I really like the current pontiff. On the plane ride back from his most recent trip (Africa), he made some comments which I most heartily endorse!
He said:
"Fundamentalism is a sickness that is in all religions"
“We Catholics have some — and not some, many — who believe they possess the absolute truth and go ahead dirtying the other with calumny, with disinformation, and doing evil. They do evil. I say this because it is my Church.”
He added: “religious fundamentalism isn’t religion, it’s idolatry"
**The above quotes taken from http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/11/30/pope-francis-says-he-is-not-losing-any-sleep-over-vatican-leaks-trial/
I think he's got this one right. What do you think?
He's good, insomuch as he - or more precisely his handlers - know they must transform the Catholic Church from a Superstition-entity into a more relevant Political/Charitable entity.
ReplyDelete[Just like the British Salvation Army did]
[the British always do things first :-) ].
In a private e-mail response to this post, a friend accused the pontiff of painting with too broad of a brush. He insisted that he knows many nice folks who are fundamentalists.
ReplyDeleteI responded: " I didn't think that Francis was saying that all fundamentalists are bad people (I know and love a good many of them too). Nevertheless, I do think that he was making some broad generalizations about the nature of fundamentalism, and what it tends to evoke in the people who adhere to it. Fundamentalism by its very nature makes you (and the members of your group) right and everybody else wrong. Hence, fundamentalists usually do disparage those who do not agree with them - some of them have been known to use their calm/soft voices when they do so; but I have found it to be an almost universal phenomenon among them (I used to be one myself). Fundamentalism produces closed-mindedness and rigidity in thinking - Do you know any fundamentalists that are willing to alter the basic structure of their belief system - the way that they arrive at their positions/beliefs? In other words, they cannot be persuaded of some new way of thinking about things unless you demonstrate it to them from their scriptures. Bill Watson is a kind, decent and likable person (who almost never raises his voice); but he still teaches racist and homophobic doctrines. Our culture has always tended to laugh at and pity those who don't agree with us (though, Lord knows, we have had plenty of the ones who blow up and scream too). In some folks, fundamentalism presents a more appealing face than in others; but the self-righteousness and disdain for other opinions/beliefs that underpins it is hateful even with a smile. The pope sees fundamentalism as a kind of idolatry (I agree with him). The belief system itself is the Supreme and Final Authority - not God. The belief system trumps love, compassion, mercy and reason. Anyway, bottom line, I think that there are some good folks who are trapped (mostly self-imposed) in a system that evokes bad things from its adherents. Does that distinction make any sense?"