Vatican City, Sep 14, 2017 / 12:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis met with new bishops at the end of their training course at the Vatican, reminding them to be both humble in their work and open to better ways of evangelizing other than just “the way it’s always been.”
“Discernment is a remedy for the immobility of ‘it has always been so’ or ‘we take time,’” the Pope said Sept. 14.
“It’s a creative process that is not limited to the application of methods. It is an antidote against rigidity, because the same solutions are not good everywhere. Do not be imprisoned by the nostalgia of having only one answer to apply in all cases.”
He continued, warning that to have an easy, one-size-fits-all answer might soothe our performance anxiety, but it threatens to make our lives “dried up.”
Pope Francis spoke in an audience with participants in the annual training course for new bishops held in Rome and organized by the Congregation of Bishops and the Congregation of Eastern Churches.
He reminded them how important it is that they have humility, especially for the work of the Holy Spirit.
“Remember that God was already present in your dioceses when you arrived and will still be there when you are gone,” he said.
“And, in the end, we will all be measured not on the accounting of our works but on the growth of God’s work in the heart of the flock that we keep in the name of the ‘Shepherd and keeper of our souls’ (cf. 1 Pt. 2:25).”
Discernment, the Pope continued, requires humility and obedience. “Humility with regard to your own projects.”
“Obedience with regard to the Gospel, the ultimate standard; to the Magisterium, who guards it; to the norms of the universal Church, which serve it; and to the concrete situation of people,” who are looking to draw from the Church what will be most fruitful to their salvation,” he said.
In achieving this, Francis encouraged the bishops to “cultivate an attitude of listening, growing in the freedom to give up your point of view (when it is partial and inadequate), to assume that of God.”
Listening is necessary, because the bishop’s discernment is always a community action, he said, it does not disregard “the richness of the opinion of his priests and deacons, of the People of God, and of all those who can offer him a useful contribution” – even those which are more concrete than formal.
Discernment is a gift of the Spirit to our Church, the Pope noted. So although bishops may have many personal responsibilities in their job, they are also called to live their own discernment “of Pastor as a member of the People of God, or in ever-ecclesial dynamics, at the service of the koinonìa,” the Christian community.
“The bishop is not the self-sufficient ‘father’ and not even the frightened and isolated ‘Lone shepherd.’”
This is why the bishop must be aware of the great gift, the “Spiritus Principalis” entrusted to him at his ordination, the Pope said.
It is perhaps for this reason that the Church, in the episcopal consecration prayer, derived an expression from the Miserere in which the person praying, after exposing his failure, implores the Spirit to grant him immediate and spontaneous generosity in obedience to God, “so fundamental to those who lead a community.”
“Discernment, therefore, is born in the heart and mind of the bishop through his prayer when he meets people and situations entrusted to him with the Divine Word pronounced by the Spirit,” he said.
It is in the intimacy of prayer that a bishop grows his inner freedom to make good decisions, both in ecclesial and personal matters. “Only in the silence of prayer can one learn the voice of God, perceive the traces of his language, access his truth.”
He explained that bishops and leaders in the church must strive to grow in the kind of discernment which dialogues with the faithful “in a patient and courageous accompanying process.”
Then it can “mature the capacity of each – faithful, families, priests, communities, and societies – all called to advance in the freedom to choose and accomplish the good that God wants.”
Because discernment isn’t just for the wise, clear-sighted, or perfect, he said. God often shows himself to the most humble, in fact.
So true discernment, he continued, is an open and necessary process. It’s not about set formulas or repetition. “The Shepherd is called to make available to the flock the grace of the Spirit, who knows how to penetrate the folds of the real and to take account of its nuances to reveal what God wants to achieve at all times.”
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An “official visit” between abortion-defender, gender-theory-promoter and head-of-state Joe Biden–and the pope. Great!
We are reminded of equally primitive times when another barbarian and cultural leader, Attila, was met by Pope Leo I in A.D. 452, in the River Mincio near Mantua, in an earlier official visit of sorts. And for some reason it was Attila who decided to reverse course, and not to sack Rome or violate the population.
It is recorded that Pope Leo came in grand procession, including a monstrance containing the Real Presence. “A procession of priests and monks…approached. It was being led by an old man with a white beard, dressed in white, upon a white steed.”
How might Catholicism be self-understood–or, instead, be compartmentalized and redefined–by the current visit? Will Eucharistic coherence be dissolved into the modernday monologue called dialogue? No record of Pope Leo giving or enabling Communion to Attila.
A non-event if ever there was one.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wasn’t going to act – but bluster only – before Pope Francis meets Biden and certainly won’t act subsequently.
Pelosi vindicated.
Meanwhile, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ continues to be received in any manner under the guise of indifferent bishops…1Cor. 11:27 be damned.
Liberal meets Liberal.
Pope Francis should be warned ahead of time That all Catholic Art,Icons,Statues,Cross’s and other images of the faithful. Be covered up or removed to the basement at wherever they meet.Nothing has changed since May 27th,2009 When Father Jenkins at Notre Dame set the templet on how Catholics behave when “The One We’ve Been Waiting For” enters the room.Obama/Biden Evil rolls on unabated.It’s how they roll.
If Pope Francis doesn’t talk to Biden about his sanctioning and funding the murders of the unborn, the Catholic Church is done. Jesus promised to be with us to the end of the age, and this will either signify that end or will confirm that Jesus isn’t with the Church. Please, God, even a Jesuit could understand the teaching Your Son gave us.
I can now hear the lamentations – or the silence – of the extremist rightist Catholics who feel they are the only Catholics and President Biden and Pope Francis are not.
“Extremist rightist Catholics”…oh you must be referring to those who are normal and trying to survive your Woke World.
Who are these ‘extremist rightist Catholics’ you claim in comments but don’t actually identify?
Is it extreme to demand that the Catholic president avoid the Holy Eucharist when he not only talks but uses his power to clearly destroy the Catholic Church’s infallible – by the Ordinary Magisterium-teachings on morality? Either the Church has the objective truth or it doesn’t. What of the grave sin of Scandal???
Pope Francis refuses clarity -and is proud of it- in not clarifying Church doctrine on morality. Confirmation of this is the self-determination of the Church in Germany as the most extreme example.
How about asking the Pope to be a Pope as understood in the Catechism of the Catholic Church?
You apparently have no idea how silly that is.
How sad.
Birds of a feather…
Optics are understood by CNA’s Gagliarducci, why his sources are necessarily secondary informants on both sides. Vatican and Washington seek to avoid an embarrassing, hypersuspect nullification of such a grand political religious encounter. Leo the Great and Attila nicely analogized by Beaulieu inspire added comment. How do they match Biden and Francis? Perhaps an answer might start with faithful Pope Francis devotees both modernist and ultramontanist, Pope Saint Francis I meets Emperor Constantine. For the devilish traditionalist [the Pope said so] devilishly rigid ideologue [similarly] we might imagine something similarly foolish, Leon Trotsky meets Martin Luther. Realistically, for those who love the Church we want, pray for a different outcome. Pope Francis today met President Biden with remarkably wonderful results. In a joint announcement to the world Francis first said due to the very favorable response to his recent comments condemning the sins of abortion and euthanasia, he was compelled by the Holy Spirit to urge the President to reconsider his in effect duplicitous position on the practice of Catholicism and political expediency. After long discussion on the primacy of revealed truth compared to human law, that the inviolable sanctity of human life, a religious issue that is primarily a natural law first principle, and that the right to life is therefore a first principle justice issue and the basis of any and all jurisprudence – the President changed his previous views and agreed with the Pontiff assuring him he would no longer promote or advance abortion, euthanasia, and also transexuality [now pansexuality] since human life is sacred and inviolable. As ordained by God.
In yet another historic meeting, St. Francis confronted the Sultan Malek al-Kamil at Damietta on the Nile Delta, then under siege by an army of the Fifth Crusade. His message was the peace of Christ, more than the halfway house of humanistic fraternity…
In the Paradiso, Canto XI, Dante says that St. Francis actually sought martyrdom and, that failing this, he left. In the mid thirteenth century, fearful of the Mogul invasions, other Franciscans made their way to Mongolia in unsuccessful efforts to convert the Khan, and with the remote possibility of even joining in an alliance against Islam. One of these (John of Pian de Carpine, 1180?-1252) had been a companion of St. Francis (See Daniel Boorstin, “The Discoverers,” 1983).
But today, with the meetings of the perennial Catholic Church with Islam, China, and now the banner-carrier puppet for the abortion culture and gender theory—-already we have the betrayal of China, politic “pluralism” with Islam, and amnesiac sleep-walking with what’s left of the West.
How will any focus on such historic catastrophes—-also “seeds of truth”!—-survive the continental and yet internally fragmented note-taking of the Synod on Synodality (“walking together”)—-if the successor of the Apostles (!) remain cast only or “primarily as facilitators”?
Fraud meets fraud.
How does a Pope confront an evil ruler who was not even elected legitimately and supports the murder of babies in the womb? We shall see, and it will tell us everything we need to know about Francis.
They are bound at the ideological hip. Tragically what is about to be boldly illustrated before our eyes will only serve to confirm what we already know. Shamelessness reigns.
I already know everything that I need to know about Francis. There’s enough history already.
The leftists are trying to use this exposure to the Pope to prove how much of a faithful Catholic Biden really is. When he is NOT. It would be smart of some Cardinal to clue in the Pope to this reality. They seek to get his approval in even a tacit way in order to move on along their own disordered agenda. This is not unlike the VERY poor deal the Vatican made with the rulers of China. This has benefited the Chinese church not at all. THIS visit will only do more damage to the Church in the US. Its a faint hope that maybe the Pope will tell Biden in no uncertain terms to shape up in regards to abortion. But I would not make any bets on that happening.
Transcript of the secret Biden – Francis Social Justice Warrior meeting:
“C’mon man! I’ve already pushed the most liberal abortion agenda, threw our borders wide open, and committed scandal in receiving the Eucharist. What more do you want?”
Hoping for an on-spot excommunication. The “why” list is really long.
I am certainly glad I embraced Catholicism before reading some of these responses to this article. Sad