"Can one be critical of the Pope" by Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi

I think those who are confused by Pope Francis are choosing to be confused. Reading blogs like rorate-caeli is inevitably going to feed a particularly 'confused' view of Pope Francis. I copy below a report of Francis' talk:

“Educators are among the worst paid”



The Pope criticised this at a conference organised by the Congregation for Catholic Education. He said “no” to selecting “supermen. Behind them is the ghost of money that leads humanity to ruin”

DOMENICO AGASSO JR VATICAN CITY
Pope Francis has decried the fact that teachers are underpaid. Educators “are among the worst paid workers,” he said speaking (off the cuff) to participants of an international conference under the sponsorship of the Congregation for Catholic Education, in the Paul VI Hall. At the same time, he invited educators to be “teachers of risk” (within reason). “When there is rigidity, humanism is lacking and where there is no humanism, Christ cannot come in,” he said. The Pope warned against the risks of selecting “supermen based on head and interest. Behind all this lurks the ghost of money that leads true humanity to ruin.”

In response to a series of questions, Francis said: “A real school should teach concepts, customs and values. When a school is unable to do all this, it is a selective and exclusive school for the few. This is a serious situation because “when there is rigidity, humanism is lacking and where there is no humanism, God cannot come in,” the Pope underlined.

An educator must be a “teacher of risk” (“obviously within reason”):“An educator who does not know how to take risks or educate, a father or a mother who do not know how to risk, do not educate their children. Risking is a lesson. You may slip, but you get back up…a true educator must be a teacher of risk.”

He urged Catholic schools to “never proselytise”. The Pope stressed that “you cannot speak of Catholic education without speaking of humanity.”According to the Pope “young people and children must be brought up with human values”, paying attention to “transcendence”. “Education’s biggest crisis is a closure to transcendence. No form of closure does educstion any good.”We must “educate with humanity and open horizons”.“Today there is a tendency towards neopositivism: to educate in immanent things, and this both in traditionally Christian countries and in countries of Pagan tradition.” He went on to say, “Transcendence is what is wanting – for me, the greatest crisis in education, in order that it be [truly, authentically] Christian, is this closure to transcendence.”

Francis then criticised educators’ pay: “Educators are among the worst paid workers. What does this mean? It simply means that it is of no interest to the State. If it were, things would not be as they are.”

He then lamented:“Selective, elitist education is shameful: it leads us toward a human selectivity which drives us apart instead of bringing us closer: the rich are separated from the poor, one culture from another, people among people.” “Education has become too selective and elitist. It seems only people of a certain standard, of certain skills have the right to an education. What is certain is that not all children and young people have a right to an education and that is shameful.”

Thinking of the recent terrorist attacks, Francis said:“The biggest temptation in wars at the moment, are walls and the biggest failure for an educator is to educate inside walls”. Instead, we must “go out to the peripheries and this is not just about charity. Reality is clearer when seen from the peripheries that from the centre. In the centre you’re always sheltered, you’re always protected.”

According to Francis, the fact that“the educational pact between family and schools and family and State, “is serious because it leads to “supermen” being selected based on head and interest. Behind all this lurks the ghost of money that leads true humanity to ruin,” the Pope emphasised.

Using the example of St. John Bosco’s“emergency education”in response to the Masonic threat in northern Italy in the 19thcentury, Pope Francis said “new paths” in education urgently need to be sought. We need to take a risk with informal education. Formal education is lacking because it is the legacy of the positivism that only the language of the head can conceive. We need to break the mould.” Francis recalled that art and sport can also play a role in education that involves “the head, the heart and the hands”.

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/e...rancisco-francis-scuola-school-escuela-44805/

 

Do you really think they would be happy for them to be used to undermine the Papacy? I doubt it.

 

Those quotes can only defend the Papacy.

 

Not the Papacy of Francis. You have him in your sites. No?

 

In regards to Pope Francis urging Catholic schools to “not proselytise”. Our Pope stressed that “you cannot speak of Catholic education without speaking of humanity. And he elaborated on the needs of humanity, as stated above by Davidtlig.

Mother Teresa also had many critics on both sides (of this same Catholic argument), because of her stance on helping all humanity in the way she did.


The Mother Teresa her critics choose to ignore

by Navin B. Chawla

(Navin B. Chawla is a former chief election commissioner of India and biographer of Mother Teresa’s.)


Although staunchly and devoutly Catholic, she reached out to people of all denominations irrespective of their faith, or even the lack of it. She did not believe that conversion was her work. That was god’s work, she said. So while she lifted the abandoned baby off a street full of prowling dogs for the sanctuary of her Shishu Bhawan, she would never convert her, because that child would probably be adopted into a nice Hindu household, and such a conversion would then have been a detriment to that child. That is why people of all faiths were so accepting of this diminutive Catholic nun.

In my 23 years of close association with her, she never once whispered that perhaps her religion was superior to mine, or through it lay a shorter route to the Divine. Which is also why, when I asked Jyoti Basu, that redoubtable leader of West Bengal, what he, an atheist and communist, could possibly have in common with Mother Teresa for whom God was everything, he replied simply that “we both share a love for the poor.”

In 1952, Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the city of Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith;

Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites." A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted."


At the Vatican

In her lifetime, Mother Teresa was sometimes described as a “religious imperialist,” a handmaiden of the Church’s doctrinaire policies on abortion and birth control.

These were indeed her views and she was undeterred by such criticism. Yet, she gently but unmistakably left her imprint on the heart of the Vatican itself.

Finding in Pope John Paul II a kindred spirit, she cajoled him into literally and metaphorically opening a small door to set up a tiny soup kitchen adjacent to the Pope’s grand audience chamber.

At 6 p.m. each day, Rome’s homeless and hungry continue to be fed by Mother Teresa’s Sisters, just a few metres away from the grand Basilica of St. Peter’s.

At a stroke, this frail nun, indisputably the world’s most decorated person, helped to demystify the Vatican’s aura of wealth and privilege, serving a daily reminder to the Vatican where its true vocation lay.

 

Thank you for your prayers. Please be assured of mine for you and your family.

 

With respect, David, I think you are being a little unfair to some of us when you say that we are choosing to be confused. There's very little in that speech that lifts my spirits. On the contrary, it dampens the reassurance I got from Lynnfiat and Miker's posts. From now on, I think I'll just steer clear of any reports of the Holy Father's speeches unless they are made ex-Cathedra. I genuinely think he means well and he's undoubtedly on a higher spiritual plain than I, but sometimes I feel that I'm living on a different planet than the Pope. Maybe he's just too close to Heaven for this sinner to ever catch up.

 

With all due respect to the Pope and I have been teaching for 30 years I haven't a notion what he is talking about in this discourse (translation issues, perhaps?).

He certainly has a gift for speaking a language that I don't understand.

The only bit that made any sense was about teachers pay. The rest leaves me completely baffled.

 

I am sorry but it often seems to me he is talking gooblydygook.

I have tried and tried to understand some of his passages but it is double dutch. I am afraid some of it is complete nonsense at times.

Some of it is almost as bad as my typos.

 

I am sure it makes perfect sense to Joe and David. They can explain it.

 

Yes you are right. He is perfectly clear to me. And a billion others.

 

...and you thought the Jesuits were on the front lines...

 

The Jesuits I have known are. When I say that they are clear I mean they are clear he is a good man and is trying to change the hearts and minds of many for Christ. I am for Pope Francis 100%.
"Make me like a precious stone,
Crystal clear and finely honed,
Light of Jesus Shining through
Giving glory back to You."

 

Sadly it seems to me that the great apostasy will be found among those who do not stay loyal and obedient to The True Pope. They will be deceived by the few at the top and fall away. Sadly a few on this forum seems to already have gone in this direction as far as Pope Francis is concerned. Judas is alive and hard at work. If Jesus was betrayed why not Francis?

 

“If someone is sincere and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who are we to judge?

 

We do not condemn to hell - that is not our competence - but we must always assess and stay awake. We may decided that a certain attitude or action of some person or group without repentance puts them in danger of hell fire but we don't put them there.
Pope Francis is trying to save the many to draw them back into the fold. How well will he succeed. The signs are not good - we have already been told that very few will see God.
Some will be saved through the Warning, I believe.

 

Ahhh so that's what he meant.... We must not judge but we must assess. But what is the difference between judging and assessing, Joe?

 

It is in our competence, in our role. The same as the difference between a judge and a jury. We are always called to be jury according to our Catholic mind. God is the judge.

 

Is this what the pope is saying Joe? Only those who don't try to live according to the church's laws will be saved, or those who fall lock, step, and in line with "ambiguous" statements by the holy father will? Confusing! Where is Infant on this?
!

 

Before this disagreement gets out of hand again, could everybody please read Fr. Joseph again? Thank you.