Good Grief

Have you heard the one about the Pope, the divorcee, and the phone call where the Pope approved of sinful conduct? Judging from my email, lots of folks have.

So has Fr. Zuhlsdorf and I link to his take on things for a measure of analysis.

I'd like to examine a different aspect of this, namely, the "so what?" factor. For comparison, I will now link to a prior post of mine on the same sorts of issues, and I ask the same question I did then. What would you do if we were living at the height of the Pornocracy? Or if the 24-hour news cycle was flapping its collective gums about Honorius letter to the Sergius allegedly promoting monothelitism?

Would you lose your faith as a result?

Are we at a point where Catholics are so fragile in constitution or ignorant of the Faith that second-hand accounts of phone calls make this much news?

Again, I'm leaving aside the issue of what the Pope said, if anything along these lines. My question is, so what? If someone brings it up, what is wrong with just saying "I'm not sure what the Pope said, but I know what the Church teaches. Catholics can't receive communion after a post-divorce second marriage." What's so wrong with that?

I swear it seems like we are actually buying into the secular view that the Church's teachings are transient and that the Pope is just an absolute monarch who can do anything he wants. So it would be a scandal. So were the events mentioned above. The Church survived. Some fell away. Some would fall away now if Pope Francis was St. Pius X, St. Gregory VII and St. Leo I all rolled into one.

Everybody just needs to calm down and stop letting these reports create this kind of confusion and division. Ignore them. Pray more. You'll feel better.