Pope Francis did it again!
While so many people on the internet are railing against Pope Francis, calling him evil, I'm not one of them. I think he is leading the Church more like Jesus every day. He's speaking the truth to those who need to hear it.
He popped into the synod (that gathering of Church people (including laypeople) from around the world) and made a "rare speech" to those gathered. Boy did he have something to say. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from his speech:
"I explain it this way: 'When you want to know 'what' Holy Mother Church believes, go to the magisterium, because it is in charge of teaching it to you, but when you want to know 'how' the Church believes, go to the faithful people,"
"it is women who know how to hope, know how to discover the resources of the church and of the faithful people, who take risks beyond the limit, perhaps with fear but courageously."
"When ministers overstep in their service and mistreat the people of God, they disfigure the face of the church with chauvanistic and dictatorial attitudes,"
"Clericalism is a whip, it is a scourge, it is a form of worldliness that defiles and damages the face of the Lord's bride . . . It enslaves God's holy and faithful people."
"Pope Francis described as "a scandal" the scene of young priests going in to ecclesiastical tailor shops in Rome "trying on cassocks and hats or albs with lace."
The above quotes are from an article on the USCCB's website titled, "Listen to, trust the lay faithful, pope tells synod members"
No wonder so many people do not like Pope Francis--he really tells it like it is. For those who are ingrained in their own biases, he really calls them out, convicting them.
The articles coming out about this synod have been very interesting. But don't be thinking there are sides to be taken here, as Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe pointed out:
"When we go home, people will ask, 'Did you fight for our side? Did you oppose those unenlightened other people? . . . We shall need to be profoundly prayerful to resist the temptation to succumb to this party-political way of thinking,' he said. 'That would be to fall back into the sterile, barren language of much of our society. It is not the synodal way,' which is 'organic and ecological rather than competitive.'" (USCCB - "As Synod Winds Down, Members Urged to Sow Patience")
As was mentioned in another article, some people will fear that change will come from this gathering, and some people will fear that nothing will change.
As the synod will close in a few days, the leaders will return to their dioceses and take 11 months to digest all that took place here over this past month. They will spend time in prayerful discernment until they meet against next October.
Please keep them in your prayers.
Janet Cassidy
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