THE POPE''S COMMENTS ABOUT BEING SAVED THROUGH OTHER RELIGIONS

 

Pope Francis in a crowd

Photographer: Clemens Van Lay

Royalty free photo on Unsplash

In our fractious times in which certain groups of people seem to enjoy reacting with outrage and telling everyone else about it, our poor Papa is being criticized for his poor wordsmanship once again.

This time it is because he said that "all religions are paths to God," during a trip to East Asia and Oceania.

Apparently, he went on to say, "they are like different languages that express the Divine," and the outrage gang promptly lost their minds.

Mostly, I think that our Pope tries to paraphrase the Catechism, and it gets lost in the translation. It seems to me that he appears to be trying to express a nuanced, complex thought in more simple language.

Author Tom Hoopes points out something similar in his September 19th article, Did Pope Francis Just Say That all Religions are Equally True? in a Media & Culture Newsletter of Benedictine College in Atkinson, KS,  and his recent book What Pope Francis Really Said. [See: ARTICLE LINK]

If you read the short article, he talks about the process he uses to analyze the Pope's comments. He deconstructs the comment, and figures it out, but especially with the latest comment, it is clear that our Pope is not deviating from the Catechism:

"Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation."

This topic immediately brings to mind my own conversion from Hinduism to Catholicism.

I am today a committed Catholic BECAUSE of a Hindu group that introduced me to the Catholic mystics. I was a nun, living very comfortably in a Hindu-based convent, where I was led to read extensively about the Catholic contemplative saints, such as Teresa of Avilla, Jane de Chantal, Francis de Sales, Brother Lawrence, Thomas Merton, and others. I had a massive conversion experience and left the convent to get Baptized and become Catholic.  It was VERY difficult for me to leave that place because I LOVED the life. I was very comfortable there. Although it was a group monastic experience, we all had a certain amount of private time to ourselves and, for me, the balance was just right, especially because of the 4 to 5 hours a day that was available for meditation, which I loved.

Through that Hindu-based group, and especially through Swami Swahananda, I was also able to attend a small meeting between Pope John Paul II and religious leaders from other religions in 1987, in which my Hindu teacher, the Pope, a Zen monk and a Jewish rabbi all delivered remarks about ecumenism and related topics. I had been invited to the meeting by my Hindu Swami, since he was one of the speakers on the dais, even though I had left the Hindu convent. He knew I was leaving to become Catholic.

I was GOBSMACKED by the suffering evidenced so exquisitely by the obviously saintly pope, who appeared to be a walking sacrifice to the Lord. God definitely introduced me to some of the finer points of the mystical life and the magnitude of the Catholic mysteries through that Hindu faith and my Bengali teacher.

Another interesting feature of this situation is that, when this group set up the convent rules and routines, they copied the Catholic convents, using them as their model for the new Hindu convent, which was established sometime around 1950, in Hollywood, I believe.

Based on my experiences, my personal view on this topic is that our great Lord is elegant in his expressions of allurements to Him. It makes perfect sense to me that He can and DOES use the vehicle of other religions to carry some of His truth. After all, is there any place in which God is not allowed to reside? Indeed, can one keep Him away?

He has certainly spoken to me through other religions. I left my religion-hating home when I was 17 and immediately began my spiritual search, going first into Scientology, then Nicheren Shoshu and Zen Buddhism, then Vedanta style Hinduism, and now, for many years, Catholicism. I have read about other religions, such as Tibetan Buddhism, without setting foot on those paths, as well.

Sometimes the Lord has "spoken" to me by discouraging me from avenues that were clearly going in the opposite direction of where He intended me to go. But sometimes He makes me work very hard for something, just to impress upon my mind how very much it means to me. For example, my road into the Catholic Church was EXTREMELY difficult because there is a tendency among some members to treat it as if it is an exclusive country club meant only for "cradle Catholics" of a certain background.

It is easy for me to believe that, for those people whose desire for the True Lord is sincere, He takes them from where they are and leads them. I do not see why those people who yearn for God would be ignored by our Blessed Lord. Surely, He loves us too much for anyone to be lost simply because they took the wrong train to their desired destination (their "desired destination" being the One True God.)

After being raised by religion-hating, immoral and unloving people, it would have been easy for me to have been tripped up by any one of a number of religions I studied or practiced. 

The outrage police would be astonished at how many similarities in thought and spiritual practice many religions share among them. Truth is, indeed, "seeded" throughout.  

So, I do hope that our dear Pope's detractors will soon find some peace of soul within themselves and stop this constant fault-finding.

God bless us all.

Silver Rose

EVERYTHING IS ALL YOUR FAULT AND YOU SHOULD SUFFER FOR IT

Taking a hot air balloon ride is romantic in the minds of some, but they can be dangerous at times. They may not be as dangerous as driving the Los Angeles freeways, but accidents do happen. More than a dozen years ago, a balloon owned by a small private company met up with some unfriendly winds and dumped some tourists out of the gondola and onto the tarmac at Kirtland Air Force Base. At least one person died.

One of the people injured in that accident was a friend of mine, an elderly lady with an adventurous heart who has undergone quite a few surgeries and continues to suffer from serious chronic pain and other issues as a result of that horrible accident.

Recently, she told me that a friend of hers is blaming her for getting onto the hot air ride to begin with, and this "friend" has no sympathy for her. Evidently, according to that friend, the accident is all her fault and she deserves to undergo years and years of surgeries, pain and disability for being so stupid.

Her relatives are also loathe to help her because she tithes to her church and they continually criticize her for it! Apparently, she is expected to surrender her religious practices and values in order to earn the sympathy and help of family. They are nonbelievers and do not attend church, therefore she must be just like them. It's as if she has to make a deal with Satan in order to get her needs met. Give up your religious practices, and you can eat.

Many Americans have come to the place where their first instinct is to blame and shame people for whatever misfortune has befallen them. The poor are routinely castigated and accused of a catalog of character defects and "bad life choices" that contributed to their condition. Never mind that these social judges pretend to be Christian and that Jesus loves the poor and vulnerable above all people.

"The meek shall inherit the world," not the arrogant, self-important people who treat others with contempt for making mistakes. Choosing to experience the freedom and beauty of nature by taking a hot air balloon ride is not a sin. It may not even be an error in judgment. I wouldn't choose to get into the gondola, but my interest in risk-taking games and rides is extremely low. Other folk, however, like excitement and adventure and may not even perceive a balloon ride as something risky. Some people even jump out of airplanes with parachutes. That's not my scene, but I would still feel terribly sorry for the guy whose chute malfunctions and he ends up spread across the landscape like peanut butter on a crispy cracker. A sizeable number of people, however, feel nothing but contempt for those whose later years don't find them in a mansion stuffed with gold-leaf covered furniture.

If you are needy, due to disability, poverty, or both, you are looked down upon, blamed, shamed, and discounted.

Where does this hard heartedness COME from? How can people like this look at themselves in the mirror in the morning? Even if one is not Christian, where is the compassion that famously resides in the heart of man?

I have experienced different versions of what my friend is enduring now.  Long ago, when I first became disabled, I remember a conversation with a supposedly good friend of 30 years' duration. When I told her I had become disabled and that my Social Security was not going to be enough to get all my needs met, she asked me in a withering and overbearing tone, "If Social Security isn't enough to live on why did you decide to retire?" The word "retire" hit me like a fat, wet mackerel to the face, as I hadn't used that term at all. She had substituted it for the word "disabled" in an effort to make me sound bad and irresponsible. Her immediate response to hearing that I was disabled was to blame me, as if I had chosen to be sick and stop working.

Another odd thing that immediately started is that a number of people began calling me "kiddo," as if I am one of their children, even though we are very close in age. No one ever called me "kiddo" before I became old, sick, poor and needy. I regularly ask people not to call me this, but it continues to happen. Calling someone a child, blaming them for their illnesses and then demanding that the needy person live according to the dictates of others seems to be part of the general package that is thrust upon people like my friend and me.

Fortunately, I have several Catholic friends who walk with Jesus and whose kindness and generosity has kept me from being in much worse condition than I might be otherwise. Others are not so lucky and I do what I can to help when I can, even though my resources are puny.

Contrary to popular myth, "the government" doesn't supply every need of the poor and disabled, nor are there huge numbers of "fakers" who are "milking the system." The millions of poor people living in America today are mostly elderly and disabled people who have spent their whole lives paying taxes and paying into Social Security, doing what they were supposed to do, being upstanding citizens, only to be blamed and skewered with really mean lies at the fag end of their lives.

Grandmas and grandpas are struggling through their supposedly golden years because they had the bad taste to end up poor and/or disabled. It makes me sick, really, every time I hear one of these stories from one of my friends or neighbors, and the only thing that soothes me is the knowledge that God knows all and sees all and that the poor and vulnerable will spend eternity with Him, bouyed up with eternal kindness, eternal generosity, eternal peace and painlessness.

I do not pretend to know what will happen to the people who harass, lie about and criticize the vulnerable and sick in our society. The harassers frequently tell me they are sure they are going to heaven. We shall see.

In the meantime, I pray for my friend and all the other disabled and elderly people she represents. Please join me in those prayers.

God bless us all.

Silver Rose Parnell

A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Saint Luke

Feast day: October 18

Typically, I write a blog about an obscure saint of the day, but Luke overshadows the calendar.  I couldn't find much about the other saints that share this feast day with him. Much is already written about Luke by great theologians and writers far more gifted than me, and I decided not to bring coals to Newcastle, as they say, but to make a comment about something that is happening in our "modern" Catholic Church.

It has come to my attention that certain priests and lay persons are publishing dissent against the faith and criticism of Pope Francis. Rather than humbly consenting to be led by the pontiff, these persons have, instead, decided to broadcast their disapproval of his approach in blogs, on television, in newspapers, and wherever else their opinion can find a foothold.

No one ever became a saint by publishing complaints about the Pope and The Holy Catholic Church. They became protestant. Remember Martin Luther. He published his condemnation by hammering it onto the door of the church. His role in separating thousands of people from the church that Jesus founded was not rewarded in heaven, I can assure you. I am not presuming to know whether or not Luther is in heaven. He may be in heaven despite his break with the faith, but certainly not because of it.

Like most of you, I absolutely love Holy Mother Church. There are some things that bug me about the modern church in America, but it isn't helpful for me to air my grievances. I will not become a saint by doing that.

Our whole mission in life is to become saints so that we can spend eternity in heaven, gazing upon the Lord, being with Him, experiencing Him. It isn't a question of "earning" it, because no one can deserve union with God. We have to prepare ourselves to be with God by becoming more like God, so that we can be in harmony with Him.

As I study the saints throughout the years, I have yet to find one that became a saint because they publicly dissented with the Pope and the church and tried to get others involved in their dissatisfaction.

Prayer, fasting, alms giving, performing spiritual and corporeal works of mercy, forgiving our enemies and doing good toward those who harm us, loving our neighbor as much as ourselves. We know these things. They involve an emptying of ourselves and our petty egos and opinions so that we can be filled with and led by God.

If the Pope was having a mistress or stealing from the coffers or committing mortal sins, we would have to admonish the sinner, at least someone would have to be doing that, but this is not the case in the current instance. Some people, apparently, do not like his style of leadership and they are fomenting fear among the laity that Pope Francis will destroy the church by his mode of leadership.

Jesus promised us that His Church would last until the end of time and that He would be with us until the end of time. Even the "gates of hell" can not withstand the Holy Catholic Church. We have assurances from Christ Himself that no one can destroy His Church.

All of this controversy about the Pope, the current Synod, and the various factions that are trying to change the unchangeable...all of it...is a distraction and a detour away from what we have been told to do by Christ Himself.

Please join me in praying for The Church and everyone in it. Pray for Pope Francis, as he has many times asked us to do, and refrain from engaging in or encouraging this useless chatter that is exploding all around us. Continue your devotions and increase your prayers if you can. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said to remove the beam from our own eye before we try to remove the speck from our neighbor's!

Have confidence in the promises of Jesus. He will not fail.

Silver Rose Parnell
(c) copyright 2015
All rights reserved.

NO COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE POPE

"I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral 

people, not at all referring to the immoral of this world

or the greedy and robbers or idolaters, for you would then

have to leave the world.  But I now write to you not to

associate with anyone named a brother, if he is immoral, 

greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber,

not even to eat with such a person.  For why should I be

judging outsiders?  Is it not your business to judge those

within?  God will judge those outside.  'Purge the evil

person from your midst.'" 1 Corinthians 5:9-13

Once a person has been converted to the Catholic Christian religion, has accepted Jesus Christ and been admitted to his Church, it is assumed that such person believes in the tenets of the faith, believes that Jesus Himself created the church and made Peter, the first bishop of Rome, the rock upon which it is built.  Each Catholic person is charged to and promises to reject Satan and all his pomps and works.  At every mass, Catholics recite the Creed, which includes the statement that we believe in "the Holy Catholic Church."

Imagine my surprise when, upon becoming Catholic, I have witnessed a slew of individuals and "Catholic" blogs and newspaper articles in which people who claim to be Catholic openly defy the faith, dispute doctrine and malign the Pope, either this one or Benedict or John Paul II.  Imagine my horror when I found that a number of these detractors actually reside within the church as priests, deacons and bishops!  Some are secular bigwigs who make a living from writing about the Church.

Widespread criticism of the Pope would be understandable if he was obliterating doctrine or was living in unrepentant sin.  I would fully expect a massive uprising and quite a lot of "fraternal correction" coming from the college of cardinals and many others, but in the case of Pope Francis, for instance, I am dumbfounded by the arrogance of some who blatantly lead Catholics into the mistaken notion that public criticism of the pontiff's habit, style or manner of communication is something desirable, edifying or worthwhile in any way.

For example: recently, in THE CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT, Carl E. Olson's article appeared, the title of which is THE HYPERBOLIC AND EXHAUSTING PAPACY OF FRANCIS, which you can read HERE.  One immediately gets the thrust of the article from its title and the first sentence.

"My impression is that many Catholics are weary of the seemingly

constant addresses, homilies, interviews, texts - many of which

read like lectures - that come from the Holy Father."

Carl E. Olson

"The Hyperbolic and Exhausting Papacy of Francis"

Carl Olson sucks off the teat of Holy Mother Church while he criticizes its Holy Father.  He is editor of Ignatius Insight, and, most significantly, the editor of Catholic World Report in which the article in question appears.  He wrote a previous article in that online magazine entitled POPE FRANCIS: THE GOOD, THE BAFFLING AND THE UNCLEAR, which you may read HERE.  He is also the author of the book WILL CATHOLICS BE LEFT BEHIND? and another with Medievalist Sandra Miesel called THE DAVINCI HOAX.  He writes a weekly column for OUR SUNDAY VISITOR.  Clearly he has his fingers in a lot of Catholic media pies and is, without question, a talented person, which is the danger, of course.

I am not picking on Carl Olson in particular.  His other contributions have been helpful to the faith. Nor is he the only writer to critique the Pope in a disrespectful way, but he provides a perfect example of what ought not be done.  Whether or not his criticisms and complaints are objectively accurate is irrelevant.  We already have enough people in the secular media lambasting our church and its leaders without adding to the confusion and leading others down a twisted path away from the light of Christ.  We don't need to encourage a lack of willingness to be led by Holy Mother Church or to be taught by it and learn from it.

All of us need to model the correct attitude toward the pontiff which is indicative of our place in the scheme of things.  Cultivating a humble attitude can be challenging for Americans.  We have enough freedom to say whatever we want, and we rely so heavily on our opinions that our love for our own opinions, independent of any authority except ourselves, verges on idolatry.

Christ said that those who love Him follow his commandments. Then He set up our church, organized it on the apostle Peter, and transmitted to the apostles some of His power and authority. That power and authority has been, in turn, transmitted in an unbroken line until today.  Our Pope, a common sinner, is the recipient of that power and authority.  It is a remarkable dichotomy and one of the greater mysteries of our faith, especially when one considers that this power and authority are not simply organizational devices.  It is real power.  It is real authority.

My dearest wish is that these talented and intelligent writers would turn away from critiques of our Papa and, instead, fix their attention and their skill on helping everyone find the instructive value in each missive that the Pontiff sends our way.  Just as the power and authority of God reside within the common human who is Pope, remarkable jewels lay hidden in that artless, off-the-cuff comment, or that dull paragraph about which those writers complain.

If our Pope really is overwhelming some people with the volume of teachings, there is some good reason for it. Perhaps he is aware of a lack of time.  Maybe he senses an impending crisis, like the deceptive quiet before a tsunami hits land.  On the other hand, all of those things about which some of these writers complain could simply be the Pope's earthy, simple style.  All of God's laborers in the vineyard, including the Pope, are trying to accomplish God's work within the parameters of our abilities, hampered by the defects of our human failings and imperfections.

I pray that we all learn to shift our focus to the jewel that lays within that pile of dust, rather than the dust itself.

God bless us all.

Silver "Rose" Parnell
(c) 2015

IF YOUR FIRST INSTINCT IS TO CRITICIZE, YOU ARE MISSING THE BLISS

We all know that Jesus said to love your enemies.  When I first read the Bible, I was struck by the passage that says, "They will know you by how you love one another."  One of the two most important commandments, according to our Lord, is to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.

He told us to show this love by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoners, etc.  He said that, when we served the poor and needy that we were really serving him directly.  What a glorious opportunity!

Love. Love. Love.  Jesus is all about the demonstration of love, yet today we have an upsurge in the amount of toxic public discourse in which the poor are demeaned in every way.   Mostly, the people who complain about the poor claim that they are lazy people who are "working the system" and taking advantage.

Stories ABOUND in which nosy people examine the shopping carts and personal dress of a person using a food stamp subsidy to pay for their groceries and then extrapolate that, if they can afford those things, then they shouldn't be receiving help buying food.  Never mind that the critic knows absolutely nothing about the personal finances of the person upon whom they wished additional poverty.  The critic does not know who is paying for the cell phone they wish the poor person did not have.  The critic begrudges the poor person the nice vehicle he or she is driving, yet does not know to whom the car belongs or even if the poor person paid for it themselves when they were working and successful.

Critics assume that poor people have been poor their whole lives, it seems, because they can't imagine that a poor person would be in possession of things purchased when they were financially successful.

I could give many credible reasons why someone would have a cell phone, a car, a pair of earrings...but it doesn't matter because it is irrelevant.

Jesus did not say to love your neighbor as much as yourself provided that you approve of all of his or her life decisions.  No.  We are to love one another.  PERIOD.  Love.  Not criticism.  Not judgment.

If your first instinct is to criticize, then your mind is inclined in a direction away from Jesus and away from his commandments.  In fact, all this criticism of the poor is a distraction from the commandments of God.  It is a method of grasping onto one's own greedy little pile of comfort.  If a person can convince themselves that the poor have some egregious character defect, then the critic thinks they can assuage their conscience and continue to live in comfort while others go hungry, unhoused, unchurched, and unhealthy.  They grow to think that the poor deserve to be poor...and the poorer, the better, so that they'll be forced to get off their lazy bums and get a job.

I have written many times about the facts that disprove every one of the critic's arguments about the conditions of the poor in America.  Today I write about saintliness.

When Mother Teresa picked up the filthy, scabby, maggoty, sick old man from the streets of Calcutta, she did not first interview him to determine if he was worthy of her love and care.  She did not sit there on the curb, pad and pen in hand, asking questions and checking off boxes on some form. She did not consider if he had bad habits that contributed to his pitiful condition.  She did not care about any of that.  She dispensed the love of Christ.  That was all.  She did not hesitate.  She picked him up and brought him indoors where she and the nuns loved him and cared for him, washing, dressing, feeding and coddling him until he revived or he died.  Mostly, they died.  But they died in love, surrounded by sweet, gentle, smiling faces.

I do not imagine that this tendency to criticize lays outside of myself.  I have also experienced bouts of criticism in my lifetime, when my heart has not been soft enough and I needed to lean into a person with God's love instead of arrogance.  It is a daily process, to check one's mind and make sure that it is inclined toward Jesus, in tune with his love and his intentions.  Lots of prayer helps.

Writing this constitutes my commitment to maintaining a loving inclination of heart, to look upon all others with a compassionate eye and see them the way God sees them, in the radiant beauty of the image of God in which they were made.  To think well of others is a delightful thing.  It generates a deep feeling of joy and bliss.  Come join me, all you critics and pessimists, and partake of the bliss. In the meantime, I pray for you.  Please pray for me.

God bless us all.

Silver Rose Parnell