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| Pope Francis (Source: Casa Rosada) |
About recognizing homosexuals who are seeking God, Francis quipped: "Who am I to judge?"
He takes selfies with parishioners.
He mingles with ordinary people, and he goes out of his way to make himself as ordinary as possible.
Dispensing with the luxurious pomp and circumstance, this pope makes his own food and seeks to live as modest a life as possible. He even pays his own hotel tab.
Not only that, the Argentinian of Italian descent has suggested that divorced people should be permitted to receive communion once again.
He might want to permit allowing priests to marry, since forced celibacy is a modern teaching, at least compared to the Biblical record, which permitted priests in the Old Testament to marry, and the first "Pope" per Catholic Tradition was also married.
Still, the movement toward divorced individuals is a massive deviation from Catholic teaching but a welcome one. While staunch traditionalists will argue that no one should take Communion in an unworthy manner, thus meaning that anyone with sin in their hearts or in their lives cannot partake, the Bible clearly speaks otherwise:
"Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." (1 Corinthians 11: 27)
The whole context suggests that "unworthily" has nothing to do with sin in our hearts or in our lives, but rather the manner in which people are eating the Holy Communion:
"21For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. 22What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not." (1 Corinthians 11: 21-22)
Instead of recognize what Jesus did, as represented in His broken body and blood shed for us, the Corinthians were treating the Communion as a common event to feast and get drunk.
The Communion represents Jesus' body broken for us, in which we are healed. Through His blood we recognize that our sins are forgiven, blood which speaks better things than the blood of Abel: redemption, favor, forgiveness, blessings!
Francis should be teaching about all that Jesus has done for us, and continues to do for us, living in and through us.
Yet for all his outreach, cleaning the feet of prisoners and apologizing early for the pedophilia scandals of the Catholic church, for his modern sensibility of reaching out to the press and the public through social media and open interview with journalists, frankly, Francis is still not liberal enough.
One example is the process of beatification then canonization of specific individuals into sainthood. This is ridiculous. Every man and woman who believes on the Lord Jesus is saved (Romans 10: 9)
The escalation of sainthood is not liberal enough either. Every one of us who believe in Jesus is a saint!
Not only should Francis dispense with these man-made traditions which withhold individual Christians from receiving Holy Communion, not only should he invite all manner of flesh to receive the blessed grace of the Living God, but to further the Truth of the Gospel, he needs to give up this man-made religious bureaucracy.
Jesus instructed His disciples on earth to call no one Master and one Father:
"But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. 9And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 10Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ." (Matthew 23: 9-10)
If Pope Francis wants to fulfill the mission of the Gospel, he should not only give up the luxury and glory of the Papacy, but give up being Pope and put an end to this religious cult of personality which attaches individuals to look up to a political/religious figurehead instead of resting in the grace and peace of the one Master, Jesus! and His Father:
"17Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. 18Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her." (John 20: 17-18)
Jesus did not come to the earth to set up another religion or a state of traditions, complete with human bureaucracy, but to give us His Life and standing (John 10: 10; 1 John 4: 17)
He also serves us to this day as our High Priest. Not a man in Rome, but the Perfect Man at the Father's right hand serves on our behalf and invites us to receive His grace in time of need
So, where did this pattern of human hierarchy come from?
Catholics point to this passage:
"And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16: 18)
Simon's name "Peter" means "detached rock", and the word "rock" translates the word "petra", which speaks of connected rocks, or boulder, or a projecting cliff.
In other words, Peter was a chip off the old block, so to speak.
Jesus never intended for Peter or his successors to be the leaders of a universal church.
Jesus is the head of the Church:
"22And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." (Ephesians 1: 22-23)
and
"18And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence." (Colossians 1: 18)
Could it be any clearer? We are called to a person, Jesus! Not to temporal leaders, and certainly not to the Pope in Rome.
Francis is just not liberal enough. Putting away some of the elitist trappings is a start. If Francis really wanted to reveal the goodness of Jesus in our lives, he would institute the systematic dismantling of the Roman Catholic Church, a global organization whose traditions do not manifest the fullness of Christ and Him Crucified, because the traditions of men ("Touch not, taste not, handle not"--- Colossians 2: 21) simply do not and never can.
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