The Pope’s Non-Strategy: Healing Without Proselytizing, Seeking The Lost Then …

By Frank Walker
Pewsitter.com

In one of his signature bait-and-switches, Pope Francis placed what he calls ‘proselytism’ on one side and ‘healing and sick, seeking the lost’ on the other. Well, healing and seeking are good things, but do they necessarily mean we can’t preach the Gospel. I have to ask, “WWJD?”

Of course, both.

Christian Today discusses the Pope’s recent interview in the Argentina’s "La Nacion" and his un-proven ideas on how to ‘attract’ people to Church through a sort of overwhelming sympathy.

Pope Francis has used an interview with Argentina's prestigious La Nacion newspaper to attack the Roman Catholic Church's 'clericalism' and to defend himself against charges that he is failing to provide the Church with clear leadership.

Asked about the numbers of Latin American Catholics leaving the Church, the Argentian Pope referred to the attractions of Protestant 'prosperity preaching', which he said had "inspired many religious propositions which people feel attracted to". However, striking a note which has become familiar since his election, he spoke of the need for clergy to reconnect with ordinary Catholics, saying: "I wonder about ourselves, what is it that we ourselves do, what is within the Church that makes the faithful unhappy? It's that people don´t feel we are close enough, it's clericalism. Today, to be close means to reach out to Catholics, to seek people out and be close to them, to sympathise with their problems, with their reality."

Asked whether the Church should do more to stop people leaving, he criticised 'managerial' approaches to the problem, saying: "I don't like to use terms connected with proselytism because that´s not the truth. I like to use the image of the field hospital: some people are very much injured and are waiting for us to heal their wounds, they are injured for a thousand reasons. We must reach out to them and heal their wounds."

He objected similarly to the word 'strategy', saying: "I'd much rather speak about the Lord´s pastoral call, otherwise it sounds like an NGO. It's the Lord's call, what the Church is asking from us today, not as a strategy, because the Church isn't into proselytism."

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By Frank Walker

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