: How does a man like Abraham or any other son of Adam, a man spiritually “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1), incapable of understanding, who was not seeking after God, who was not doing good, ever come to believe in the Lord so that his belief is counted for righteousness? The answer is grace.
Ephesians chapter two explains this quite clearly:
1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
(Ephesians 2:1-9)
The word “quickened” is strange to modern ears, but it simply means to make alive.
Let’s zero in on those last two verses: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
“By grace” – God’s divine influence upon your heart
“are you” – the sinner
“saved” – delivered from the wrath of God to restored fellowship with Him
“through faith” – implicit belief in God’s truth and authority
“and that not of yourselves” – Absolutely everything necessary to provide our salvation is done by God.
“it” – your salvation
“is the gift of God” – an undeserved present from God the Father that only needs to be accepted
“not of works” – There is absolutely nothing we can do to add to the value of God’s gift. His gift alone is sufficient to redeem us.
“lest any man should boast” – It is God’s purpose for man to recognize that his whole life is dependent upon God. Nothing man can do is a basis for bragging or considering himself deserving of glory. ALL glory belongs to God.
-—Is. 42:8 “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another….”
Jesus said, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me...” (John 6:37) Jesus also said, “But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:26-27) He graciously gives His sheep the ability to believe.
For spiritually dead sinners who are incapable of understanding (Romans 3) and whose very best works are as “filthy rags” in God’s sight (Isaiah 64:6), salvation, by necessity, must be all of grace. Human intelligence has nothing to do with it. Please don’t be led astray.
(2)As to your other points, those are the very points he's making.
Aaarrr. (Pirate talk.)
A friend of mine, an ethicist (retired, University of Leeds) and -— within the last few years-— a convert to Catholicism, says he stands virtually alone in academic discourse, in finding abortion and sodomy morally objectionable. Said his own daughter, when she caught on that dear old dad was not beaming over a lesbian niece’s pregnancy by vendor insemination: “How could anybody be against that? Daft! And you, an ethicist!”
I know it's hard to keep up. I have that problem myself. It's because I do other stuff.
In fact, right now I have to haul some compost from the back yard to the front yard -- so if you miss any of my remedial catechetics, just ask markomalley and I'll be back in a couple hours or so.
Meantime, God bless you!
Are you suggesting Francis has disavowed his Jesuitical oath? If that’s the case, he had better watch his back.
As for 2, I’m sure your don’t mean to suggest your pope affirms salvation by grace alone, which happens to be the point of Ephesians 2:8-9.
Did not the Bible also say to “BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus Christ and you and your family will be SAVE ?”
What "Jesuitical oath" do you think he has sworn?
Please ... be specific.
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