The 'Dictatorship of Relativism' Has Arrived - Crisis Magazine

The 'Dictatorship of Relativism' Has Arrived - Crisis Magazine: At the beginning of the 2005 conclave, Pope Benedict XVI preached a now-famous homily condemning what he called the “dictatorship of relativism.” The newly-elected pontiff warned: “We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.” Benedict’s words elicited …

Pope at Angelus: Immaculate Conception encourages us on path of conversion

Pope at Audience: Love is mystical root of believer’s life Pope Francis reflects on the prayer of the early Church at the General Audience on Wednesday

A time of choosing: Conversion and discernment in the mind of Pope Francis

A time of choosing: Conversion and discernment in the mind of Pope Francis Posted on: 12th November 2020 |Author: Tim McEvoy Category: Church and Papacy Writing for The Way, Tim McEvoy explains why the idea of Pope Francis as the Church’s spiritual director is one to which he is particularly drawn. He uses Christus vivit, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation addressed ‘to young people and to the entire people of God’, to explore what conversion and discernment mean in the mind of Francis and, in particular, how they relate to one another. In his extraordinary decision to speak ‘to the city and to the world’ from St Peter’s Square at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Pope Francis pointed his listeners and viewers to an urgent call to conversion: You are calling on us to seize this time of trial as a time of choosing. It is not the time of your judgement, but of our judgement: a time to choose what matters and what passes away, a time to separate what is necessary from what is not. It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to you, Lord, and to others.[1] The image of Francis standing, frail and exposed, amid the dreary March rain and ambulance sirens of Rome in lockdown, is one that will stay with me for a very long time, and seemed to exemplify the closeness of this remarkable Pope to his people. At the darkest of times, he showed how the Church must stand, not aloof but in solidarity with others, holding out the hope of encountering grace and the Lord even from the cross of coronavirus. His papacy has been a model of that pastoral conversion ‘to show and live the way of mercy’ to which the Church has been called: drawing close to the people of God in the messy reality of their lives and getting his shoes dirty with the mud of the streets.[2] Austen Ivereigh is quite right to compare Francis’s style of governance, revealed in a unique way during the pandemic, to that of a spiritual director accompanying the Church and helping it to navigate through the complex global crisis of our times in all its manifestations.[3] Key to this navigation has been his astute discernment of spirits and his uncanny ability to point out the false consolations and temptations of the bad spirit. Discernment has not only been an important pastoral and formational need identified by Francis for the Church but it has shaped the processes of his pontificate, and indeed his life, in definitive ways, as many commentators have noted.[4] A synodal, journeying Church with Christ at its centre must be discerning at every level, individual and institutional, if it is not to get lost along the way, and is in need of continual reorientation and recentring. For Francis, the themes of conversion and discernment appear to be inextricably linked, and I would like briefly to explore something of this overlapping relationship in his thought, particularly as it appears in his latest apostolic exhortation, Christus vivit, and to trace its roots back to his grounding in the Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment. The word ‘roots’ has significance for Pope Francis in terms of how he views the world and the interconnected crises it currently faces, as has already been noted.[5] In an era of ‘liquid capitalism’, characterized by an ever more rapid pace of change and the loosening of traditional social, economic and political bonds, the image of roots conjures up neither artificial stability nor stubborn resistance to change but continued access to a deeper source of life and support. Francis the spiritual director reminds us that, just as for the individual making a retreat and reviewing his or her ‘faith history’, the roots of a mature society and its ability to grow in a healthy direction lie in its collective ability to remember, to know and to judge past events – its ‘historical memory’.[6] Memory plays a crucial role in discernment for Francis, as it did for Ignatius. To be wise and discerning involves, in some sense, being ‘memory keepers’, as he puts it.[7] It is interesting to note how Francis also uses the metaphor of roots in a discerning sense in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic and its graced opportunity for conversion. In his prophetic urbi et orbi he points out how the ‘tempest’ of the virus has exposed our vital need to be put ‘in touch with our roots’ and with all those things that truly ‘nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and our communities’, recognising and reintegrating the wisdom and memory of our elders and the vital work of those who are often unappreciated and hidden from view: cleaners, nurses, caregivers. These life-giving roots are also the ‘antibodies we need to confront adversity’, as opposed to all that is false and superficial in our daily lives. Francis’s Lenten call to the Church to return wholeheartedly to God consists of making a comprehensive and compassionate review of our shared reality and choosing between what nourishes and what fails to nourish the soul.[8] The twin threads of conversion and discernment, encountered throughout Francis’s official writings, are expressed at some depth in the latest post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Christus vivit, addressed ‘to young people and to the entire People of God’. After Amoris laetitia – also the product of long processes of communal discernment – it is, significantly, the document in which the words ‘discern’ and ‘discernment’ appear most frequently in his writings to date, with 34 mentions in 74 pages and a dedicated chapter on the vocational discernment of young people.[9] In it we get a real sense of what both conversion and discernment mean in the mind of Francis and, in particular, how they relate to one another. Conversion, for the Church, says Francis, can be summarised as ‘renewal and a return to youth’. This is not youth in the false sense of a culture obsessed with youthful beauty or novelty, but the true youthfulness, life and energy that spring from openness to the ever-new Risen Jesus. It is an ongoing process of transformation that involves holding in creative tension the best of what is old, the Church’s life-nourishing roots, with an openness to embrace what is new in Christ. It means a constant readiness to respond to grace, to let go of what does not nourish and start again, returning to its ‘first love’: the source of the Church’s youthfulness and unique identity. Christ’s call to conversion, both to the Church as a body and to each individual member, is essentially the same. As Francis says, reaching out to each young person right at the start of his exhortation, the bottom line is that, ‘Christ is alive and he wants you to be alive!’[10] Conversion in this sense is not a discrete event but rather a continual call to renewal and remaining ever alive in Christ. Francis expresses it using another image later in the document as learning to live fully and fruitfully in ‘the now of God’.[11] Living fully means being fully present to the grace and mercy of God in each moment and each situation, no matter how dark or difficult. We need to let ourselves be ‘saved over and over again’, says Francis, and to return, time and time again, to the God who ‘always embraces us after every fall, helping us to rise and get back on our feet’.[12] Much could be said about what Francis, in so many ways ‘the discerning Pope’, has to say about spiritual discernment: that means of distinguishing between grace and temptation, as he likes to call it.[13] Fundamentally, he has sought to demystify and declericalise what has sometimes been seen as an abstruse art reserved for the spiritual elite (or copyrighted by Jesuits), regrounding the Church in its own tradition, and the ordinary people of God in their own daily experience, of discernment. Discernment is not a spiritual technique or tool for Francis, but something much deeper and broader. It has to do with the sensus fidei – a spiritual sense beyond mere reason or wisdom, gifted by the Holy Spirit to the faithful, intrinsic to discipleship for all and part of a wider ‘formation of conscience’.[14] Ultimately discernment is somehow both the seed and the fruit of an ongoing relationship of freedom, trust and receptivity to the Holy Spirit: ‘the graced practice of letting go and letting God lead us’, as Nick Austin has put it so well.[15] It is a gift and a lifelong process of transformation by grace as we learn to become like the one we contemplate and ‘cultivate the very sentiments of Jesus Christ’.[16] In Christus vivit we see a glimpse of how Francis perceives discernment in action in relation to the accompaniment of young people, which draws telling inspiration from his own Ignatian roots. Using the Emmaus story in Luke’s Gospel as a model for ministry, he points to how Jesus walks with his disciples, accompanying them along the way even while they head in the wrong direction: He asks them questions and listens patiently to their version of events, and in this way he helps them recognize what they were experiencing. Then, with affection and power, he proclaims the word to them, leading them to interpret the events they had experienced in the light of the Scriptures …. They themselves choose to resume their journey at once in the opposite direction, to return to the community and to share the experience of their encounter with the risen Lord.[17] This threefold movement of recognising experience, interpreting it in the light of scripture and choosing to respond to grace (rather than temptation), while reflecting the classic ‘See, Judge, Act’ cycle of Cardinal Cardijn, is grounded firmly in the Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment. The same dynamic can be observed in Ignatius’ title or preface to the Rules for Discernment of Spirits: Rules to aid us towards perceiving and then understanding, at least to some extent, the various motions which are caused in the soul: the good motions that they may be received, and the bad that they may be rejected (Exx 313). For Ignatius, discernment involves a similar threefold process: of perceiving – or recognising – the various threads of one’s experience as they are remembered and brought into consciousness; understanding – or interpreting – these in the light of the gospel, the Church’s tradition and previous experience; and finally choosing to respond to what seems to come from God and rejecting everything else as distraction or temptation. Choice and action are at the heart of the process: the essential task of discernment being to receive the motions of the good spirit and to reject those of the bad, as Rob Marsh says.[18] With his characteristic and uncompromising clarity, Ignatius boils it down in the end to a stark choice between good and bad: between what leads to life – the place of encounter with the living God – and what leads to a dead end. There is more than a touch of this Ignatian starkness in Pope Francis’s vision of the world, in which discernment is ‘a genuine means of spiritual combat, helping us to follow the Lord more faithfully’. In order to fulfil its mission, the Church must help others to recognise and interpret their experience, and to choose well in response: to learn, in other words, to tell apart the ‘promptings of the good Spirit’ from the ‘traps laid by the evil spirit – his empty works and promises’.[19] It finally comes down to a Moses-like choice of life over death, led and informed by the Spirit. At both the macro- and micro-levels, the ecclesial and the personal, discernment, for Francis, is essentially a God-given ‘time of choosing’ between ‘what matters and what passes away’; between what helps us get back on track and stay there with regard to God, and all that derails or diverts us.[20] In returning to where we began, it appears not only that Francis perceives an urgent need for conversion to discernment in the Church but that he sees discernment as conversion: a moment-by-moment conversion to Christ and the life-leadings of the Spirit. Intrinsic to discernment, whether at the individual or institutional level, is an ongoing surrender of our limited ‘plans, certainties and agendas’ to God and a willingness to be led into a new and larger horizon of life.[21] Discernment and conversion converge, it seems, in Francis’s vision for a Christ-centred, Christ-contemplating Church: a Church that is called, and calls others, again and again, to turn back to God, confident in God’s mercy, and to choose life ‘so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days’ (Deuteronomy 30:19–20). Tim McEvoy holds a doctorate in early modern history from the University of Warwick and is a spiritual director at St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre in north Wales. This article was published in The Way, 59/4 (October 2020). To find out more about and subscribe to The Way, please visit theway.org.uk.

"August 12 2020 General Audience Pope Francis"

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Pope Francis Observes 50th Anniversary of Revised Rite of Consecration of Virgins

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May 30 2020 Holy Rosary Pope Francis

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Pope at General Audience: Love the world that persecutes you At his General Audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis concludes his series of catecheses on the Beatitudes, focusing on the final Beatitude, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-04/pope-francis-general-audience-29-april-2020-final-beatitude.html

April 29 2020 General Audience Pope Francis

Regina Caeli Address: On the Third Sunday of Easter -In Life, We Have Before Us Two Directions: Either We Are Paralyzed by Life’s Disappointment or We Choose the Greatest and Truest Reality: Jesus, Who Loves Us

© Vatican Media

Regina Caeli Address: On the Third Sunday of Easter

‘In Life, We Have Before Us Two Directions: Either We Are Paralyzed by Life’s Disappointment or We Choose the Greatest and Truest Reality: Jesus, Who Loves Us’

APRIL 26, 2020 15:02VIRGINIA FORRESTERANGELUS/REGINA CAELI

Here is a ZENIT translation of the address Pope Francis gave today, before and after praying the midday Regina Caeli, from the Library of the Apostolic Vatican Palace. At the end of the Regina Caeli, the Pope appeared at the window of his study and imparted his Blessing.

* * *

Before the Regina Caeli:

Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning!

Today’s Gospel, set on Easter day, recounts the episode of the two disciples of Emmaus (Cf. Luke 24:13-35). It’s a story that begins and ends on the way. It was, in fact, the outward journey of the disciples that, sad over the epilogue of Jesus’ story, leave Jerusalem and go back home to Emmaus, walking for some eleven kilometers. It’s a journey that takes place in daytime, with a good part of the trajectory downhill. And there is the return journey: another eleven kilometers but done at nightfall, with part of the way uphill after the effort of the outward journey and the whole day. Two journeys: one easy during the day and the other tiring at night. Yet the first occurs in sadness, the second in joy. The Lord is in the first, walking beside them, but they don’t recognize Him; in the second they no longer see Him but feel Him close. In the first, they are disheartened and without hope; in the second they run to bring to the others the good news of the encounter with the Risen Jesus. 

The two different ways of which those first disciples tell us, disciples of Jesus today, that in life we have before us two opposite directions: there is the way of one, as those two when they set out, who lets himself be paralyzed by life’s disappointments and goes on sad; and there is the way of one who doesn’t put himself and his problems in the first place, but Jesus who visits us, and the brothers who await His visit, namely, brothers that wait for us to take care of them. 

Here is the turning point: to stop orbiting around oneself, the disappointments of the past, the unrealized ideals, the many awful things that happened in one’s life. We are led many times to orbit, to orbit . . . 

Leave that and go forward looking at the greatest and truest reality of life: Jesus is alive, Jesus — and He loves me. This is the greatest reality. 

And I can do something for others. It’s a beautiful, positive, sunny, beautiful reality! 

This is the U-turn: to pass from thoughts on myself to the reality of my God; to pass — with another play of words — from “if” to “yes.” What does from “if” to “yes” mean? If He had been here to free us; if God had listened to me if life had gone as I wanted if I had this or that . . . “ in a tone of complaint. This “if” doesn’t help, it’s not fruitful, it doesn’t help us, or others. 

Here are our “ifs,” similar to those of the two disciples, who, however, pass to the “yes”: “yes, the Lord is alive, He walks with us. Yes, now, not tomorrow, we set out again to proclaim Him.” “Yes, I can do this, so that people are happier, so that people are better, to help many people. 

Yes, yes, I can. From the if to the yes, from complaint to joy and peace, because when we complain we aren’t in joy; we are in a grey, in a grey, that grey air of sadness. And this doesn’t help or make us grow well — from if to yes, from complaint to the joy of service. How did this change of step happen in the disciples, from the “I” to God, from if to yes? 

By encountering Jesus: the two of Emmaus first open their heart to Him; then they listen to Him explain the Scriptures; then they invite Him to their home. 

These are three passages that we can also do in our homes: first, open our heart to Jesus, entrust to Him the burdens, the efforts, the disappointments of life, entrust to Him the “ifs” and, then, the second step, to listen to Jesus, to take the Gospel in hand, to read this passage today, chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel; third, to pray to Jesus with the same words of those disciples: “Lord. ‘stay with us’ (v. 29). Lord, stay with me. 

Lord stay with all of us because we need You to find the way. And without you there is night.”

Dear brothers and sisters, in life we are always on the way, and we become that to which we are going. We choose the way of God, not that of the “I”; the way of yes, not that of if. We will discover that there is no unexpected <thing>, there is no ascent; there is no night we can’t face with Jesus. May Our Lady, Mother of the Way, who, receiving the Word made her whole life a “yes” to God, point out the way to us.

© Libreria Editrice Vatican

April 26 2020 Regina Coeli prayer Pope Francis

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MACHI 2020: Wakatoliki Nchini China.

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Pope Francis-Bari-Holy Mass 2020-02-23

OUR LADY OF LA VANG SHRINE AT CHRIST CATHEDRAL

POPE FRANCIS Pope Praises Those Dedicated to Catholic Education for Their Work Each Day

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Pope Francis - General Audience 2020-02-19

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Pope’s Morning Homily: God Is Moved By Even the Littlest Prayers

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Angelus Address: On the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

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Angelus Address: On the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

‘On the Feast of Jesus’ Baptism, We Rediscover Our Baptism. We Are also Reborn of Water and the Holy Spirit and We Know We Are Loved Children of the Father’

Pope Francis - Angelus prayer 2020-01-12

Pope: The spirit of the world makes you unconscious of sin

•  Jan 7th, 2020

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Source: Vatican News

Pope Francis celebrated his first morning Mass of the new year at Casa Santa Marta today (7 January). In his homily he reflected on the first reading, the passage from the first letter of St John the Apostle, in which the evangelist takes up the advice of Jesus to his disciples: "Remain in God."

The Christian life is to remain in God, following the Holy Spirit and not the spirit of the world, which leads to corruption, and does not distinguish good from evil, Pope Francis said.

One can be in the most sinful cities, in the most atheistic societies, but if one's heart remains in God this man and this woman bring salvation, the Holy Father said. He then recalled the episode in the Acts of the Apostles, who arrive in a city and meet Christians baptized by John. They ask them: "Have you received the Holy Spirit?" but they didn't even know he was there.

Pope Francis said many Christians, even today, only think about the Holy Spirit as a dove - and don't realise that it is the Spirit which which is the guarantee, which gives you the strength, to remain in the Lord.

The Holy Father then spoke of the spirit of the world, which is contrary to the Holy Spirit. "Jesus, at the Last Supper does not ask the Father to remove the disciples from the world," because Christian life is in the world, but he asks to protect them from the spirit of the world, which is the opposite. The spirit of the world is an atmosphere that renders you unconscious, leads you to a point where you do not know how to recognize good from evil."

Instead, to remain in God, "we must ask for this gift" of the Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee. From this "we know that we remain in the Lord," the Pope said.

How can we know, Pope Francis asked, if we have the Holy Spirit or the spirit of the world? Saint Paul, he explained, gives us this advice: "Do not sadden the Holy Spirit. When we go towards the spirit of the world we upset the Holy Spirit and ignore him, we cast him aside and our life goes another way."

The spirit of the world, the Pope added, is forgetting, because "sin does not turn you away from God if you realize it and ask forgiveness, but the spirit of the world makes you forget what sin is" everything is permissible. Then he said, that in these days a priest showed him a film of Christians celebrating the New Year in a tourist city, in a Christian country.

They celebrated the New Year with a terrible worldliness, wasting money and many things. The spirit of the world. "Is this a sin?" - "No dear: this is corruption, worse than sin." The Holy Spirit leads you to God, and if you sin, the Holy Spirit protects you and helps you to rise up, but the spirit of the world leads you to corruption, to the point that you do not know what is good and what is evil: everything is the same.

Pope Francis recalled an Argentinean song that says: "Go, go, go... everything is the same that down there in the oven we will meet." The spirit of the world, he commented, leads you to the unconsciousness "of not distinguishing sin." And how do I know, the Pontiff asked, if "I am on the road to worldliness, to the spirit of the world, or if am I following the Spirit of God?"

The Apostle John gives us this advice: "Dear friends, do not give faith to every spirit (i.e. to every feeling, every inspiration, every idea), but test the spirits, to test whether they really come from God (or from the world)". But what does it mean to test the Spirit? It is simply this: when you feel something, you feel like doing something, or you come up with an idea, a judgment of something, ask yourself: is this what I feel from the Spirit of God or from the spirit of the world?

And how do you do it? Pope Francis' advice is to ask yourself "once, twice a day, or when you feel something that comes into your mind" - This thing that I feel, that I want to do, where does it come from? "From the spirit of the world or the Spirit of God? Will this make me good or will it throw me down the road of worldliness that is unconsciousness?"

Many Christians, the Pope lamented, "live without knowing what goes on in their hearts." That is why St Paul and St.John say: "Do not lend faith to every spirit," to what you feel, but put it to the test. And so "we will know what happens in our hearts."

Pope Francis concluded: "For many Christians, their hearts are like a road and they do not know who comes and goes, who comes and goes, because they do not know how to examine what happens inside."

For this reason I recommend that you take some time every day before going to bed or at noon - when you want to - and ask yourself: what has happened in my heart today? What did I want to do, to think? What is the spirit that has moved in my heart? The Spirit of God, the gift of God, the Holy Spirit who always brings me forward to the encounter with the Lord or the spirit of the world who gently, slowly moves me away from the Lord; it is a slow, slow, slow slide.

In a final piece of advice, the Pope said: "we ask for this grace, "to remain in the Lord and we pray to the Holy Spirit, that He may make us remain in the Lord and give us the grace to distinguish spirits, that is, what moves within us. May our heart not be a road," may it be the meeting point between us and God.
https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/38669

Tags: Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis, Holy Spirit

Pope’s Morning Homily: Ask Whenever You Have a Feeling or Instinct, ‘Does This Come from Holy Spirit, or Spirit of the World?’

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Pope Francis Holy Mass for the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God 2020-01-01