The summary:
Shortly after one Vatican article stirred debate by asserting there's an "ecumenism of hate" in the U.S. between conservative Evangelicals and Catholics, another over the weekend asserted that the "main obstacle" to implementing Pope Francis's vision for the Church is “closure, if not hostility” from “a good part of the clergy, at levels both high and low.” [Emphasis original.]
The body:
On the heels of one controversial Vatican article alleging an “ecumenism of hate” between conservative Evangelicals and Catholics in America, another potential eyebrow-raiser emerged Saturday claiming that the “main obstacle” to implementing Pope Francis’s vision is “closure, if not hostility” from “a good part of the clergy, at levels both high and low.”
The term “high and low” suggests the author had in mind clergy ranging from senior bishops to ordinary parish priests.
“The clergy is holding the people back, who should instead be accompanied in this extraordinary moment,” said the article by Italian Father Giulio Cirignano, a native of Florence and a longtime Scripture scholar at the Theological Faculty of Central Italy.
The piece appeared in the weekend edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, under the headline of “The Conversion Asked by Pope Francis: Habit is not Fidelity.”
It comes a little over a week after the publication of an essay by Italian Jesuit Fr. Antonio Spadaro and Argentine Protestant Marcelo Figueroa, two close friends of Pope Francis, in the Jesuit-edited journal La Civilità Cattolica. In it, Spadaro and Figueroa described what they see was a “Manichean vision” [2] underlying growing closeness in America between Evangelicals and “Catholic Integralists.”
Cirignano’s piece didn’t focus on the United States, and appeared to be more concerned with Italian realities, though he didn’t specify which country or region he was addressing.
“The main obstacle that stands in the way of the conversion that Pope Francis wants to bring to the Church is constituted, in some measure, by the attitude of a good part of the clergy, at levels high and low … an attitude, at times, of closure if not hostility,” Cirignano wrote.
“Most of the faithful have understood, despite everything, the favorable moment, the Kairos, which the Lord is giving to his community,” Cirignano said. “For the most part, they’re celebrating.”
“Despite that, the portion [of the community] closest to little-illuminated pastors is maintained behind an old horizon, the horizon of habitual practices, of language out of fashion, of repetitive thinking without vitality,” he said.
Cirignano offered several factors to explain what he sees as “closure” and “hostility” from the clergy towards Pope Francis.
The “modest cultural level on the part of clergy, both at high and low levels,” he said, saying that both theological and Biblical preparation is often “scarce.”
An antiquated image of the priesthood, which, according to Cirignano, sees the priest as “the boss and patron of the community,” who, because of his celibate condition, is compensated with “totally individual responsibility,” a sort of “solitary protagonist.”
An old theology, associated with the Counter-Reformation, “lacking the resources of the Word, without a soul, that transformed the impassioned and mysterious adventure of believing into religion,” arguing that “the God of religion … is, for the most part, a projection of man, while “faith” is not in the first place “Man reaching for God, but the opposite.”
“When the priest is too marked by a religious mentality, and too little by a limpid faith, then everything becomes more complicated,” Cirignano wrote. “He risks remaining the victim of many things invented by man about God and his will.”
God, according to Cirignano, “doesn’t tolerate being enclosed in rigid schemes typical of the human mind.”
Instead, he said, “God is love, and that’s all, love as gift of itself. Thus [God] corrects, in a plain way, the million involutions we’re used to putting in the way of love.”
...
Though there’s no indication that Cirignano’s piece was encouraged by Pope Francis, or indeed that the pontiff was even aware of it, Francis himself has frequently taken recalcitrant bishops and clergy to task during the course of his papacy.
Famously, in his December 2014 address to the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s central administrative bureaucracy, Francis ticked off 15 “spiritual diseases” he saw, including “Spiritual Alzheimer’s,” “rivalry and vainglory,” gossip, and even an unhealthy lack of joy he dubbed “funeral face.”
It seems to this blogger that Bergoglio is the one who gives the appearance of a "funeral face" when he is upset. Better put are these words quoted below without hyperlinks from a blog entitled ........Choosing-Him that appeared in a post dated February 4, 2017, entitled Rome covered in Anti-Francis posters [3]:
The photo chosen for the poster [see below] is classic Francis. Paraphrasing Francis’ own words, when one exhibits a ‘funeral face’ [4] it reflects the insecurities he has about himself and a ‘pickle face’ [5] shows that one lacks joy.
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| http://choosing-him.blogspot.com/2017/02/rome-covered-in-posters-critical-of-pope.html |
It is not for easy to say whether the extreme liberal or the extreme conservative side of the Catholic Church, or some point along the continuum, is on the side of God. One would think that there is only one voice for the whole Catholic Church and that "voice" consists of words spoken by Christ. Seriously, how difficult is it to comprehend these words, quoted without paragraph numbers and footnotes [6]:
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
How many songs, operas, poems, stories, movies, compositions have been about love throughout the centuries? Has love changed with the passage of time? This blogger senses what love is but knows very little about it, but doubts that its meaning has changed since the time of Adam and Eve. Perhaps because of his ignorance of love, he concludes that it must be simple. After all, it is not a subject that is taught at school or has to be studied at length and examined for proficiency, probably because it is universal to mankind; yet, in almost every part of the world, it is disposed of and in its void, the seven deadly sins, namely, pride, gluttony, lust, envy, greed, anger and sloth [7] completes one's being in varying proportions.
Perhaps those who are most influential in shaping the Catholic Church and keeping it from falling apart ought not to waste time and words theorizing about love but actually love for once. Maybe, just maybe, would the Catholic Church then be a place that can help sinners overcome the seven deadly sins and begin paving the way for all to Heaven.
[1] https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/07/23/vatican-article-says-main-obstacle-pope-francis-bishops-priests/
[2] https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/07/13/jesuit-journal-close-pope-says-manichean-vision-behind-trump/
[3] http://choosing-him.blogspot.com/2017/02/rome-covered-in-posters-critical-of-pope.html
[4] http://callmejorgebergoglio.blogspot.com/2015/03/whats-up-with-frown-francis.html
[5] Ibid.
[6] http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/22, 36-40.
[7] http://www.deadlysins.com/
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