Who offers the best critique of the Catholic Church?
It’s none other than Pope Francis himself. He never misses an opportunity to
punch holes in the ivory towers in the church. He calls a spade a spade and
comes down on the misdemeanors and felonies in the church.
His apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium
(The Joy of Gospel) is a good example of pointing out the improprieties in the
church.
Last week, he made a scathing attack on many people
who “claim to be in the Church, but have only one foot inside”, while the rest
remains “outside”. In fact, he characterized such people into three forms:
Uniformists, alternativists and advantagists. He particularly lambasted
advantagists in the church who run their scams under the table.
Advantagists run scams under the table:
The group of advantagists includes those who
“look for advantages”. They go to Church but for personal advantage, and wind
up conducting business in the Church. These are the swindlers, who have also
been around since the very start — such as Simon the magician, Anania e
Saffira, who “took advantage of the Church for their own profit”.
Modernizing the discourse, Pope Francis
denounced those characters of the type often found “in community or diocesan
parishes, and in religious congregations”, disguising themselves as
“benefactors of the Church”. We’ve seen many of them, he said, essentially
“parading about as benefactors and in the end, under the table, running their scams”.
They too, obviously, don’t believe sense the Church as mother.
Alternativists put conditions and rent the Church:
On the alternativists, the Pope categorized
them among those who think, “I’ll enter the Church, but with this idea, with
this ideology”. They propose conditions “and their membership in the Church is
thereby partial”. They too have one foot outside the Church; they’re renting
the Church but don’t really experience it; and they too have been present from
the very outset of evangelical preaching, as testified by “the agnostics, whom
the Apostle John harshly lambasted: “We are... yes, yes... we are Catholics,
but with these ideas’”. They seek an alternative, because they don’t share the
common experience of the Church.
Uniformists are rigid and confuse Jesus’ teaching:
‘Uniformists’ are rigid people who want
everyone to be equals in the Church or ‘uniformize’ everything. These people
have been present from “the very beginning”, that is, from “when the Holy
Spirit willed that the pagans be allowed to enter the Church”, recalled the
Pope, referring to the many who demanded that pagans become Hebrews before they
could join the Church.
This shows that uniformity goes hand in hand
with rigidity; and it was not without reason that Pope Francis described these
Christians as “rigid”, because “they don’t have the freedom that the Holy
Spirit bestows. And they confuse what Jesus preached in the Gospel [with] their
doctrine of equality”, although Jesus never wanted his Church to be rigid.
Therefore, because of their attitude, they don’t enter the Church. They call
themselves Christians, they call themselves Catholics, but their rigid attitude
distances them from the Church.
Church is not for doing business for your benefit:
But Christ’s message is quite different: to
all these types, the Pontiff continued, Jesus says that “the Church isn’t
rigid, it’s free! In the Church there are many charisms, there’s great
diversity in people and in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says: in the
Church you must give your heart to the Gospel, to what the Lord has taught, and
never have an alternative for yourself! The Lord tells us: if you want to enter
the Church”, do so “for love, to give all, all your heart and not for doing
business for your benefit”. Indeed, “the Church is not a house for rent” for
all those who “want to do as they please”; on the contrary, “it is a home to
live in”.
