I urge you to read the entire piece over at First Things.
I’ll throw you some highlights:
Chaput writes that Lumen Fidei, while being Pope Francis’ first encyclical, was actually Pope Benedict’s final encyclical with a few flourishes by Francis. Chaput writes:
The rich quality of Lumen Fidei stands in unhappy contrast to every other document of the Francis tenure.
Ouch. True but ouch.
It becomes hard to avoid the conclusion that an undercurrent of resentment is one of the distinguishing and most regrettable marks of the Francis pontificate. Regrettable, because it damages the dignity of the petrine office. Regrettable, because it creates critics and enemies, rather than reconciling them. Regrettable, because it undercuts every pontificate’s central task: providing a credible, faithful source of Catholic unity. And the advisers, apologists, and ghostwriters who surround this pontificate have been instrumental in adding to the problem.
Chaput then turns to Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández. He agrees with Spanish priest and theologian Jose Granados that Fernandez’ view of Catholicism’s goal are essentially materialist, rather than spiritual.
Granados goes on to observe that Fernández, “in describing charity, insists that its main external manifestation is to help our neighbors improve their material needs.” But for the Christian, though a person’s material needs are important, they’re not charity’s primary focus. Authentic charity, and its expression in mercy, consists of “helping [others] to live in union with God, which also includes external acts like fraternal correction.” Moreover, “for Aquinas, the virtue of obedience, inasmuch as through it we offer our will to God, is greater than all the moral virtues, including mercy.” We rightly feel compassion for persons locked in sinful situations. But compassion is not a license to minimize, or excuse, or bless the destructive behaviors involved therein.
I completely agree. (As if Chaput needs a chubby blogger to agree with him.) I think too many forget that we serve the poor to help us and help the poor. It is not merely the exchange of the material good, it is the spiritual connection that truly matters.
Chaput concludes:
Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century Catholic mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, is often remembered for his comment that “the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” The human heart is our counterbalance to the brutality of cold logic and truth without love. But it is not infallible. And feelings—including compassion—when they become sovereign in the discernment of moral good and evil, can be dangerously flawed guides. No “new paradigm” or “development of doctrine” can result in an alibi for sin in the light of God’s Word and the wisdom of the Church’s long experience.
The heart does indeed have its reasons. And sometimes they’re wrong.
Chaput is brilliant and good. Please read the entire thing at First Things.
March 23, 2024 at 11:40 am
After all these years with Pope Francis my feelings have been up and down about what is happening to our Church. At first it really upset me how many Catholics would criticize and attack the Pope. Listening to his critics there was nothing he could do that they would be deemed as right. Really. He could do no right. Then as more and more controversies concerning his off the cuff remarks, attacks on the TLM, his apparent disdain for American Catholics I found myself distancing myself from him. Not liking him and not defending him anymore. I found that I hated being like this against the leader of our Church, a man placed there to lead our Lords Church. So now I’m using a different tactic. Whenever he says or does something that has to be re’interpreted’ by the vatican or whom ever I refrain from offering my opinion on it. I keep my mouth zipped lest I say something I shouldn’t and just say a prayer for him. That’s it. I ask God to work with the Pope and guide him. He needs guidance as much as we all do for he is a human being and then I leave it up to God to make things work.
I was tired of criticizing. I was tired seeing him in a bad light. Now, to me, he’s just a man who holds the highest office in the Church and has an extraordinary job to do and he needs our prayers. Period.