Oh boy.
He’s not shooting the breeze...he’s talking to journalists whose job is to quote him.
He needs to watch what he says.
Why didn’t this admonition need to be applied to previous Popes?
By the way, we all need to study up on the episode of Pope Honorius I and the Monothelites. Honorius sent a letter to Sergius in which he waffled on monothelitism.
He was later condemned by an Ecumenical Council for it.
Francis is walking a dangerous path.
Of course not. We might clearly read that he is a heretic.
One of the few times I have agreed with Lombardi. Personally, I think Lombardi should be replaced, because he’s ineffective at best and usually even ends up making things worse - I’m surprised they kept him, except that he’s a Jesuit.
That said, I think he’s right. Benedict was very careful in his speech and the press still twisted it. The press loved JPII because he said things that were ambiguous or even downright heretical (think of Assisi) and also kissed the Koran, something that seems to be forgotten by his inexplicable conservative supporters. I say inexplicable, because until he became so frail that he wasn’t really in charge anymore and Ratzinger took over, JPII did little to further orthodoxy or even to deal with the scandals.
I actually think Francis is more orthodox than JPII, and pretty much on the same wavelength with BXVI. He just expresses it differently.
And I don’t think that’s because he’s a Jesuit or Latin American - I think it’s because of the influence of the Communion & Liberation movement (CL), which is very popular with Italian or Italian-identified intellectuals and was actually a great favorite of Pope BXVI. Look it up.
I am seriously wondering about Francis’s mental state.
” I urged people not to read Francis’ words too closely:”
Even better if you don’t read them at all! Tee hee hee!
The pope is a teacher, and when he preaches he should be trustworthy. If we can’t attach value to the individual words, which is to acknowledge that they are not themselves trustworthy in terms of teaching, then we should ignore him altogether. And what value is a pope which we must ignore? Ultimately, though, I am unconvinced by this excuse of informality. We are to believe that a man who is the supreme pastor of the Church, deeply steeped in the Gospel, cannot be both informal and trustworthy? He cannot speak spontaneously and still not say outrageously misleading things which, at the bare minimum, smack of heresy? No, sorry, that sounds like a cop out to me. The things which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart. If, over and over, the pope insists on saying outrageous things, then there is every reason to imagine he might just very well believe outrageous things.
Ping for later