James
Pope Francis the Liberal? Pope Francis the Bold Reformer? Pope Francis the Anti-Benedict? Pope Francis of ‘Hope and Change’, you say? Hold on.
The Christian is not a baptized who receives baptism and then goes on his way. The first fruit of Baptism is to make you belong to the Church, the People of God. You cannot understand a Christian without the Church. This is why the great Paul VI said that it is an absurd dichotomy to love Christ without the Church, to listen to Christ but not the Church, to be with Christ at the margins of the Church. It’s not possible. It is an absurd dichotomy. We receive the Gospel message in the Church and we carry out our holiness in the Church, our path in the Church. The other is a fantasy, or, as he said, an absurd dichotomy. …
Fidelity to the Church, fidelity to its teaching; fidelity to the Creed; fidelity to the doctrine, safeguarding this doctrine. Humility and fidelity. Even Paul VI reminded us that we receive the message of the Gospel as a gift and we need to transmit it as a gift, but not as a something of ours: it is a gift that we received. And be faithful in this transmission . Because we have received and we have to gift a Gospel that is not ours, that is Jesus’, and we must not – he would say – become masters of the Gospel, masters of the doctrine we have received, to use it as we please. ~Franciscum, January 30, 2014
While citing Paul VI, Francis sounds a lot like Benedict XVI. Of course, you will NOT read this remarkable passage in the TIME/Rolling Stone/The Advocate/Associated Press stories on Pope Francis. Liberals are all about becoming “masters of the Gospel” and “masters of doctrine”, and they would have to reject every word of Francis’ homily. So, while mainstream media pooh-bahs are busy fabricating an embarrassingly deficient narrative about their Pope Francis, this quote will be conveniently ignored. We’ll keep it handy.