Tag Archives: Pope Francis

Pope Francis and Speaker Boehner

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Is it a coincidence that Speaker John Boehner announced his resignation the morning after his invited guest, Pope Francis, spoke to a joint session of Congress?

Pope Francis and John Boehner - Joint Session of Congress

Pope Francis and John Boehner – Joint Session of Congress

Before his address to Congress yesterday Pope Francis turned to the two former altar boys behind him on the dais.  He looked quickly at Vice President Joe Biden; he looked much longer into the eyes of his host, Speaker John Boehner. It was warm but it also seemed like something else – a moment between a priest and penitent?

The Speaker wiped his eyes, as any faithful Catholic would be prone to do.  He cried, as he often does, but this time as if to ask in humility, “Who am I, John Boehner, a mere altar boy, to share this powerful platform with the Holy Father? I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.”

One had to ponder Mr. Boehner’s inner turmoil listening to the Pope’s words gently reprimand leaders who forget the Golden Rule, push aside the poor, ignore or criminalize immigrants and migrants, prefer aggression to dialogue, ignore the common good for private gain, put people on death row, and refuse to act responsibly on climate change.

What do you do sitting behind the Pope?

You take out your handkerchief at the great privilege of hosting the Pontiff and the honor of being in his presence, but perhaps also because you recognize the prevalence of sin, as in Francis’ quotation from Thomas Merton (see quotation below) or his choice of the socialist Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement as one of four Americans to emulate.  And, if you haven’t already done so in your private time with the merciful Pope Francis, you might go to confession, repent, and do penance.

This morning John Boehner announced his resignation as Speaker of the House at the end of October. Preparing to speak to the United Nations in New York, one can imagine Pope Francis blessing John while lamenting Boehner’s colleagues’ loud cheering, wondering whether anyone but Joe and Johnny was paying attention the day before.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Sept. 25, 2015

Quote from Pope Francis commendation of Thomas Merton as an American example to follow:

A century ago, at the beginning of the Great War, which Pope Benedict XV termed a “pointless slaughter”, another notable American was born: the Cistercian monk Thomas Merton. He remains a source of spiritual inspiration and a guide for many people. In his autobiography he wrote: “I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God, and yet hating him; born to love him, living instead in fear of hopeless self-contradictory hungers”. Merton was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.

[Bold print added for emphasis by Views from the Edge]

Our Common Home: Pope Francis and Bernie Sanders

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Pope Francis’s Encyclical Laudato Si‘: On Care for Our Common Home has caught the world’s attention. (Scroll down for the Encyclical Letter’s opening paragraphs.)

In our view, Pope Francis and Bill McKibben of 350.org are prophetic figures, i.e., they seem to utter a Word not totally their own. So does Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, VT), who is, not by accident, Bill McKibben’s close friend from Vermont, and the ONLY candidate to place climate change action among the top priorites of his presidential campaign. He speaks boldly, and his message echoes the cry of Luudato Si‘ for action now for the sake of the planet. There is no obfuscation.

“The United States must lead the world in tackling climate change, if we are to make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from polluting fossil fuels, and towards energy efficiency and sustainability.” – Excerpt from Sen. Bernie Sanders’s campaign priority on Climate Change and the Environment.

Religion, science, and politics each deal with reality, superstition, and obfuscation. The Pope’s call for global action requires political legs to make it walk. Political engagement is not optional at this moment in the history of planetary development. In that regard, no other presidential candidate is so clear on climate change and sustainability as Bernie Sanders. No other candidate speaks with such passionate conviction or knowledge. Pope Francis is a man of God, a modern John the Baptizer appearing in the wilderness, following the lead of Bill McKibben, the scientific consensus, and The Pontifical Academy of Sciences’s research and counsel.

The Pope’s position on nature, born of a more ancient wisdom than the mechanistic “man over nature” view of postindustrial society, is thoroughly catholic, the0logically classical, and steeped in scientific research.  “Man over nature” and “history over nature” are figments of our imagination. Nature always wins. We ARE nature and nature is us.

1. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.[1]

2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

[1] Canticle of the Creatures, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, New York-London-Manila, 1999, 113-114.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN. July 28, 2015

Verse – I’m Still a Presbyterian

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I have made a new “Friend” on my FaceBook:
It is Francis, the Pope–you can look;
But he never will “Comment”,
Or will “Like” what I present,
He just Pronounces and quotes the Good Book.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, July 14, 2015

Pope Francis on Spiritual Alzheimer’s

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Click HERE for Pope Francis’s December 22, 2014 message. God bless Pope Francis! Let all the people – and the Curia – say “Amen!”

Cuba – Finally a Breakthrough

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Goliath’s bullying is almost over. After 53 years, by the good offices of Pope Francis and Canada, and  by order of U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro, the U.S.A. and Cuba are taking steps to normalize relations. At long last, Cuba and we will be neighbors again.

FLASHBACK:

It’s later afternoon in 1979. A 37-year-old minister/college pastor from Wooster, Ohio is mixing with other guests from all over the world at a social hour on the veranda of the residence of the Rev. Dr. Jose Arce Martinez, Dean of the ecumenical Protestant seminary in Matanzas, Cuba.

Thirteen years earlier, the young minister, then a seminarian, had been sent by the City of Chicago Chapter of the Experiment in International Living to live for three months in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. There he had participated in the Christian-Marxist Dialogue founded by Czech theologian and former Princeton Theological Seminary Professor of Theology Josef Hromadka. In Bratislava he had lived with the Schulz family.Mr. and Mrs. Schulz were employed by the Department of Economics and the Department of Justice. Pan (Mr.) Schulz, after welcoming him to their home with a shot of Slivovitz (plum brandy), had said with a a smile, “I’m a whole lot Marxist…but still a little bit Lutheran.”

The 75 international guests at the Matanzas seminary are Christian theologians, bishops, and pastors from Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, Peru, the U.S.S.R, East and West Germany, France, and the U.S.A. They’ve been convened at the invitation of the seminary with the consent of the government of Cuba following the Pope’s conference on human development at Puebla, Mexico.

Earlier that day the guests had stood on the lonely beach of Playa Girón, site of the Bay of Pigs invasion, where the air was still heavy from the deaths of the CIA-led invasion of Cuba that had failed. Being at Playa Playa Girón had been chilling. A Cuban Pentecostal minister who lost a leg in the battle at Playa Girón explained the scene of the American invasion to his North America visitor.

That afternoon, they return to the seminary for the social hour where they are joined by a small number of members of the Cuba government. The young minister engages in a conversation with someone named Raúl who asks him what it means to him to be a Christian. He answers that to be a Christian is to be a disciple of Jesus, and that to be a disciple of Jesus means to give oneself to the Kingdom of God. He tells Raul that Marx’s classless society is borrowed from Jesus’s teaching and that he shares that vision.

Raúl smiles and says that they will have to see whether it is of God or of Man that it comes. Only time will tell. They shake hands as brothers in a common cause to end human misery and agree that only time will tell.

Today Raúl Castro and Barack Obama agreed to pursue normal relations between little David and the giant Goliath.

Thanks you, Barack. Thank you, Raúl. Thank you, Canada. Thank you, Pope Francis. Thank you, God!

 

It’s all there in the Christmas story

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Pope Francis on Economics

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POPE FRANCIS' GENERAL AUDIENCE

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.” – Pope Francis, TIME Person of the Year, Nov. 29, 2013

The economic disciples of Ayn Rand’s “virtue of selfishness” – many of whom attend Mass or other Christian worship services on Sunday only to act on Monday as though they never had – have met their match in Time‘s Man of the Year. Economics is a spiritual matter – first, last, and always. Thank you, Pope Francis for speaking the truth with clarity.

Glocks in the State Capitol Building

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Glock owner at State Capitol hearing. Photo by David Joles, StarTribune.

Glock owner at State Capitol hearing. Photo by David Joles, StarTribune.

Not in my worst nightmares did I think I’d see the day.

This morning’s Star Tribune front page “Debate Triggers Show of Weapons” and the accompanying photographs are chilling. There are two photos. In one a young man with a loaded Glock strapped to his waist stands with arms folded, looking defiantly smug while he waits to testify about before a legislative committee in the Minnesota State Capitol. In the other two men sit at the hearing table with microphones. One reads from a manuscript; the other covers his face with his left hand as though he can’t believe they’re even discussing this.

I identify with the man with the hand covering his face. I don’t understand the man who brought the .40-caliber Glock to the hearing loaded with 15 rounds. Why would he do that?

“You have to be your own hero on your own white horse” is the way he explained it. He feels safer with his Glock.

Put next to that the statement of Pope Francis, as reported by Vatican Radio: “Faith and violence are incompatible.”

The Pope was preaching on the exact text often used by those who believe that violence and division are compatible with Christian faith. The text is Luke 12:51 in which Jesus asks, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” The division, as interpreted by the Pontiff, is between living for yourself or living in the light of God. Here are Francis’ words:

“The word of the Gospel does not authorize the use of force to spread the faith. It is just the opposite: the true strength of the Christian is the power of truth and love, which leads to the renunciation of all violence. Faith and violence are incompatible”.

The halls of a legislature are intended to be sacred spaces where differences are resolved for the sake of the greater good, where my self-interest and your self-interest, as they are perceived by elected representatives, are expressed and resolved peacefully without intimidation. The chambers of representative democracy are the last place where any legislator or innocent visitor to the State Capitol should face the explicit or implicit intimidation of someone with a Glock.

Faith and violence are incompatible… so are democracy and intimidation.