Great essay (but ignore the comments that follow): http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-mission-of-francis-in-church-under.html
The essay is wonderful, but I am shocked at the level of uncharitable comments left by others directed at the Holy Father.
I'm with you. That's why I avoid this site. After all, you are known by the company you keep. The "more Catholic than the Pope" crowd are on my heart and my beads - they are in for a very big shock when they fall into the hands of the living God.
That's par for the course for that site. Hence my advice to ignore the comments and just read the essay.
"Now that the Church is under a perfect siege – from the anti-Christian USA and Europe on one side – and on the other the persecutory regimes in Asia, Africa and Muslim countries, Pope Francis emerges from this historic siege which threatens the very survival of the Church – by means of the only irresistible weapon with which the Church has always triumphed over the course of the centuries when persecuted: the Gospel (or as the Pope would say, “grace”). It is false that the Pope has set aside the teachings of his predecessors on “the non-negotiable values” as the conservative Catholics reproach him for and as the progressive Catholics would like him to do. (His first encyclical “Lumen Fidei” demonstrates this). Pope Francis simply knows that, in the situation at which we have arrived, it no longer makes any sense for the Church to break out into a cultural battle or in political action to exorcize, through human means, the collapse of a civilization and the “barbarian invasions”. The Church knows that only the grace of Christ is indispensible for Her. That is why today the Pope asks for conversion (beginning with the dismantling of the “Renaissance Curia”): incessant prayer which obtains miracles; the marveling at Jesus “who kisses His wounds” in the poor, the sick and the desperate; the announcement and experience of the mercy of God for men. It was in this way that the world was conquered peacefully and reconstructed by Christianity. And it will happen anew." (Source: “Libero”, July 14, 2013; translated by Contributor Francesca Romana)
And in the end, it is our only hope anyway. Thanks Philip for posting this and thank God for our Holy Father. We all have to trust in God's mercy and grace for everything in our lives.
