‘Pope’ Francis makes a Mess: The Interview

“Chaos Frank” Strikes Again…

Francis Makes a Mess:
12,000-Word Interview creates Chaos among Novus Ordos

It’s happened again. Jorge Bergoglio — the man the world calls “Pope” Francis — has opened his mouth once more and thereby created nothing short of chaos. The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, S.J., editor-in-chief of La Civilta Cattolica, conducted a lengthy interview with the Impostor Pope during the month of August (2013) in the Casa Santa Marta, where Francis resides.

Before we delving into some highlights — or lowlights — of what Francis said, we are providing first of all a link to the full text of the interview:

Full Text: THE INTERVIEW in English:
“A Big Heart Open to God”

Also Available: Download as PDF

Interview Highlights — the Most Important Quotes:

  • “Yes, perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naïve.”
  • “Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.”
  • “When you express too much, you run the risk of being misunderstood.”
  • “…when I entrust something to someone, I totally trust that person. He or she must make a really big mistake before I rebuke that person. But despite this, eventually people get tired of authoritarianism.”
  • “To be sure, I have never been like Blessed Imelda [a goody-goody], but I have never been a right-winger.”
  • “Thinking with the church, therefore, is my way of being a part of this people [of God]. And all the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief, and the people display this infallibilitas in credendo, this infallibility in believing, through a supernatural sense of the faith of all the people walking together. … When the dialogue among the people and the bishops and the pope goes down this road and is genuine, then it is assisted by the Holy Spirit. So this thinking with the church does not concern theologians only.”
  • “…We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church. …And, of course, we must be very careful not to think that this infallibilitas of all the faithful I am talking about in the light of Vatican II is a form of populism. No; it is the experience of ‘holy mother the hierarchical church,’ as St. Ignatius called it, the church as the people of God, pastors and people together. The church is the totality of God’s people.”
  • “I see the sanctity of God’s people, this daily sanctity.”
  • “I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle.”
  • “The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all.”
  • “The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials. The bishops, particularly, must be able to support the movements of God among their people with patience, so that no one is left behind. But they must also be able to accompany the flock that has a flair for finding new paths.”
  • “In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.”
  • “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.”
  • “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”
  • “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently…. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”
  • “But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing. …The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.”
  • “The dicasteries of the Roman Curia … are instruments of help. In some cases, however, when they are not functioning well, they run the risk of becoming institutions of censorship. It is amazing to see the denunciations for lack of orthodoxy that come to Rome. I think the cases should be investigated by the local bishops’ conferences, which can get valuable assistance from Rome. These cases, in fact, are much better dealt with locally. The Roman congregations are mediators; they are not middlemen or managers.”
  • [on ecumenism with the Orthodox:] “We must walk united with our differences: there is no other way to become one. This is the way of Jesus.”
  • “We must … investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. Only by making this step will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised for various areas of the church.”
  • “Vatican II was a re-reading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture. Vatican II produced a renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation. Yes, there are hermeneutics of continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear: the dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualising its message for today – which was typical of Vatican II – is absolutely irreversible. Then there are particular issues, like the liturgy according to the Vetus Ordo. I think the decision of Pope Benedict was prudent and motivated by the desire to help people who have this sensitivity. What is worrying, though, is the risk of the ideologisation of the Vetus Ordo, its exploitation.”
  • “…complaining never helps us find God. The complaints of today about how ‘barbaric’ the world is – these complaints sometimes end up giving birth within the church to desires to establish order in the sense of pure conservation, as a defence. No: God is to be encountered in the world of today. God manifests himself in historical revelation, in history. Time initiates processes, and space crystallises them. God is in history, in the processes.”
  • “God manifests himself in time and is present in the processes of history. This gives priority to actions that give birth to new historical dynamics.”
  • “If one has the answers to all the questions – that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.”
  • “…God is always a surprise, so you never know where and how you will find him. You are not setting the time and place of the encounter with him. You must, therefore, discern the encounter.”
  • “If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists – they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies. I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life.”
  • “…[The poet] Hölderlin compares his grandmother to the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, the friend of the earth who did not consider anybody a foreigner.”
  • “Among the great painters, I admire Caravaggio; his paintings speak to me. But also Chagall, with his ‘White Crucifixion.’” [see an image of this painting here and information about it here]
  • “There is always the lurking danger of living in a laboratory. Ours is not a ‘lab faith,’ but a ‘journey faith,’ a historical faith. God has revealed himself as history, not as a compendium of abstract truths. I am afraid of laboratories because in the laboratory you take the problems and then you bring them home to tame them, to paint them, out of their context. You cannot bring home the frontier, but you have to live on the border and be audacious.”
  • “…[H]uman self-understanding changes with time and so also human consciousness deepens. The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong…. Even the forms for expressing truth can be multiform, and this is indeed necessary for the transmission of the Gospel in its timeless meaning.”
  • “…[W]e must not confuse the genius of Thomas Aquinas with the age of decadent Thomist commentaries. Unfortunately, I studied philosophy from textbooks that came from decadent or largely bankrupt Thomism.”
  • “When does a formulation of thought cease to be valid? When it loses sight of the human or even when it is afraid of the human or deluded about itself.”

The content of the interview should come as no surprise to those who know Jorge Bergoglio. For example, in his 2010 book On Heaven and Earth, which he co-authored with Jewish rabbi Abraham Skorka, Bergoglio asserts in all seriousness that a Catholic priest “does not have the right to force anything on anyone’s private life.” He also said that cohabitation — which is a public endorsement of the mortal sin of fornication — “does not have the fullness, or the greatness of marriage” (source). This thoroughly Modernist non-Catholic thinking is simply being developed at greater length in this interview. Whoever expected Francis to be orthodox in this interview simply isn’t informed about who Jorge Bergoglio really is.

By the way, one of the tragic consequences of Francis’ despicable silence on abortion — on the pretext that “people know what the Church teaches on that”, as though preaching were merely a communication of doctrinal knowledge and not also exhortations to piety and admonitions against sin — can be seen here: Doors Open Wide for Abortion in Brazil after Francis Fails to Rebuke Country’s President at World Youth Day.

What follows is a collection of links relevant to this interview.

Secular Coverage of the Interview:

Novus Ordo Coverage of the Interview:

Secular and Novus Ordo “What Francis Really Said/Meant” Commentary:

Other Commentary:

Our own Commentary:

Image source: Shutterstock (giulio napolitano; cropped)
License: paid

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