Palermo, Italy, Sep 15, 2018 / 04:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- During a day trip to Sicily Saturday, Pope Francis told priests and religious to fight their vices and strive to live a consistent witness of morality.
“One cannot live a double morality: one for the people of God and another in their own home,” the pope told a group of priests, religious and seminarians in Palermo, Italy, Sept. 15.
“No, the witness is only one. The testimony of Jesus always belongs to him. And for his love [the priest] undertakes a daily battle against his vices and against all alienating worldliness.”
He referred to the room of Bl. Pino Puglisi, who was assassinated by the Mafia 25 years ago, saying it stands “in genuine simplicity. It is the eloquent sign of a life consecrated to the Lord, who does not seek consolations and glory from the world.”
People look for simplicity in priests and in consecrated men and women. He said: “People are shocked not when they see that the priest ‘slips,’ is a sinner, repents and goes on… People’s scandal is when they see worldly priests, with the spirit of the world.”
People are scandalized, he continued, when they see a priest who is like “an executive,” rather than a pastor. “And this puts it right in your head and in your heart: shepherds yes, executives no!”
In the meeting, the pope also discussed clericalism, stating that clericalism is to think the Church is “above the world,” when the Church is in fact “inside the world, to make it ferment, like leaven in the dough.”
“For this reason, dear brothers and sisters, every form of clericalism must be banned. It is one of the most difficult perversions to remove today, clericalism.”
He also warned against careerism, which he said is about power, and emphasized that priests and religious are meant to be people of service. To be a good witness, therefore, he said, “means fleeing every duplicity, that hypocrisy which is so closely linked to clericalism; to escape every duplicity of life, in the seminary, in religious life, in the priesthood.”
Francis was also critical of “pastoral projects,” which he said are often “pharaonic,” or extravagant, not simple. “We go to meet people,” he said, “with the simplicity of those who want to love them with Jesus in the heart… without riding the fashions of the moment.”
What have pastoral projects done? “Nothing!” he said. “Pastoral plans are necessary, but as a means, a means to help [those near us], preaching the Gospel, but in themselves they are not useful. The way of the encounter, of listening, of sharing is the way of the Church.”
He listed ways to grow the Church within the parish, such as helping young people at school, accompanying people as they discern vocations, meeting families and the sick, creating meeting places to pray and to learn. This is the “pastoral care” that brings fruit, he said.
Condemning gossip and division, saying they “are not sins that everyone does,” Francis added that “always the error must be distinguished from the one who commits it,” and people should be loved and treated as brothers and sisters. He pointed to the example of Don Pino, who welcomed everyone with an open heart, even criminals.
He also told priests that they are a man of God 24 hours a day, not only when wearing vestments, and that the liturgy is life for them, not just a ritual. “This is why it is fundamental to pray to the One we talk about, to nourish ourselves with the Word that we preach, to adore the Bread we consecrate, and do it every day,” he said.
“It demonstrates that the Church is a sacrament of salvation,” he said, “that is, a sign that indicates and an instrument that offers salvation to the world.”
Following his encounter with priests and religious at the cathedral, Pope Francis met with the young people of Palermo and the surrounding areas.
Asked a question about how to know God’s will for one’s life, he said it cannot be found by looking in a mirror or staying locked in one’s room, but “in relationship.”
God speaks “in the journey and in relationship with others. Do not close yourselves, confide in Him, entrust everything to Him, seek Him in prayer, seek Him in dialogue with others, seek Him always on the move, look for Him on the way,” he said.
“This is important: Jesus believes in you more than you believe in yourselves. Jesus loves you more than you love yourself. Seek him out of yourself, on the way: He awaits you.”
Doing this, you will hear the Lord’s invitation, he said. “Pray with your words: with what comes from your heart. It is the most beautiful prayer.”
At the end of the meeting, noting the probable presence of non-Catholics in the crowd, the pope forwent giving his usual apostolic blessing, instead saying an off-the-cuff prayer for blessing on all those present. “May the Lord God accompany all these young people on the journey and bless everyone,” he prayed.
[…]
The Vatican’s Response: “A day late and a dollar short.”
My advice to the Vatican: Don’t bother; the People of God are already on it.
The dollar short being: this was primarily an offence aimed against God; it was a Luciferian anti-liturgy.
In 2024 and of Paris we read: “…there should not be allusions ridiculing the religious convictions of many people.”
In 1938 and in Munich Chamberlain said it was ‘Peace for our time’ and Hitler said he had ‘No more territorial demands to make in Europe.”
At all levels civilization is up for grabs, and we delineate the limits to “freedom of expression.”
Yes, and “many” people is actually several billion people, which is not a small thing.
Kudos to Bishop Barron for getting on this without waiting for everybody else to go first.
True that!
I’m not sure how this letter can be characterized as coming “from the Vatican” — i.e., from the pope’s administration.
The story says that the signatories were “led by Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke,” who was expelled from his Vatican apartment and denied his Vatican paycheck by Bergoglio just this past November.
If the letter originated from the Vatican hierarchy, I hardly think that Cardinal Burke, who is viewed with such contempt by Bergoglio, would be among the signers.
brineyman, please take note that this piece emanated from CNA. For me, that explains all. If you peruse so many of the “news stories” of CNA, they pretty much all make reference in one fashion or another to “the Vatican” – as if the Catholic Church was synonymous with the Vatican.
Not the same letter, but TWO totally different letters (the first was an “open letter” on July 30, and the more recent was an email(!) from “the Holy See” as the home base of the Church but also a sovereign state like the nation-states participating in the Olympics.
About the possibility of the second communication from, say, the pope, yours truly made this earlier comment:
“Or, maybe NOT a direct response from Pope Francis or from any pope? Would such an action be twisted to confer a kind of equivalence and legitimacy to a tribe of lunatics floating through Paris or wherever?
“Another proposition is that the Holy Spirit already works in subtle but concrete ways…
“The demand for an apology [the first letter] comes from bishops from around the world (just as the Olympic Games include nations from around the world). And the demand was possibly fostered by Cardinal Burke who, by incoherent circumstance, no longer lives in the Vatican. And, therefore, now is more free to say what must be said without engaging in an historic pissing contest between the perennial Catholic Church and moral mutants feeding on what’s left of the West.
“The brief letter also evangelizes clearly and concisely, in only a few sentences, rather than in thousands of unread words on Vatican letterhead. The only fly in the ointment (fly, so to speak), is the earlier Vatican blessing of irregular “couples” under Fiducia Supplicans… butt surely pairs of drag queens are not to be excluded.
“Better that oblique harmonizers of “polarities” stay out of this.”
Paolo below references a release from the Vatican Press Office. NO ONE apparently signed the release. No office of the Vatican is identified. Not only that. It does not mention Francis. NO names are mentioned. In its entirety (Italian followed by English translation)
olympiques de Paris 2024
Created: 03 August 2024
Hits: 19
Holy See Press Office Bulletin
Le Saint-Siège a été attristé par certaines scènes de la cérémonie d’ouverture des Jeux Olympiques de Paris et ne peut que se joindre aux voix qui se sont élevées ces derniers jours pour déplorer l’offense faite à de nombreux chrétiens et croyants d’autres religions.
Dans un événement prestigieux où le monde entier se réunit autour de valeurs communes ne devraient pas se trouver des allusions ridiculisant les convictions religieuses de nombreuses personnes.
La liberté d’expression, qui, évidemment, n’est pas remise en cause, trouve sa limite dans le respect des autres.
© http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino.html – August 3, 2024
The Holy See was saddened by some scenes of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris and can only join the voices that have been raised in recent days to deplore the offense caused to many Christians and believers of other religions.
At a prestigious event where the whole world unites around common values, there should be no allusions that ridicule the religious beliefs of many people.
Freedom of expression, which is obviously not in question, finds its limit in respect for others.
This CNA piece is confounding as it appears to be reporting on more the press release. This CNA news piece appears to conflate the earlier open letter with Burke, Barron, etc.
I would like to see the whole document. If anyone has a link to it share it please.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/Gioacchino-Genovese.pdf
I apologize, the provided web address is not relevant. Here is the correct one I could access:(https://www.ilcattolico.it/catechesi/documenti-catechesi/communique-du-saint-siege-pour-les-jeux-olympiques-de-paris-2024.html)
Thank you!
A perfectly secular statement which could be done by any bureaucrat. (The objective reality i.e. blasphemy is swapped with “hurt feelings” which “nice people” should not cause.)
“Saddened”? Why not outraged? Among the episcopal signatories, I trust that the name Jorge Mario Bergoglio stood out as prominently as John Hancock’s on the Declaration of Independence. Then again . . .
Yes. If Francis put his John Hancock there, it’s in invisible ink. Perhaps the magician will come out from under the white cloak and call the ‘nothingness’ into objectively sensible, visible being. We dream.
It took 10 days, this statement is really nothing, and we still have yet to hear from the Pope himself.
…who is he to judge?
Curious….first al Azhar university in Cairo condemns then President Erdoğan of Turkey and finally The Holy See….curiouser and curiouser Your Holiness.
Or maybe not in the Vatican Wonderland.
The plot thickens…
About Al-Azhar, it was the grand imam Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb of Al-Azhar who co-signed with Pope Francis the Abu Dhabi Declaration (2019), which affirmed: “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.”
Two points:
FIRST, the Sheikh was reported in 2019 as having a following of 150 million Muslims, but not the full 1.5 billion members of sectarian Islam as reported or implied now (but only ten percent).
SECOND, while the Declaration has been questioned on its ambiguity about a “pluralism” of (equivalent?) religions as “willed” rather than only permitted by God, it could also be questioned what, exactly, is meant by a pluralism of sexes? Only a ghostwriter editing oversight, or more like a “wardrobe malfunction” at an infamous Superbowl halftime?
About this fluidly inclusive term (plurality of sexes, as in gender theory?), was it this insane sin seen sailing the Seine scene?
Glad the Vatican was so prompt in responding to the Parisian disgrace. Guess they had to fit in the “Querido Jimmy” letter from “Francesco” first.
I don’t know and have no time to investigate. It seems, in this article, CNA confuses two different things. Imagine a cross of MSNBC with Fox, reporting truth.
CNA website seems to suggest that EWTN sponsors, operates or supports CNA in some manner. Can we trust CNA as a reliable news source? I wonder. Do they receive any funds from the Vatican? What editorial process is used to verify stories which writers at CNA put forth? Anyone?
Meiron, I do not understand the assumptions behind the questions. Catholic News Agency is owned by EWTN; the home page identifies them as a “service of EWTN News.” So that relationship has always been clear to me but maybe not to others? As far as I know, EWTN does not get funding from the Vatican, although they do seem to have a broadcasting agreement regarding Vatican events.
I have not seen a serious reason to doubt the basic integrity of CNA’s reporting. Some stories are better than others, and they may occasionally get something wrong but not at an especially high rate. Have you seen something suggesting that EWTN or CNA has an agends in the way they are reporting Vatican-related news? It is possible that I am misunderstanding your post so I wanted to ask.
Having read this 3x, I conclude:
The beginning of the article says “the Vatican… issued a statement.” The second paragraph states the statement was “e-mailed. Many folks may reasonably consider a statement transmitted by e-mail to equivocally refer to an “e-mail letter,’ an “e-mail,” or a “letter”. In fact, the Vatican Press Office released its statement and classified it as a Press Office Release.
The final three paragraphs refer to the distinct letter signed by Burke and other bishops. The ‘signatories’ to that letter are not signatories to the Press Release. NO signatories whatsoever occur on the Press Release.
The name of Francis? Notable by absence…like Biden at the debate….
I would boycott this olympics. But if you need an olympics “fix” watch the movie “The Boys in the Boat”. Based on a true story about a US Olympic Crew team from the 1930’s. Excellent and worth the time.
“Vatican deplores Olympic offense”. Could that mean the costuming and choreography weren’t done well?
Perhaps it’s time for Rome to reaffirm the complementary roles of apologetics and dialogue in spreading the Gospel.
Meiron above – That’s French, not Italian.
Just sayin’.
Thanks, Cleo. Next time, can you help spot my error before I make it? Très reconnaissant!
As a side note, I went looking for the entire text of the press release Sunday morning after catching up with the news because the reports seemed too fragmentary to understand. “Surely there must be more to it, at least more context,” I thought. (I was wrong.). Reuters reported that a statement in French (which is an unusual choice) had been emailed on Saturday night. That made me chuckle because it reminded me of the infamous Friday afternoon information dump practiced by many presidential administrations when they had to deliver bad news and wanted to attract as little attention as possible.
The statement was hard to find, perhaps because it was only in French at that point and I wasn’t looking on French-language sites. A quich search of the Vatican site came up empty. I finally found it later that day on the Italian site Messainlatino. Any confusion caused by this Vatican statement seems (to me) to come from the Vatican itself, not the news agencies reporting on it. There just isn’t much substance there.
John Allen credits the President of Turkey for the Vatican statement, as their prez announced ahead of time, publically to his cabinet, that he was calling Francis, and then did a release confirming the call and its contents, leaving the Vatican on hook to not leave the prez in the public breeze as a possible liar if him ignored, and the Vatican wanting good diplomatic relations with real a real power in the Muslim world…so, we get a note from the diplomats, Francis saying,”handleithandleithandleit.” And a note bemoaning only our poor precious widdle hurt feelings.