Oh Friday, How I Love Thee. Or, at least, feel a sort of vague affection for thee for the week is finally over and the last push to Sunday is upon us.
I have finally dispatched that thing about Pope Francis that I was writing. It’s not really about the Holy Father. It’s about the document—Fiducia Supplicans—(Boy, Grammarly does not like that second word). As I rounded the final corner and was double-checking everything, I found more things to be unhappy about. Like this bit:
25. The Church, moreover, must shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes, especially when they lead to “a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.” Thus, when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection.
The first time I wrote about this I got hung up on the line “exhaustive moral analysis” without paying too much attention to the whole paragraph. There are a lot of things to object to in this instruction. Let’s look at a few of them and see if we can get all the way to seven.
One
Why must the church “shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes?” The word “scheme” is vraiment de trop. Most of the people I know who have been limping along through the Christian life very much want “pastoral praxis” to rest on the “fixed nature” of doctrine. That’s really the entire point. Their lives are in chaos. They don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. They long to rest in the knowledge of the truth that God never changes, that his word is certain, that he doesn’t invent “schemes” to make their lives inexplicably harder but that every difficult thing that happens is for a good reason that they might not be able to know in the moment, but that will one day be shown to them. The Lord, after all, disciplines those whom he loves. The fixed nature of doctrine is a feature, not a bug, something to rejoice in not shy away from.
Two
The next part of the line, “especially when they lead to a ‘narcissistic and authoritative elitism’ is taken from something Francis said in 2013. I don’t know if it was that far back, but at some point in the last ten years, I read a percipient analysis about Pope Francis (I wish I could find it but I can’t remember the title nor who it was by) making the good and obvious point that good shepherds don’t beat their sheep while cozying up and making excuses for the enemies of the flock of God. A shepherd might have to be firm—disciplining the sheep, for example, when they go astray, or warning them with a commanding voice when they are near danger—but they are not harsh. A bad shepherd is someone who coddles the wolves while scolding the sheep. This “narcissistic and authoritative elitism” line strikes me as just that sort of bad shepherding technique. There are a lot of narcissists and elitist scolds out there, but they aren’t usually faithful churchgoers who are limping along, doing their best to obey what the church requires. Priests who are trying to faithfully fulfill their vocation to serve God’s people are not the problem. The problem is people like James Martin who, out of sheer narcissistic elitism, undermine the gospel for their own gain. Those people lie and say they care about the sheep, but observe how they are always preaching a gospel that aligns, almost perfectly, with whatever the world happens to love at any given moment—like sexual immorality in this particular case.
Three
The quote of Francis in 2013 continues: “whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.”
I mean, again, there’s no need to adopt this tone. Most pastors don’t have a moment, given the sheer mountain of pastoral and sacramental work they face on an average week, to analyze or classify or inspect or verify. But honestly, given the total degeneracy of our society, it would be nice if they had a little bit of time to dig around in people’s spiritual lives. There is none righteous, no not even a solitary one, and it is only the light of the truth that can bring healing. So it is great when someone like a pastor or mature elder in the faith can say something like, “Hey, I see you’re living with your girlfriend and yet you continually present yourself for communion as if there’s nothing wrong. Why don’t you come see me this week and I’ll clue you in about how dangerous that is.” No one has to be a jerk about it, but it should still be done. What I’m trying to say is, “the door of grace” is literally pried open by the conviction of sin. When you skip the conviction of sin, you’re not opening the door of grace, you’re opening some other door that might look cozy and comfortable, but will not bring you to eternal life.
Four
The other problem is the question of “evangelizing.” One might have thought that His Holiness would have had occasion to contemplate the dumpster fire of the protestant seeker-sensitive movement and, after shuddering, backed away with all speed. To use “evangelism” as an excuse to avoid telling people the truth is a terrible idea. For, the good news of the gospel includes letting people know that they will be separated from the Lord forever if they don’t turn away from their sin and fling themselves onto his mercy. That’s what evangelism is. And yet Pope Francis uses expressions like “God’s unconditional love” refusing to admit that there are some serious conditions for receiving God’s love—like acknowledging and confessing as sin the sin that otherwise separates you from him forever.
Five
That, then, was the context surrounding the part I reacted to before. Just to remind ourselves, it goes like this:
Thus, when people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it. For, those seeking a blessing should not be required to have prior moral perfection.
I’d just like to see where it says anywhere in any Christian literature that any person seeking a blessing has to have “prior moral perfection.” I just haven’t heard of that, though I haven’t read everything that’s ever been written, of course. I’m more familiar with the writers who spend a lot of time trying to deal with the question of sin. Everyone knows that sinners are gonna sin, which is another way of saying that they don’t have any current or prior moral perfection. Of course those sinners should come for a blessing, seeking God’s favor and goodness toward them, just to let my Anglican sensibilities show. For His Holiness to express his thoughts in this way amounts to constructing a little theological straw person and then blowing it away in the hot wind of “popular” forms of piety. The only person who is impressed is James Martin.
Six
As a bonus, I am bothered by the way the Holy Father expresses himself in this bit:
So we are more important to God than all the sins we can commit because he is father, he is mother, he is pure love, he has blessed us forever. And he will never stop blessing us.
I don’t want to be one of those dreadful elite narcissists, but, while I appreciate the truth that God goes to the ends of the earth, and into the depths of the sea, and spares not even his only Son, whom he loves, to redeem the sinner from his sin, I don’t love how Francis constantly places the human person at the center of the equation. It reminds me of the way so many protestant people go on about how “worthy” of love they are, while at the same time neglecting to mention the Day of the Lord, that moment when God absorbed his own wrath against them to set them free. Yes, you are important to God—look at the Cross—but you are not more important than the sins you commit—look at the Cross.
Seven
For a round-up of writers far more adept at dealing with what Pope Francis has wrought upon the Church, here is Hans Boersma, here is Carl Trueman, and here is Cardinal Muller. And, for a little bit of pure ex-Anglican Cope, here is Gavin Ashenden.
So anyway, have a nice day! And Happy Epiphany tomorrow and all that.
I think of all the poor folks who swam the Tiber for the perceived safety of what they considered the Catholic Church’s “fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes,” only to be betrayed by a duplicitous pontiff introducing quicksand in the place of solid footing. Which just highlights the vulnerability of the papal system.
One thing that has a "fixed nature" is rock; I wonder that Francis does not have imagination enough to extrapolate from the nature of rock to the nature of the church and her distinctives. If you're desperately in need of a fortress and are instead given a series of addresses in ever more derelict neighborhoods, that's no help at all.