gpmj12
Active member
Pope Francis gives the Priests of Rome his praises and gratitude for their hidden goods but again touches on the insidiousness of clericalism which he has constantly identified as a root problem in the Church today… even for lay people.
“Let us, therefore, remain vigilant towards clericalism,” is Pope Francis’ exhortation. Clericalism “can affect everyone, even lay people and pastoral workers: one can in fact assume ‘a clerical spirit’ in carrying out ministries and charisms, living out one’s calling in an elitist manner, closing oneself within one’s own group and erecting walls towards the outside, developing possessive bonds towards roles in the community, cultivating arrogant and boastful attitudes towards others.”
The “symptoms” are then evident: “complaining”, “negativity”, “chronic dissatisfaction with what is wrong”, “irony that becomes cynicism.”
“Thus,” the Pope writes, “one becomes absorbed in the climate of criticism and anger that one breathes around, instead of being the kind of people who, with evangelical simplicity and meekness, with kindness and respect, help their brothers and sisters to come out of the quicksand of intolerance.”
## “Do not be discouraged!”
So many “frailties”, so many “inadequacies”… But “let us not be discouraged!” is the Pope’s word of encouragement.
“Let us roll up our sleeves and let us bend our knees (you who can!): let us pray to the Spirit for one another, let us ask Him to help us not to fall, in personal life or in pastoral action, into that religious appearance full of so many things but devoid of God, so as not to be functionaries of the sacred, but passionate heralds of the Gospel, not ‘clerics of State’, but pastors of the people.”
“Let us, therefore, remain vigilant towards clericalism,” is Pope Francis’ exhortation. Clericalism “can affect everyone, even lay people and pastoral workers: one can in fact assume ‘a clerical spirit’ in carrying out ministries and charisms, living out one’s calling in an elitist manner, closing oneself within one’s own group and erecting walls towards the outside, developing possessive bonds towards roles in the community, cultivating arrogant and boastful attitudes towards others.”
The “symptoms” are then evident: “complaining”, “negativity”, “chronic dissatisfaction with what is wrong”, “irony that becomes cynicism.”
“Thus,” the Pope writes, “one becomes absorbed in the climate of criticism and anger that one breathes around, instead of being the kind of people who, with evangelical simplicity and meekness, with kindness and respect, help their brothers and sisters to come out of the quicksand of intolerance.”
## “Do not be discouraged!”
So many “frailties”, so many “inadequacies”… But “let us not be discouraged!” is the Pope’s word of encouragement.
“Let us roll up our sleeves and let us bend our knees (you who can!): let us pray to the Spirit for one another, let us ask Him to help us not to fall, in personal life or in pastoral action, into that religious appearance full of so many things but devoid of God, so as not to be functionaries of the sacred, but passionate heralds of the Gospel, not ‘clerics of State’, but pastors of the people.”