Recent remarks by the Holy Father about young people and the Extraordinary Form sound more like the words of a psychologist than a pastor.
by Carl E. Olson on The Dispatch at Catholic World Report
A November 10th article by CNS reporter Cindy Wooden about a new collection, in Italian, of homilies and speeches given by Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been raising eyebrows. And even some ire. The problem, to be clear, isn't in Wooden's reporting, but in some excerpts from the book, specifically a new interview given by Pope Francis to his close confidant Fr. Antonio Spadaro SJ, who is Editor-in-Chief of Civiltà Cattolica. The except in question is at the very end of the article:
Listening to people’s stories, including in the confessional, is essential for preaching the Gospel, he said. “The further you are from the people and their problems, the further you hide behind a theology framed as ‘You must and you must not,’ which doesn’t communicate anything, which is empty, abstract, lost in nothingness.”
Asked about the liturgy, Pope Francis insisted the Mass reformed after the Second Vatican Council is here to stay and “to speak of a ‘reform of the reform’ is an error.
In authorizing regular use of the older Mass, now referred to as the “extraordinary form,” now-retired Pope Benedict XVI was “magnanimous” toward those attached to the old liturgy, he said. “But it is an exception."
Pope Francis told Father Spadaro he wonders why some young people, who were not raised with the old Latin Mass, nevertheless prefer it.
“And I ask myself: Why so much rigidity? Dig, dig, this rigidity always hides something, insecurity or even something else. Rigidity is defensive. True love is not rigid.”
Those who follow Francis' various addresses and interviews closely will recognize the usual rhetoric: the implication that theology (or doctrine) is somehow opposed to pastoral ministry, the psycho-analysis of those the Pope disagrees with, the pretense to contemplation without evidence of much insight, and the digs—in more than one sense, in this case—at supposed rigidity, insecurity, and defensiveness.
Much could be said about the the excerpt above, but I'll first note, in fairness, that the full context of the remarks isn't known and the remarks are apparently not official translations. That said, it's hard to not be disappointed, or even troubled, by the Holy Father's comments and approach. And there are a couple of deep ironies involved. One of them is that Francis insists strongly in the need to close to the people and their problems, but then, in remarking on why some young people (and plenty of older people as well) would be attracted to the "old Latin Mass", gives every appearance of not having really been close to any of the young people in question. I don't attend the Extraordinary Form (EF), but I know several people who do, including many younger folks, and I have talked to them at length about the EF and the Ordinary Form. To respond to these young people and their motives with shallow neo-Freudian dismissals comes off as both unfair and uncharitable.
A second irony is that this excerpt, as it stands, does not give the impression of a sensitive and caring pastor, but of an annoyed and arrogant man who cannot fathom why people many decades younger than himself would think or act differently than he thinks they should.
Part of the problem, to return to a point stressed in detail in my October 2016 editorial, is that pitting theology and doctrine over and against pastoral ministry is going to create a number of problems and will lead, again and again, to a skewed reading of people and events.
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