Pope, in First Homily, Says Church Should Focus on Gospels.

[elleng]

Source: nyt/reuters

Pope Francis appealed to the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday not to forget its primary mission of proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ or risk being reduced to what he called "a compassionate NGO".

The Argentinian pope, speaking in Italian without notes in his first public Mass since his election on Wednesday, said the Church should shun worldliness and be more focused on the Gospels.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/03/14/world/europe/14reuters-pope-homily.html?hp&_r=0

[sangsaran]

1. Compassionate?

Did I miss the part where they stopped opposing human rights?

[HuckleB]

8. +1

[glinda]

2. Woops! Was afraid of that. He took the Evangelicizing route and not the actions route so far....

[yellowcanine]

4. The "gospels" includes Matthew 5 (Sermon on the Mount)

Actually the Gospels are more about works than evangelism. In any case, Jesus didn't separate the two.

[glinda]

13. That is quite informative. Thanks!

I was more responding to the "compassionate NGO" comparison.

[JDPriestly]

3. And what does he think the Gospels say?

I don't remember and have never been able to find a passage claiming that Jesus disapproved of homosexuals. Paul maybe, but not Jesus. And I have never understood why Paul's writings are viewed by Christians as equal to the writings about Jesus' teachings. Paul was a mystic, but he wasn't Jesus. Yet Paul's writings are quoted as if Paul was channeling Jesus. The two never met as far as I know. Same for other authors of the Epistles, the Letters.

Why? Why? Why did the Christian Church mess around with the message of Jesus?

[Macoy51]

14. You Are Correct

You are correct, they never met. (in life at least) Paul/Saul persecuted Christians after the time of Jesus’ death. He traveled from city to city, having people put to death for being Christian. Paul converted to Christianity after meeting with the spirit of Christ on the road to Damascus. (The original “come to Jesus meeting”).

While I have the upmost respect for Paul, he is not Christ. Christ CLEARLY told us to love one another as he loved us. And he loves all of us, even those “other” people. So that means, as a Christian, I have to love everyone, even the gay.


Macoy

[JDPriestly]

18. I agree, and I'm a Unitarian.

One of the reasons that I left a Protestant church to become a Unitarian was that the Protestant church was moving toward this crazy, ignorant form of Fundamentalism and know-it-allism that is now considered to be the norm among Protestants. It's such a shame.

[LiberalFighter]

21. Paul was preaching his own version of a religion.

The disciples of Jesus were at odds with what Paul was doing.

In Christ or Paul?, by Rev. V.A. Holmes-Gore:

"Let the reader contrast the true Christian standard with that of Paul and he will see the terrible betrayal of all that the Master taught. . . . For the surest way to betray a great Teacher is to misrepresent his message. . . . That is what Paul and his followers did, and because the Church has followed Paul in his error it has failed lamentably to redeem the world. . . . The teachings given by the blessed Master Christ, which the disciples John and Peter and James, the brother of the Master, tried in vain to defend and preserve intact were as utterly opposed to the Pauline Gospel as the light is opposed to the darkness."

The great theologian Soren Kierkegaard, in The Journals:

"In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ The Atoner. What Martin Luther, in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ. Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down, making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ"

The brilliant theologian Ernest Renan, in his book Saint Paul:

"True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology."

IMO all of the writings by Paul should be thrown out. There are at least 13 of them which would leave at most 14 NT books.

[yellowcanine]

16. Well it says this in Matthew 19:12

"For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others--and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

Some biblical scholars maintain that this is a non literal interpretation of eunuch referring to sexual minorities in general and possibly to gays in particular. This particular interpretation is supported by the Acts 8 account of the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch by Philip. The message seems to be that sexual and racial minorities were accepted as Christian - "Ethiopian" was often a euphemism for "black" in literature of the era when the NT was written and "eunuch" appears to have sometimes been a euphemism for "gay."

[JDPriestly]

17. Yes. Thanks. Wish this were wider understood.

[Macoy51]

20. Learn the New Testament

I love getting in to discussions with anti-gay religious people. I am sure I have read the bible through more times then any of them and I use Jesus’ very words to knock down their arguments. When they say something out of context, I remind them of what Jesus said in the paragraph before and after their “quote”. Botton line, Jesus says "love every one", not love every one you like.

They tend to get very flustered when you know more about the bible than they do. Bonus points to me for being calm and understanding of thier lack of knowlege.


Macoy

[JDPriestly]

24. Thanks.

[hrmjustin]

26. When the canon of the New testament was set in the 4th century and they decided to go with

Paul because they agreed with his view of Jesus Christ. They agreed that Jesus was crucified, died,and was buried. They also believed when he died he took on the sins of the world and by his resurrection we are free. That was Paul's interpretation and most of the Christians throughout history. I also agree with it. Paul did some great work but his views on gays, women, and sex are not mine.

[lovuian]

5. I thought this was shocking

from the article

"When we walk without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we proclaim Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly," he said.

"We may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, all of this, but we are not disciples of the Lord," he said.

is this an admission

[yellowcanine]

15. Could be taken several ways I guess.

My hope is (and this is as a Christian but not a Catholic) that he means that we need to suffer as Christ suffered with and for the oppressed - that discipleship comes at a cost and is not just happy talk. On the other hand, if he is downplaying the significance of the social ministry of Jesus that would be a disappointment.

[hrmjustin]

27. Jesus himself said we must all take up our cross.

I take to mean that Jesus was not just a good man but the savior and the church must walk with Christ with that cross and take up our own.

[Arugula Latte]

6. Translation: Keep shoving that Bronze Age mythology down people's throats.

Got it.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. The Gospels don't have any anti gay crap, and this Francis has spent much time producing anti

gay materials that apparently he feels Jesus stupidly left out of his sermons. Such casual hypocrisy and arrogance he displays. His own focus has always been on the flaws he sees in his neighbors, that has been his definitive crusade in life, attacking other people.
If the RCC's recent history was held by a sandwich shop or a toy store chain, the entire world would boycott them.

[snooper2]

9. I like "Eat Grits with Jesus"

This will get ya swingin'

[olddad56]

10. I know the priests should focus on something other than little boys.

[Squinch]

11. Can I say, "Lighten up, Francis" yet? Too soon?

[Nye Bevan]

12. He should drop the Readings from the Old Testament from Mass.

They always bored the living shit out of me when I was dragged to church every Sunday as a kid.

[Paulie]

19. But they begat the bagats

Son of bagat.

[ucrdem]

22. That's crossed my mind many a time.

Nothing against the OT but it seems like a lot less per service would do the job and a little more NT could only help. Just about everything in the OT is irrelevant in any meaningful way to the RCC, including the ballyhooed ten commandments, maybe four of which -- love God, honor the sabbath, love thy neighbor, don't covet his wife -- get serious traction in RC theology.

I get why the OT is still there, more or less, and in fact Catholics have 11 more OT books than Protestants (46 Catholic books, inc. 4 doubles, vs. 39 Protestant books), but liturgically most are at so many removes from reality that they might as well still be in latin. Praying for the ransom of Israel after 1946 for example doesn't even make sense as a metaphor. JMHO and if any of this is grossly insensitive I apologize and will gladly self-delete.

In any case I don't see it happening anytime soon, oh well. Rec.

[hrmjustin]

28. I wish the Episcopal Church would get rid of them too.

When they go through all of those this one begat that one, and then all the names you can't pronounce or remember. Yes I agree lets just have one reading from the NT and the gospel reading.

[kelliekat44]

23. I'm glad he is staying away from the Old Testament written by masogonist, bigotted men in the name o

GOP have little attraction to the Gospels but they sure love the Pauline letters and the, Old and I do mean Old, Testament.

[Trascoli]

25. the gospels are pretty clear on giving to the poor...

a rich man will go to hell...

let's see what happens

[MFrohike]

29. It would be a dream come true

I would rather see the church living the Gospels rather than following Paul's obsession with his own problems. Paul and his disciple Augustine need to be either lost or used as cautionary tales. Either way, they are really the wrong people on whom to base the church.