Pope Francis:
'The Church is a love story'
April 24, 2013
The Church is not a bureaucratic organization, but a love story. This was Pope Francis's message during Wednesday’s Mass in the Chapel of the Casa Santa Marta.
Attending the Mass this morning were employees of the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly called the Vatican bank. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, concelebrated Mass with the Holy Father.
The day’s readings tell the story of the growth of the first Christian community. In his homily, the Pope warned against being tempted to make "deals" simply to get "more partners in this enterprise."
Instead, he said, “the road that Jesus willed for His Church is otherwise: the way of difficulties, the way of the Cross, the way of persecution . . . And this makes us wonder: what is this Church? Because it seems it is not a human enterprise"...
The Church, he said, is "something else." The disciples do not make the Church – they are the messengers sent by Jesus. And Christ was sent by the Father: “The Church begins there,” he said, “in the heart of the Father, who had this idea . . . of love. So this love story began, a story that has gone on for so long, and is not yet ended. We, the women and men of the Church, we are in the middle of a love story: each of us is a link in this chain of love. And if we do not understand this, we have understood nothing of what the Church is..."
The rest of the Vatican Radio English service's account of this morning's homily can be read here:
en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/04/24/pope_francis:_church_is_in_a_love_story/en...
What it does not quote is something highlighted in the Italian service's account, in my translation, as follows:
And when the Church wants to boast of its numbers and creates organizations, creates offices and becomes somewhat bureaucratic, the Church loses her principal substance and risks turning herself into an NGO*. The Church is not an NGO. It is a story of love... But there are those from the IOR - excuse me, eh? - all this is necessary, offices are necessary, OK? [he uses the colloquial Italian phrase "eh, va be?", which I've translated to 'OK'?. But they are necessary to a certain point - as a help to this story of love. And when the organization takes the first place, love is forgotten, and the Church, poor thing, becomes an NGO. This is not the way!"
[NGO is the horrible UN term for 'non-governmental organizations', usually referring to bleeding-heart liberal groups, as opposed to 'government organizations' considered to be inherently evil by nature.]
Subsequently, the Pope's reference to the IOR was scrubbed out of the RV story about this morning's homily, and not mentioned at all in the story appearing in tomorrow's issue of the OR.
Even at this early date, six weeks into his Pontificate, Pope Francis will already be remembered in history as the Pope who has improvised his public discourses the most, since he has improvised all the homilies he has given during the daily Masses he has celebrated at Domus Santa Martha since March 14, 2013.
Although Vatican Radio and L'Osservatore Romano have faithfully reported these homilies everyday, no transcripts have been issued, and they do not appear on the Vatican website's detailed documentation of Pope Francis's activities and pronouncements, since, presumably, the daily Masses at Santa Martha are not considered 'official' events.
But one expects an anthology soon (Part 1 of what will certainly be a spectacularly popular series) from the Vatican publishing house that will put together edited transcripts of the homilies.
Edited, not necessarily because the Pope may have said anything theologically wrong - which is the main reason Popes have not extemporized their homilies (even Benedict XVI always spoke his homilies from a pre-written text, even if he occasionally extemporized from the text), but because the Vatican 'editors' may decide to 'scrub' the transcripts of anything that might be taken amiss. As they sought, execrably, to 'edit' what Benedict XVI said about AIDS and condoms during his inflight Q&A with newsmen in March 2009 enroute to Cameroon, after the actual transcripts had already been released the day before by journalists who were travelling with the Pope.
Objectively, there is nothing wrong with Pope Francis making the reference to the IOR the way he was quoted this morning - especially since IOR employees made up most of today's congregation. But contextually, one might say it is at least questionable that the Pope should cite the IOR as an example of what he considers an NGO-like organization.
Not just because he is singling out a specific Vatican office for public censure at an inappropriate occasion, but because the IOR has seemed to be aboveboard in the past two years that it has been under the close scrutiny of the Moneyval inspectors. Which is not to say that the IOR is above criticism - it obviously has its problems. But why should its rank=and-file have to be censured in public by the Pope (even if he employed some humor to temper what he went on to say). As if they were responsible for whatever problems the IOR has, not the IOR's management which has always been overseen by a cardinals' commission!
But there is a larger comment to be made about this morning's homily, whose message, as synthesized by the RV headline is "The church is a love story, not a bureaucratic organization". A conviction expressed over and over and in so many ways by Benedict XVI (and I am sure, without having to research it, by all his modern predecessors as well).
My main concern is that the cardinals who chose Pope Francis - according to all the statements made by those of them who spoke and have been speaking freely to the media - have made it appear that the main problem confronting the Church (as Benedict XVI left it) is the Vatican bureaucracy. Not that they are wrong to criticize an inefficient, incompetent and even, perhaps, 'corrupt' Church bureaucracy, but that they made it appear as if reforming the Curia was the main problem of the Church - not the crisis of faith.
The 'fresh air' and 'springtime' they all praise today refers to their conviction that Francis is the 'air freshener', the magic spray, whose very breath can rid the Church of all those problems 'left behind by Benedict XVI'. And does any of them list the crisis of the faith as one of those problems? NO - they cite the Curia, Vatileaks, and pedophile priests. Ignoring not just the substantial work Benedict XVI did about these issues but also the bedrock of his Petrine ministry, of any Pope's ministry - confirming Catholics in their faith while upholding that faith against all challenges.
Unlike his electors, Pope Francis has spoken much more since his election about the essentials of the faith than he has about structural reforms, and has mentioned more than once, as Benedict XVI said every so often, that, in effect, the structure is not the problem but that every member of the Church, clergy and laity alive, must live the Christian message.
Another example of the Pope's sense of humor surfacing at these daily homilies came early in his homily at the Pauline Chapel on his name day, the feast of St. George, yesterday (from Vatican Radio's (translation):
The [first] reading today makes me think that the missionary expansion of the Church began precisely at a time of persecution, and these Christians went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, and proclaimed the Word. They had this apostolic fervor within them, and that is how the faith spread! Some, people of Cyprus and Cyrene - not these, but others who had become Christians - went to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks too. It was a further step.
And this is how the Church moved forward. Whose was this initiative to speak to the Greeks? This was not clear to anyone but the Jews. But ... it was the Holy Spirit, the One who prompted them ever forward ... But some in Jerusalem, when they heard this, became 'nervous and sent Barnabas on an "apostolic visitation": perhaps, with a little sense of humor we could say that this was the theological beginning of the [Congregation for the] Doctrine of the Faith: this apostolic visit by Barnabas. He saw, and he saw that things were going well.
The usual dissidents in the Church, like the LWCR types, may well cite this to say that Pope Francis mocks the idea of 'apostolic visitations' such as those ordered by Benedict XVI to the Maciel's organizations, to Ireland, and to the LCWR.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/04/2013 23:34]