How should I respond when a fellow Catholic tells me that the pope is changing doctrine?
I will admit, initially I struggled to accept Pope Francis because of my perception of his being liberal. Then, I decided I would listen to him speak with an objective mind while trying to understand what positive concepts he was trying to convey. Immediately, I felt ashamed because my parents taught me better than that. They taught me to humbly respect the priest and that we should never talk bad about a priest. Rather, we should pray for priests.
There’s a part in Exodus that speaks of Aaron and Hurr raising the arms of Moses. While his arms are raised, the battle is being won; when his arms fall, because Aaron and Hurr become tired, the battle is being lost. I believe this is a precursor for us to “hold up the arms of our priests”.
Back to “the pope changing doctrine”… firstly, we seem to jump to conclusions before we even know the facts. It is my understanding that it is not my responsibility to challenge his decisions. There are bishops in certain positions whose responsibility is to assist the pope or correct him or guide him (I believe). Furthermore, when I first audaciously judged the pope a few months back, I checked if my assumption was factual and it was not. The media had misled me.
Secondly, assuming that the pope does in fact do something wrong, like fathering a son for example, I believe such would be an opportunity for me to instead of judge him, to look into my soul and examine my conscience. This is an opportunity for me to judge myself and check how I am doing as a Catholic Christian. The scripture that comes to mind is the one regarding the splinter in my neighbor’s eye and the beam in mine. I find that I am so very far from holiness when I look into my lack of virtue; but until then, I assume a self-righteous attitude as if I’m holy when I look at the behavior of others. I do get a bit of satisfaction when I believe I have the right perspective on what my role is when the priest gets attacked regardless whether innocent of guilty.
Thirdly, I like to think that maybe God just might be using this opportunity to allow such things to happen for the greater good. By this I mean that perhaps God is counting on us to continue striving for holiness while allowing a priest to stray or a pope to seemingly – or in fact – mention that maybe to allow priests to marry or a homosexual priest to be placed in a questionable position of authority. By no means do I know what Almighty God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit thinks, but what if He is counting on you and me to remain steadfast in our faith while He goes in mysterious ways to gather a “lost sheep”. I actually am in awe of this possibility and just have to shake my head in amazement in the depth of God’s love and the length He will go to save his people. Every human being is very loved by God. If He can show me the Mercy He has shown me and continues to love me, I’m happy that He will attempt in ways I might not understand or agree with to save someone else who is very likely not quite as wretched as me.
The world doesn’t miss an opportunity to bash the Church. How I wish we would defend our Church within the Church. It is my prayer that this might encourage one person to pray for the Church, the priest, the bishop, the pope, the sinner, instead of joining the world to destroy it.
“PRAY FOR US SINNERS”