Day's Links - 2015-10-05

Whenever Pope Francis delivers a good speech or homily, my natural instinct is to assume that someone else wrote it. This happened as Pope Francis opened what is officially the synod on the family, although many have come to see it as the synod against the family.

In many ways it was a perfectly orthodox speech, and spoke strongly against attacks on the sanctity of life, even seeming to defend indissolubility. Typically, we can note where Pope Francis inserted his own comments after seeing the draft, or where the speechwriters felt they had to put in a little bit of Bergoglioism to leave room for novelty. This happened near the end where we are told:

A Church which teaches and defends fundamental values, while not forgetting that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27); and that Jesus also said: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17). A Church which teaches authentic love, which is capable of taking loneliness away, without neglecting her mission to be a good Samaritan to wounded humanity.

The Church must search out these persons, welcome and accompany them, for a Church with closed doors betrays herself and her mission, and, instead of being a bridge, becomes a roadblock: “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb 2:11).

They even threw in a quote from Sacred Scripture for good measure, although the relevance of the last one to what came before it remains a mystery, and the first two seem tortured at best.

So there we have it, a homily which encourages us to be faithful towards God, ending with an exhortation not to let our faithfulness get in the way of the Church's mission. Of course, it doesn't say so in so many words, but given Bergoglio's priorities, it wouldn't have been clearer if he had chanted it Gregorian-style. It is important to note that Pope Francis gives the impression that the Church has neglected her "mission to be a good Samaritan to wounded humanity".

For all the good words in the homily, and some of the hard-hitting words against the culture of death have already made it to the mainstream media, thankfully, the only important thing to take from this is that Bergoglio sees the need for novelty and a need to depart from fundamental values if that is what it means to be a good Samaritan. Repentance and conversion by wounded humanity is predictably ruled out as an option.