On Friday, La Civiltà Cattolica published remarks that Pope Francis made in November during a meeting with the leaders of mens religious orders. The pontiff once again blasted those who stick to extreme ideology and attacked fundamentalism for being blind to reality.
It is not a good strategy to be at the center of a sphere, the Pope stated. To understand we ought to move around, to see reality from various viewpoints. We ought to get used to thinking.
Pope Francis referred to a letter written by Father Pedro Arrupe in which he spoke of poverty and how some time of real contact with the poor is necessary. The pontiff believes that if people who have much spend time with those who are poor, theyll be more sympathetic to their plight and be more understanding. Instead of believing that the poor are mere bottom-feeders who are lazy, wealthy conservatives would grow hearts and change their tune if they actually spent time with those who struggle in poverty.
This is really very important to me: the need to become acquainted with reality by experience, to spend time walking on the periphery in order really to become acquainted with the reality and life experiences of people, Pope Francis continued. If this does not happen we then run the risk of being abstract ideologists or fundamentalists, which is not healthy.
In October, Pope Francis called ideological Christianity an illness that needs to be more in line with the teachings of Jesus.
In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness, the pontiff declared during a daily Mass. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought
For this reason Jesus said to them: You have taken away the key of knowledge. The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?
Pope Francis has even criticized the superior complex that conservative Christians demonstrate on a daily basis. In front of an audience in St. Peters Square last month, the pontiff said that Christians shouldnt act superior to others because:
God reveals himself not as one who stands above and who dominates the universe, but as He who lowers himself. It means that to be like Him, we do not have to place ourselves above the others, but come down, come down and serve them, become small among the small, and poor among the poor.
