During his homily for morning Mass Francis says that the words of Jesus “pass through our mind and go straight to the heart. Because Jesus seeks our conversion”, but there are those who “only want to implement what they understand with their minds of the Gospel”. “They are the great ideologues.” But “when ideology enters into our understanding of the Gospel, confusion ensues.”
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More from the homily given by Pope Francis:
"They are the ones who walk alone “on the path of duty”: it is the morality of those who claim to only realize what they understand of the Gospel with their minds. They are not “on the road to conversion, that conversion to which Jesus calls us.” "And these, on the road of duty, place everything on the shoulders of the faithful. Ideologues falsify the gospel. Every ideological interpretation, from wherever it originates - from one side or the other - is a falsification of the Gospel. And these ideologues - as we have seen in the history of the Church - end up being, becoming, intellectuals without talent, ethicists without goodness. And they do not speak of beauty, because they understand nothing. "
Today, I went to a wonderful conference at Boston College on the New Evangelization. The “
New Evangelization,” is outreach to baptized Catholics who have become distant from the faith. It can be a challenging mission, because these are people who either don’t care or have strong reasons for leaving the Church. Acknowledging the challenge, one of the speakers referenced this passage from Paul:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” - Galatians 5:22-23
His point was that if you’re not feeling like this, then it isn’t the Holy Spirit, and your not Evangelizing. I can’t think of a better test for determining whether our passion for the Gospel is based on the words of Jesus or on some ideologically falsified Gospel.
