Marc Barnes is explaining how to become more "fully alive and fully ourselves" and how Pope Francis is leading the way:
Our dear Pope calls himself a “son of the Church” and thereby reveals a delicious paradox. Living out the commands of the Church is an obedience so radical that it smacks of disobedience. Taking the
Church as Holy Mother is an act of humble submission so out-of-place that it tastes of revolution. We find ourselves looking for the rule Francis is breaking, sniffing for the tradition he is flouting, for surely such a splay of out-there love — such a big, fat, kiss-the-diseased kind of warmth — is rebellion? And we are right, The Huffington Post is right, the look-dad-a-rulebreaker!impulse is absolutely right — but it is because the Church is a rebellion, and Francis is a son of the Church. He says…
“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: “Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?” We must always consider the person.
…and our noses twitch like bloodhounds, looking for the “up-yours,” only to find a servitude to the demands of the Church who is the damn revolution, who goes so far as to reject all considerations of homosexuality or heterosexuality as possibly delivering identity:
The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation. Every one living on the face of the earth has personal problems and difficulties, but challenges to growth, strengths, talents and gifts as well. Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a “heterosexual” or a “homosexual” and insists that every person has a fundamental Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life. (Letter, Oct. 1986)
The immense value of Pope Francis has been a radical obedience to and an artistic expression of the Catholic Church. The immense of value of this is that it has made Americans look all sorts of stupid.
The language of our current culture is limited. It is too small to fit a man like Francis. We have no readily available vocabulary to discuss Catholicism, and it’s about time we stopped pretending otherwise. We are utterly snapped in a dichotomy of the liberal and the conservative, the left and the right, our ideology and its established counter-ideology — what can we do with a man who obeys a higher order?
Church as Holy Mother is an act of humble submission so out-of-place that it tastes of revolution. We find ourselves looking for the rule Francis is breaking, sniffing for the tradition he is flouting, for surely such a splay of out-there love — such a big, fat, kiss-the-diseased kind of warmth — is rebellion? And we are right, The Huffington Post is right, the look-dad-a-rulebreaker!impulse is absolutely right — but it is because the Church is a rebellion, and Francis is a son of the Church. He says…You should read the whole thing. If not to enhance your Catholic faith, then to better understand the Catholic faith.
Well worth your time.
