Who Cares What the Pope Says?
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I do not get up in the morning wondering what the pope is thinking or hoping he'll tell me what to think. I know my responsibilities in life and, however poorly, I get up each day to try and fulfill them without caring a whit for what the pope thinks of them, of me, or of much else besides. But it seems I am in a minority.
How things have changed in little over a century. Until the reign of Leo XIII (1878-1903) most Catholics in Italy itself had little idea even of the name of the pope, let alone any significant contact with him. That was exactly right, and exactly what we should return to today. The cult of personality that has developed around the pope over the last century is deeply unhealthy and unhelpful, and for the first time in history it comes very close to being an actual expression of a previously bogus piece of Protestant propaganda: papolatry.
The pope is not a demiurge. He is a human being. That is all. He has select and limited responsibility for keeping the unity of the Church, and the orthodoxy of her faith, intact, and that is it. His views on anything else are otiose and they need not be sought in the first place. The faith is not about him: it is about Christ. Has every Catholic in the world so perfected her relationship with Christ that she now has the luxury of fixating on the pope's latest outburst?
Continued Here.
I do not get up in the morning wondering what the pope is thinking or hoping he'll tell me what to think. I know my responsibilities in life and, however poorly, I get up each day to try and fulfill them without caring a whit for what the pope thinks of them, of me, or of much else besides. But it seems I am in a minority.
How things have changed in little over a century. Until the reign of Leo XIII (1878-1903) most Catholics in Italy itself had little idea even of the name of the pope, let alone any significant contact with him. That was exactly right, and exactly what we should return to today. The cult of personality that has developed around the pope over the last century is deeply unhealthy and unhelpful, and for the first time in history it comes very close to being an actual expression of a previously bogus piece of Protestant propaganda: papolatry.
The pope is not a demiurge. He is a human being. That is all. He has select and limited responsibility for keeping the unity of the Church, and the orthodoxy of her faith, intact, and that is it. His views on anything else are otiose and they need not be sought in the first place. The faith is not about him: it is about Christ. Has every Catholic in the world so perfected her relationship with Christ that she now has the luxury of fixating on the pope's latest outburst?
Continued Here.