Pope Francis' 2nd Anniversary, Part II | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The parsih priest meme is interesting, not because Francis wants every priest to use his homilies instead of their own, but because he wants them to preach the Gospel for today, just like he does. Calling him the world's parish priest brings us back to the kind of monarchism he is working to defeat.
Francis is in Rome, and this is where the sick are. Not just in the youth prisons or rehabs, but in the Vatican. The Curia should remember that when they criticize Francis for also going out to the city.
Mercy is essential - and is as essential for the small sins - not to bring them to the Sacrament, but to recognize their smallness and leave them alone. How to define that is interesting and in the end is left to the penitent - this is simply judgment, not the soft Pelagianism of the left.
Francis' conservative critics need to realize that preaching the Gospel is his goal - and that their purpose is to do it too (which terrifies them), not make up things like the Gospel of Life which essentially aligns the Church with the Amen wing of the Republicans. There are two Gospel stories that hint at abortion (the kind used if a woman was thought to have slipped one in on an absent husband). In both stories, the herbal test was not used (and in the first case the victim would have been Jesus) and mercy reigned - especially for the women involved who were treated as people by Joseph and by Jesus - not as breeding stock. We could spend the entirity of next year unraveling that one.
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