Confusing YouTube message from Pope Benedict XVI

[ryanmac]

Benedict XVI: Freedom and service to others

Where faith becomes intellectualism and humility turns to arrogance, there we find a caricature of the true Church. That was the Popes message to Roman seminarians during his visit yesterday afternoon to the major Roman seminary. Pope Benedict spoke off the cuff drawing inspiration from a passage of St Pauls letter to the Galatians. True freedom he said, is to place ourselves at the service of others because we are creatures who live in relation to our Creator.

I can’t tell what he really said, but the transcript and reporter is confusing.

Is he really saying that the true Church isn’t humble, but more arrogant… but just not too arrogant, somewhere in between?

Also, the true Church isn’t faithful or intellectual, but somewhere in between?

Intellectual   Faith                      
        \     /
         \   /
          \ /
       True Church
          / \
         /   \
        /     \
Arrogance      Humility

Something isn’t right here.

View it for yourself… Benedict XVI: Freedom and service to others

 

[Fergal]

What he said is perfectly sound and true.

What is wrong is your understanding of the word ‘caricature’.

A caricature is any imitation or copy so distorted or inferior as to be ludicrous.

Now read it again! See? It makes perfect sense.

Here’s a caricature of …

 

[ryanmac]

So you’re saying he said:

Intellectual   Faith                      
        \     /
         \   /
          \ /
       Fake Church (or bad copy)
          / \
         /   \
        /     \
Arrogance      Humility

Kind of like Father Herman Bernard Kramer, in The Book of Destiny: (pp. 223-224)

When Luther propounded his heretical and immoral doctrine, the sky became as it were obscured by smoke. It spread very rapidly over some regions of the earth, and it brought forth princes and kings who were eager to despoil the Church of her possessions. They compelled the people of their domains and in the territories robbed from the Church to accept the doctrines of Luther. The proponents of Protestantism made false translations of the Bible and misled the people into their errors by apparently proving from the ‘Bible’ (their own translations) the correctness of their doctrines. It was all deceit, lying and hypocrisy. Bad and weak, lax and lukewarm, indifferent and non-practicing Catholics and those who had neglected to get thorough instruction were thus misled; and these, seeing the Catholic Church now through this smoke of error from the abyss and beholding a distorted caricature of the true Church, began both to fear and hate her.

 

[Fergal]

With your diagram no, but with the example cited, yes!. Now I see where His Holiness got the idea!!

Let’s have another look at the statement in question:

"Where faith becomes intellectualism and humility turns to arrogance, there we find a caricature of the true Church."

Becomes the following:

Where faith becomes intellectualism and humility turns to arrogance, there we find a distorted image of the true Church.

Intellectualism and arrogance in matters of Faith disfigure what is the True Church.

By the way i like His Holiness’s use of the words “True Church”

 

[ryanmac]

Thanks. This helps.

I’ll read through Galatians today and see if anything else pops up.