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| Is Pope Francis Dividing the Church? |
The pope's Christmas message to the curia was a stocking filled with switches and coal. (To read the message to the curia in full go here.) Filled with the typical mix of nasty and nice, the pope is ambiguous (nothing new there) about who the malicious devils are. Which is why it's necessary, in order to understand him, to consider his other statements. Since, in the past he has reserved his condemnation for those who uphold doctrine and love the Church's holy tradition, one can only presume he is going after those "rigid" folks in both the clergy and laity whom he's targeted in the past with the labels of pharisees or whose love for tradition, e.g., the Latin Mass, indicates (in his opinion) psychological problems.
I confess that I'm baffled by the meanness of this pope who talks compassion and mercy while he condemns and commits rash judgment against those who embrace tradition and orthodoxy, labeling them as "rigid" and stating that their love for Church doctrine indicates psychological illness or the attitude of the pharisees. How charitable were these statements of Pope Francis?
