Pope Francis to journalist's condom question: the problem is much bigger

[graciew]

It’s those key issues that are going to separate the sheep and goats. How did we treat our suffering fellow man? Did we help to relieve their suffering in a practical sense or did we preach law to them so they know why they are suffering?

Pope Francis seems determined to stop the train of thought that’s so focused on rules and to push us towards being non judgemental and going out to others in their need.

And did you notice ,Longing Soul ,that he said " I felt pain " ?
That was deep. Africa is a martyr he said or something close to that.
I thought of you and the exercises when I read it.

 

[Art321]

I think it’s avoiding the particular message of the Pope, to dismiss his lack of articulation as a mistake though. He said early on that we have to stop putting so much emphasis on abortion, contraception and gay marriage as being ‘signature sins’… and start focusing on the basics of the gospels like poverty and exclusion and judgement. He often says go read Evangelii Guadium or now Laudato si for the official Church teaching… but he continues to stay strictly in St Francis mode of just ‘being with’ people on the journey.

The Church is in an eschatological phase of theology now and you see the word popping up everywhere now in scripture studies and homilies. It’s basically the study of the end times. The last four things… death, judgement, heaven and hell. So those gospel verses that refer to those things are more urgently contemplated. Ones such as Matthew 25…

The Sheep and the Goats

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

It’s those key issues that are going to separate the sheep and goats. How did we treat our suffering fellow man? Did we help to relieve their suffering in a practical sense or did we preach law to them so they know why they are suffering?

Pope Francis seems determined to stop the train of thought that’s so focused on rules and to push us towards being non judgemental and going out to others in their need.

Yes, LongingSoul I do get what you are trying to say. And this is just my opinion so you may take it as you wish.

Without a doubt, I do believe that this is a set of priorities! We as the Church must work to help our fellow man as they continually suffer in many ways. Many lack the basic needs to even survive and we must be there to care for them in every way possible. We have great models such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta who helped the poorest of the poor in India, St. John Bosco of Turin, Italy who dedicated his life for the betterment and education of homeless children, and countless others. I myself could use improvement in this area, and I do believe we all can in one way or another to help the poor.

I don’t believe that we question this, and many Catholics happily promote this. Yet in an age of moral relativism that seems to have dominated the West, and perhaps the East as well in some places, proclaiming the Truth is needed now more than ever. I don’t think Catholics who stress on doing this are being judgmental at all, because the reason we care is because ultimately this is about our souls!

Proclaim the Good News! The news that God died for us simply out of Love! To care for our neighbors and each other through service, yet we must always be willing and to do so boldly to proclaim the Truth with clarity and mercy so that no one can claim ignorance; and so that we may all come to live in the Truth! Our ultimate goal is for Sainthood!

 

[Mongo]

We fight the big battles first; people are dying all around the place in Africa.

So in other words contraception doesn’t matter because as Jesus said you will always have the poor. We can abandon Catholic moral teaching because the utopia will never exist.

 

[LongingSoul]

Yes, LongingSoul I do get what you are trying to say. And this is just my opinion so you may take it as you wish.

Without a doubt, I do believe that this is a set of priorities! We as the Church must work to help our fellow man as they continually suffer in many ways. Many lack the basic needs to even survive and we must be there to care for them in every way possible. We have great models such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta who helped the poorest of the poor in India, St. John Bosco of Turin, Italy who dedicated his life for the betterment and education of homeless children, and countless others. I myself could use improvement in this area, and I do believe we all can in one way or another to help the poor.

I don’t believe that we question this, and many Catholics happily promote this. Yet in an age of moral relativism that seems to have dominated the West, and perhaps the East as well in some places, proclaiming the Truth is needed now more than ever. I don’t think Catholics who stress on doing this are being judgmental at all, because the reason we care is because ultimately this is about our souls!

Proclaim the Good News! The news that God died for us simply out of Love! To care for our neighbors and each other through service, yet we must always be willing and to do so boldly to proclaim the Truth with clarity and mercy so that no one can claim ignorance; and so that we may all come to live in the Truth! Our ultimate goal is for Sainthood!

I see lots of Catholics on websites proselyting, but you don’t really see many doing so in everyday life. Their conviction about teachings is nearly always in the form of exclusion, judging and gossiping in private. I see Pope Francis as urging us to give without religious conditions. The bible primarily teaches ‘doing’ not ‘saying’ and in fact there are fairly severe accusations against those who are into ‘saying’ without ‘doing’ enough… hypocrits. As a Catholic, I do personally feel that the pedophile Priests scandals and other financial scandals warrants a much greater effort of doing over saying in this day and age.

 

[LongingSoul]

And did you notice ,Longing Soul ,that he said " I felt pain " ?
That was deep. Africa is a martyr he said or something close to that.
I thought of you and the exercises when I read it.

Oh the exercises have definitely given me a lot of insight into this Jesuit Pope!

 

[Art321]

I see lots of Catholics on websites proselyting, but you don’t really see many doing so in everyday life. Their conviction about teachings is nearly always in the form of exclusion, judging and gossiping in private. I see Pope Francis as urging us to give without religious conditions. The bible primarily teaches ‘doing’ not ‘saying’ and in fact there are fairly severe accusations against those who are into ‘saying’ without ‘doing’ enough… hypocrits. As a Catholic, I do personally feel that the pedophile Priests scandals and other financial scandals warrants a much greater effort of doing over saying in this day and age.

Yes, it truly seems that this is going around a lot. In regards to CAF, there have been some harsh comments but certainly not all of them. Most of the posts regarding teachings are honest and firm posts, yet they are always seem done with clarity. It is sad that many would result to condemn people. The favorite phrase of CAF comes to mind to “hate the sin and love the sinner”! I do also agree that if you want someone to follow the Truth, lead by example! Harder to do but definitely worth it! After all, if the Saints could do it so can we!

 

[NovusFidem]

I really don’t think it was a mistake. Read what he said again, he meant to say what he said and we need to take his words to heart. People are dying over there every day of starvation, war and mistreatment by other humans, stopping that is a much higher priority than going into theological debates about condoms.

He did not need to get into theological debate, but he could at least have directed the journalist to Church teaching:

"That has been discussed already, go Google it. Here are a series of issues you guys never ask me, but should reads from a big list of Issues the secular media doesn’t care about, but that are more pressing than worrying about what Catholics think of sexual morality".

As was noticed by many secular media, he sounded even irritated at the question.

From the comments section, this sums up my confusion with his words: “It’s not necessary for all wrongs to be righted for Catholics to behave properly with regards to being open to life.”

So in other words contraception doesn’t matter because as Jesus said you will always have the poor. We can abandon Catholic moral teaching because the utopia will never exist.

This. This is what one can understand from the sort of dismissal the Pope gave to that question. As I said, I KNOW that’s not what the Pope meant to say, which is why I said my problem is with his wording, not with his heart. He could have worded it much better than that.

 

[mikekle]

Aren’t they dying of AIDS as well?

I don’t think that, to the secularized world and specially to Africans, HIV and AIDS are a minor issue. They have malnutrition? Yes, but HIV spread is a truly big issue over there. (and they often blame the Church for being against condom use)

Here on the West, people with HIV can live rather well. We have medicine and treatment, and not many transmissible diseases (by water or air) to worry about. But in Africa? With malaria, malnutrition, yellow fever, and so many intestinal parasites? An infection by HIV quickly develops into AIDS, and quickly kills a person.

So, we either change the teaching, or explain the alternative. Do we have an alternative to condoms? Yep, a great one in fact: chastity. Why didn’t the Pope focus on it? Why didn’t he just answer the journalist with a yes or no?

Thats easy, because teaching chastity, is not popular, especially in the US, that would not go over very well with the mainstream, seems to me, the Pope does all he can to avoid ‘stirring things up’, by using very vague answers or getting around the question altogether, same thing happened during his US visit, with the Kim Davis issue, he wouldnt really say whether he supported her or not, even the vatican was vague when asked about it.

You have to ask yourself, how could the leader of the catholic church come to probably the most sinful nation on the planet, visit all kinds of places, and a great majority of the people (even the most secular, non-religious folks) have no ‘beefs’ with anything he did or said? (when in reality, it should be the complete opposite), Its easy, because he didnt do or say anything they took to be offensive, when you only respond vaguely or allude to things in your answers, its very easy to get everyone to suddenly love and agree with you, as no matter what you believe to be true, the response can be interpreted in a number of ways.

This is sort of like needle exchange programs, they are great for keeping people alive and preventing the spread of disease, but in some peoples opinion, they encourage the use of drugs, so the question becomes, do we care more about stopping drug use or are we concerned with a possible disease outbreak? Have to look at the bigger picture imo.

 

[NovusFidem]

Thats easy, because teaching chastity, is not popular, especially in the US, that would not go over very well with the mainstream, seems to me, the Pope does all he can to avoid ‘stirring things up’, by using very vague answers or getting around the question altogether, same thing happened during his US visit, with the Kim Davis issue, he wouldnt really say whether he supported her or not, even the vatican was vague when asked about it.

That’s not it at all. The Pope has no qualms about stating the harsh truth - he stands with the Catholic Church on all polemic issues we currently have (same-sex unions, abortion, remarriage, etc). The difference in his speech, however, is that he wants to focus on the good things of people, instead of speaking about the bad things they do. He wants us to be merciful, so that even the remarried, homosexuals, and everyone else WE are prejudiced against, could be welcomed back into the Church.

He is so good in ‘stirring things up’ that many Catholics feel offended when he is caring towards those who live in sin. (you know, like Jesus was)

I repeat: I trust the Pope’s heart on this issue; I just think he could have worded it better. I don’t care that he didn’t want to talk about contraception (again), I just would like him to have been **candid **(straightforward, frank, direct, plain-spoken, forthright) towards that journalist by answering his question, either with a yes or no, or by simply stating “I don’t want to discuss that again.” Instead, he used his question to talk about other issues…