EVANGELII GAUDIUM Pope Francis

verbumdei

I was very impressed by how the Pope has managed to bring so many towards Christ. Never has Rome seen so many Pilgrims during Wednesday Audiences.


On abortion he is Clear

the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”. It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.

On homosexual acts

The process of secularization tends to reduce the faith and the Church to the sphere of the private and personal. Furthermore, by completely rejecting the transcendent, it has produced a growing deterioration of ethics, a weakening of the sense of personal and collective sin, and a steady increase in relativism. These have led to a general sense of disorientation, especially in the periods of adolescence and young adulthood which are so vulnerable to change. As the bishops of the United States of America have rightly pointed out, while the Church insists on the existence of objective moral norms which are valid for everyone, “there are those in our culture who portray this teaching as unjust, that is, as opposed to basic human rights. Such claims usually follow from a form of moral relativism that is joined, not without inconsistency, to a belief in the absolute rights of individuals. In this view, the Church is perceived as promoting a particular prejudice and as interfering with individual freedom”.[59] We are living in an information-driven society which bombards us indiscriminately with data – all treated as being of equal importance – and which leads to remarkable superficiality in the area of moral discernment. In response, we need to provide an education which teaches critical thinking and encourages the development of mature moral values.

http://www.vatican.va/evangelii-gaudium/en/index.html

Benny_Cake

verbumdei wrote: »

I was very impressed by how the Pope has managed to bring so many towards Christ. Never has Rome seen so many Pilgrims during Wednesday Audiences.


On abortion he is Clear



On homosexual acts



http://www.vatican.va/evangelii-gaudium/en/index.html

Folks, feel free to discuss Evangelii Gaudium here but let's leave discussion in relation to homosexuality on the megathread - thanks.

verbumdei

Benny_Cake wrote: »

Folks, feel free to discuss Evangelii Gaudium here but let's leave discussion in relation to homosexuality on the megathread - thanks.

Hi, Just to be clear on those 2 topics. There has been a lot of discussion all over the media about how the Pope is not focused on those topics. However when he does focus on them the media does not report it.

I don't think there is much more to add on the 2 topics they are what they are and the Catholic Church's teaching is what it is. I am also not getting into a debate on them.

Peregrinus

I would just point out the passage verbumdei quotes doesn’t actually mention homosexuality at all. It does quote from a pastoral letter of the US bishops on ministry to homosexual people, but the passage quoted doesn’t deal with homosexuality; it deals with the existence of objective moral norms, and the question of whether maintaining that moral norms exist can be seen as interfering with individual freedom. This, obviously, has a much wider relevance than just the matter of homosexuality, and straining to read this passage as a reaffirmation of Catholic teaching on homosexuality is perhaps the kind of imbalanced reading and preaching that Pope Francis has been warning against.

The core of this encyclical is Chapter 3: the Proclamation of the Gospel. This particular passage occurs in Chapter 2, which sets the context in which we proclaim the gospel, and mentions a number of challenges that we face - the economy of exclusion, the idolatry of money, religious persecution, etc. One of the challenges mentioned is secularisation and the attempt to marginalise questions of faith in the public square, and that’s the paragraph which verbumdei quotes. It’s true that the paragraph employs a phrase taken from the US guidance on the care of homosexual persons, but the phrase borrowed has nothing to do with homosexuality, and it doesn’t turn the pope’s point into a point about homosexuality. It’s very clearly a point about secularism.

Similarly, in paragraph 66 of the Encyclical the Pope quotes from a pastoral letter of the French bishops on same-sex marriage, but the passage he chooses doesn’t say anything about same-sex marriage, that not being the point the pope is trying to make.

I’m not suggesting that the Pope is about to depart from conventional Catholic teaching on homosexuality or same-sex marriage or abortion; I doubt very much that he is. But he has very clearly set his face against attempts to present Catholic teaching as revolving principally around such issues. And, no offence, but I think verbumdei is trying to read this encyclical in a way which is the opposite of that intended by the author

I suggest that the whole of this encyclical should be read in the light of the first section, the theme of which is that “the joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus". This is an encyclical about encountering and sharing joy. In so far as it points to a problem, the problem is not homosexuality or same-sex marriage, or even secularism or materialism or greed. It’s that “there are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter”. Note that word “seems”; he’s not saying that Christianity is joyless; just that we sometimes make it appear so. And I think placing the negative proscriptions that emerge from Christian moral thought front and centre in our presentation of the Gospel is part of that. I think the Pope thinks that too.