A BBC report quotes Francis as telling his power-structure cardinals at Mass in the Sistine Chapel:
"I would like all of us ... to have the courage to walk in the presence of God.""The courage" -- that's hopeful.
Likely? Who knows? But hopeful at the moment.
And further:
"If we do not confess to Christ, what would we be?"Like the ad for Miller Lite beer -- "Tastes great. Less filling" -- any statement made in a corporate or political setting can be revised later to conform to self-serving, conniving and unfulfilled ends, but in the meantime....
I suppose that if such pronouncements catch the eye of a non-Catholic like me, it suggests how far I (and others) imagine the church has strayed from any honest message it may actually have.
I have discovered that hope is intoxicating and thus alluring, attractive, easy.
ReplyDeleteWho does not like to have their emotions reeled as high as a kite. Faith, devotion, love, truer banners you could not hope to find to rally the heart/mind.
The problem of course, is if these values are used instead as tools for manipulation in ANY circumstance/religion -- but nevertheless these are the facts, and I suspect many people more than not would prefer these emotions and themes than touching the earth beneath our feet.
I have been reading some Merton and am thoroughly enjoying myself: here is one such quote:
“The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.”
― Thomas Merton, The seven storey mountain