Monday, July 02, 2018

Doubts

Someone I know uses the following as part of his/her email signature:
“If one has the answers to all the questions – that is the proof
that God is not with him. 
It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself.
The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always
left room for doubt.”
The person quoted is Pope Francis. The source is America, the dissident Jesuit magazine, from 2013.

This is the same Pope who appears to pay no attention to any doubts expressed about his own off-the-cuff verbal meanderings, nor to repeated requests for clarification of his vague statements in Amoris Laetitia, even when those with questions are Cardinals of the Church who have submitted their dubia officially to him as Canon law allows. Not even the courtesy of a genuine reply. Just a remark, months later, that the interpretation formulated by a group of South American bishops was the correct one, without even mentioning the patiently doubting Cardinals.

This is the same Pope who attacks as "rigid" those who wish to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, or who take Catholic morality seriously enough to put up a real struggle with temptation (and encourage others to do the same). No room for their doubts about the shabby irreverence of contemporary Catholic worship. C'mon, people, have the right doubts, and then everything will be cool!

Did "the great leaders of the people of God, like Moses," really leave much room for doubt? When was that exactly, Your Holiness? I seem to recall that Moses was not leaving much room for doubt when he came down from Sinai and found that "the people of God" had turned to idolatry and vice while he was away receiving the Ten Commandments. I seem to recall something about throwing down the stone tablets in fury. Did Jesus Himself leave tons of wiggle room when He said, "Apart from me, you can do nothing?" Or "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life?" (No ambiguous sentences seeming to leave the door open to worthwhile things that Astarte or Isis or Aphrodite might have to offer the human race in His place.)

Francis here gives us another round of the same game that we've become so familiar with since 2013: invent a straw man and then revel in destroying it. After all, just who was claiming to have all the answers, relying on his own authority rather than on the Faith as it has been passed down to us?