In typical Marxist fashion, Bergoglio has determined that anyone who opposes the error at the Amazon Synod is really a bigot and a racist.
What a disgusting, evil man.
What disgustingly effeminate Cardinal and Bishops that do not confront this man for his hatred of Christ and his flock.
For the record, my wife is African from Capetown, Irish, Dutch, and mostly Black and the blood in my veins is from Mount Lebanon.
Bergoglio is an evil monster. He is a sociopath. A bully and an abusive man.
"Francis excoriated certain “circles and sectors” who .. consider much of humanity a “lower-class entity” with scant “spiritual and intellectual life.” These unnamed individuals, the pope opined, hope out of racism or bigotry to withhold the Gospel."
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-11/pope-francis-interview-valente-mission-book.html?fbclid=IwAR3QGWNrmcndrD7f2JK1uJO_ipWYKh8pikdb23tf5KE6-MBvF0WCWAKfMBs
The Pope and mission: “Without Jesus we can do
nothing”
At the end of the Extraordinary Missionary Month, we are
providing a few extracts from the book-length interview of Gianni Valente from
Fides News Agency with Pope Francis, in which the Pope emphasizes that “Either
the Church evangelizes or she is not Church”. The book, published by Libreria
Edictrice Vaticana and Edizioni San Paolo will be available in bookstores as of
November 5th.
“The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who
encounter Jesus”. Thus begins the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium,
published by Pope Francis in November 2013, eight months after the Conclave
during which he was elected Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter. That
programmatic text of his pontificate invited everyone to re-harmonize every
action, reflection and ecclesial initiative with “the proclamation of the
Gospel in today's world”. Six years later, the Holy Father called for an
Extraordinary Missionary Month to be held in October 2019, and at the same time
convened the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome dedicated to the
Amazon Region, with the intention of suggesting new paths for the proclamation of the Gospel in
the "green lung", martyred by predatory exploitation that violates
and inflicts wounds “on our brothers sisters, and on sister earth” (Holy
Father’s homily for the closing Mass of the Synod for the Pan-Amazon Region).
During this period, Pope Francis has included in his public
discourses insistent references to the specific nature of the Church’s mission
in the world. For example, the Holy Father has repeated numerous times that
evangelization is not “proselytism”, and that the Church grows “by attraction”
and by “witness” – a host of expressions all of which are oriented toward
suggesting by association what is the dynamism of each apostolic work, and what
its source can be.
Pope Francis speaks about all this, and much more, in the
book-length interview entitled Without Him We Can Do Nothing: a Conversation
about Being Missionaries in Today’s World. Here, Fides News Agency provides a
few pre-publication excerpts.
Holy Father, you said that as a young man you wanted to go
to Japan as a missionary. Can we say then that the Pope never became
missionary?
I don’t know. I joined the Jesuits because I was struck by
their missionary vocation, of always going to the frontiers. At the time I
could not go to Japan. But I have always felt that to proclaim Jesus and His
Gospel always involves a certain outgoingness and being on the move.
You always repeat: "A Church that is on the move".
Many have picked up this expression, and sometimes it seems to have become a
hackneyed slogan, used by a growing number of people who spend their time
lecturing the Church on what she should or should not be.
"A Church on the move" is not a fashionable
expression that I invented. It is Jesus’ command, who in the Gospel of Mark
asks His followers to go into the whole world and preach the Gospel “to every
creature”. The Church is either on the move or she is not Church. Either she
evangelizes or she is not Church. If the Church is not on the move, she decays,
she becomes something else.
What does a Church that does not evangelize and is not in
movement become?
It becomes a spiritual association, a multinational that
launches ethical and religious initiatives and messages. There is nothing wrong
with that, but that is not the Church. This is the risk of any static
organization in the Church. We end up taming Christ. You no longer bear witness
to what Christ does, but speak on behalf of a certain idea of Christ. An idea
that you have appropriated and domesticated. You organize things, you become
the little manager of ecclesial life, where everything happens according to an
established plan, to be followed only according to instruction. But the
encounter with Christ never happens. The encounter that touched your heart at
the beginning doesn’t happen anymore.
Is mission itself an antidote to all this? Is the will and
effort to “go out” on mission enough to avoid these distortions?
The mission, the "Church on the move", is not a
program, an intention to be carried out by sheer force of will. It is Christ
who makes the Church go out of herself. In the mission of evangelization, you
move because the Holy Spirit pushes you, and brings you. And when you get
there, you realize that He is already there, and is waiting for you. The Spirit
of the Lord arrived first. He has already prepared the path for you, and is
already at work.
In a meeting with the Pontifical Missionary Societies, you
suggested that they read the Acts of the Apostles, as a habitual text to pray
over. Why is it a narrative of the beginnings, rather than a “modern” strategic
missionary manual?
The protagonist of the Acts of the Apostles is not the
apostles. The protagonist is the Holy Spirit. The apostles are the first to
recognize Him and testify to Him. When they communicate the decisions
established by the Council of Jerusalem to the community in Antioch, they
write: “We have decided, the Holy Spirit and us”. They realistically
acknowledge that it was the Lord who daily added to their number “those who
were saved”, rather than the persuasive efforts of men.
And is it the same today as it was back then? Has nothing
changed?
The experience of the apostles is like a paradigm that is
always valid. Just think of how things happen spontaneously in the Acts of the
Apostles, without coercion. It is a human story, in which the disciples always
arrive afterwards, they always arrive after the Holy Spirit has already acted.
He prepares and works on hearts. He upsets their plans. It is he who
accompanies them, guides them and comforts them in all the circumstances they
find themselves living. When problems and persecutions come, the Holy Spirit
works there too in an even more surprising way with His comfort, His
consolations, as happens after the first martyrdom, that of Saint Stephen.
What happens next?
A time of persecution begins, and many disciples flee
Jerusalem, going to Judea and Samaria. And there, while they are dispersed and
fugitive, they begin to evangelize, though they are alone and without the
Apostles who remained in Jerusalem. They are baptized and the Holy Spirit gives
them apostolic courage. There we see for the first time that baptism is enough
to become evangelizers. That’s what mission is. Mission is His work. There’s no
point in getting agitated. There’s no need for us to get organized, no need to
scream, no need for gimmicks or stratagems. All we need to do is ask to be able
to repeat the experience today that makes us say, “We have decided, the Holy
Spirit and us”.
And without this experience, what do the calls for
missionary mobilization mean?
Without the Spirit, wanting to do mission becomes something
else. It becomes, I would say, a plan to conquer, the pretext that we are
conquering something. A religious, or perhaps an ideological conquest, perhaps
carried out even with good intentions. But it’s another thing.
Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, you often repeat that the Church
grows by attraction. What do you mean? Who attracts? Who is attracted?
Jesus says it in the Gospel of John, “When I am lifted up
from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself”. And in the same Gospel, he
also says: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him”.
The Church has always recognized that this is the proper form of every movement
that brings us closer to Jesus and the Gospel. It is not a conviction, a
rationalization, it’s not taking a position; not a pressure, or a constraint.
It is always an attraction. The Prophet Jeremiah already said “You duped me, O
Lord, and I let myself be duped”. And this applies to the apostles, to the
missionaries, and to their work.
How does what you have just described take place?
The Lord's mandate to go out and evangelize comes from
within, by falling in love, by loving attraction. One does not follow Christ,
and even less become an evangelizer, because of a decision made sitting around
a table, or by one’s own activism. Even missionary thrust can be fruitful only
if it takes place within this attraction, and transmits it to others.
What is the meaning of these words with respect to the
mission and the proclamation of the Gospel?
It means that if you have been attracted by Christ, if you
move and do things because you are attracted by Christ, others will notice it
without effort. There is no need to prove it, let alone flaunt it. Instead,
anyone who thinks he or she is the protagonist or manager of the mission, with
all the best intentions and declarations of purpose, often ends up attracting
no one.
In the Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii gaudium, you
recognize that all this can "can cause us to feel disoriented". It's
like those who dive into the ocean not knowing what they will find. What did
you want to suggest with this image? Do these words also concern mission?
Mission is not a tried and tested company plan. Neither is
it a public spectacle organized to flaunt how many people are associated with
it thanks to our marketing. The Holy Spirit works as He wills, when He wills
and where He wills. And this can lead to "vertigo". Yet the high
point of freedom rests precisely in this letting oneself be carried by the
Spirit, renouncing the need to calculate and control everything. This is
precisely how we imitate Christ Himself, who in the mystery of His Resurrection
learned to rest in the tenderness of the Father’s embrace. Mission’s mysterious
fruitfulness does not consist in our intentions, in our methods, in our
impulses and in our initiatives, but rests precisely in this
"vertigo": the "vertigo" we perceive when we hear Jesus’
words: “without me you can do nothing”.
You also often repeat that the Church grows “by witnessing”.
What are you trying to suggest by insisting on this?
The fact that attraction makes us witnesses. This witness
testifies to what the work of Christ and His Spirit have really accomplished in
our life. After His Resurrection, it is Christ himself who reveals Himself to
the apostles. It is He who makes them witnesses. In addition, this witness is
not self-serving. We are witnesses to the Lord’s works.
Something else you repeat often, in this case in a negative
sense: the Church does not grow through proselytizing, and the mission of the
Church is not proselytism. Why do you insist on this so much? Is it to maintain
good relations with other Churches and dialogue with other religious
traditions?
The problem with proselytism is not only the fact that it
contradicts the ecumenical journey and interreligious dialogue. There is
proselytism wherever there is the idea of making the Church grow by putting
less emphasis on this attraction on the part of Christ and the work of the
Spirit, focusing everything on any type of "wise discourse".
Therefore, proselytism first of all cuts out Christ Himself and the Holy Spirit
from the mission, even when we claim to speak and act nominally in Christ’s
name. Proselytism is always violent by nature, even when it is hidden or
exercised with white gloves. It does not tolerate the freedom and graciousness
with which faith can be transmitted from person to person by grace. This is why
proselytism is not only something of the past, of bygone colonialist times, or
conversions forced or bought with the promise of material advantages.
Proselytism can also exist today even in parishes, communities, movements, religious
congregations.
So what does it mean to evangelize?
To evangelize means delivering Christ's own testimony in
simple and precise words, like the apostles did. But there is no need to invent
persuasive discourses. The proclamation of the Gospel can even be whispered,
but it always passes through the overwhelming power of the scandal of the
cross. And it has always followed the path indicated in the letter of the
Apostle Peter, which consists in simply "providing reasons" of one’s
hope to others, a hope that remains a scandal and foolishness in the eyes of
the world.
How do we recognize a Christian "missionary"?
A distinctive feature is that of acting as facilitators, and
not as controllers of the faith. Facilitating, making easy, without us placing
obstacles to Jesus' desire to embrace everyone, to heal everyone, to save
everyone, not being selective, not imposing "pastoral tariffs", not
playing the part of the guard at the door controlling who has the right to
enter. I remember parish priests and communities in Buenos Aires who set up
many initiatives to facilitate access to baptism. In the last few years, they
realized the number was growing of those not being baptized for various
reasons, even sociological ones, and they wanted to remind everyone that being
baptized is something simple, that everyone can request it, for themselves and
for their own children. The path taken by those parish priests and those
communities had one objective: not to add burdens, not to make claims, to
remove any cultural, psychological or practical difficulties that could push
people to postpone or drop the intention to baptize their own children.
In America, at the beginning of evangelization, missionaries
discussed who was "worthy" to receive baptism. How did those disputes
end?
Pope Paul III rejected the theories of those who claimed
that the Indians were by nature "incapable" of accepting the Gospel
and confirmed the choice of those who facilitated their baptism. They seem to
be things of the past, yet even now there are circles and sectors that present
themselves as ilustrados [enlightened], and even sequester the proclamation of
the Gospel through their distorted reasoning that divide the world between
"civilized" and "barbaric". What irritates them and makes
them angry is the idea that the Lord might have a predilection for many
cabecitas negras [a derogatory term]. They consider a large part of the human
family as if they were a lower class entity, unable to achieve decent levels in
spiritual and intellectual life according to their standards. On this basis,
contempt can develop for people considered to be second rate. All this also
emerged during the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon.
Some tend to drive a wedge between the transparent
proclamation of the faith and social work. They say that we must not reduce
mission to a type of social activity. Is that a legitimate concern?
Everything that is within the scope of the Beatitudes and
the works of mercy is in agreement with mission, is already proclamation, is
already mission. The Church is not an NGO, the Church is something else. But
the Church is also a field hospital, where everyone is welcome, as they are,
where everyone’s wounds are healed. And this is part of her mission. Everything
depends on the love that moves the heart of those who do things. If a
missionary helps dig a well in Mozambique because he is aware that those he
baptizes and evangelizes need it, how can it be said that that work is separate
from evangelization?
Today what are the new focusses and sensitivities to put
into practice in the processes aimed at making evangelization fruitful in the
various social and cultural contexts?
Christianity does not embrace only one cultural model. As
John Paul II acknowledged, “while remaining completely true to itself, with
unswerving fidelity to the proclamation of the Gospel and the tradition of the
Church, Christianity will also reflect the different faces of the cultures and
peoples in which it is received and takes root”. The Holy Spirit embellishes
the Church, with the new languages of persons and communities that embrace the
Gospel. Thus the Church, taking up the values of different cultures, becomes
“sponsa ornate monilibus suis”, “the bride
bedecked with her jewels”, of which the Prophet Isaiah speaks. It is
true that some cultures have been closely linked to the preaching of the Gospel
and to the development of Christian thought. But in the period we are living,
it becomes even more urgent to bear in mind that the revealed message is not
identified with a particular culture. And when meeting new cultures, or
cultures that have not accepted the Christian proclamation, we must not try to
impose a determined cultural form together with the evangelical proposition.
Today, in missionary work as well, it is even more important not to carry heavy
baggage.
Mission and martyrdom. You have often recalled the intimate
bond uniting these two realities.
In Christian life the reality of martyrdom and
evangelization both have the same origin, the same source: when the love of God
poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit gives strength, courage and
consolation. Martyrdom is the maximum expression of the recognition of and the
testimony rendered to Christ, which represents the fulfillment of mission, of
apostolic work. I always think of the Coptic brothers slaughtered in Libya, who
quietly uttered Jesus’ name while they were being beheaded. I think of Saint
Mother Teresa’s Sisters murdered in Yemen, while they were taking care of
Muslim patients in a home for disabled elderly people. The sisters were wearing
work aprons over their religious habits when they were killed. They are all
victors, not "victims". And their martyrdom, to the point of the
shedding of blood, illuminates the martyrdom that everyone can suffer in
everyday life, with the witness rendered to Christ every day. It’s what can be
observed when visiting old missionaries in their nursing homes. They are often
battered by the life they have had. A missionary told me that many of them lose
their memories and no longer remember anything about the good they did.
"But it does not matter", he told me, "because the Lord
remembers it very well".
