Yes or No? Pope Francis is Causing Headaches.

(Rome) Should we condemn someone,  evaluate or judge someone? Yes or No? Pope Francis is causing, and not for the first time, a headache with his statements. Some papal statements appear even contradictory for the inexperienced observer.

Sometimes a statement saying the exact opposite of another or at least  gives  the impression of internal inconsistency or ambiguity.The problem is not small, because the Vatican is silent on which to provide instead of a clarifying and explanatory interpretation. At the recent "headache" that Pope Francis prepares, draws the Vatican expert Sandro Magister's attention.

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Judgments: Yes or No?

Sandro Magister

In less than two days Pope Francis  uttered a first  harrowing condemnation, which became the headline on the front pages of all the newspapers, and then the  whole his morning sermons in Santa Marta was used to exhort the Christians to never judge and condemn anyone, but always to be only a defender and advocate for others.

The judgment,, better the condemnation, he pronounced  on June 21 against the Calabrian mafia `ndrangheta. His words were: "If you're not worshiping the Lord God worship, you become a worshiper of evil, as there are those who live by  bad reputations and violence ... The `Ndrangheta's  worship of evil and contempt for the common good. This evil is to fight to remove, you must tell him no ... Those who go in their lives this way of evil, as the Mafiosi, are not in communion with God! They are excommunicated "

The  chroniclers reported that the 200,000 in attendance broke out at this point in a rousing applause. A round of applause, followed by an even bigger worldwide applause from the media.

But the fact is that Pope Francis is laughably giving equally general consent whenever he says not to make judgments, from that memorable "Who am I to judge?", which is probably the most widely cited and acclaimed worldwide message of this pontificate.

This leads to a headache. Francis is a Pope, who judges, evaluates, acquits, demands, apprehends. At the same time he preaches incessantly, that one should never judge, neither accuse nor condemn.
Whoever judges is "always wrong," he said in his sermon on 23 June in Santa Marta. He errs, the Pope continued, "because he puts himself in the place of God, who is the only judge." He claimed "the authority to judge everything: people, life, everything." And "Judging with the ability," he said he has also to have the ability to "condemn".

With the excommunication of the Mafiosi, two days earlier, everything sounded quite different. Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, Bishop of Cassano all'Jonio and favorite of Pope Francis who was made the Secretary of the Italian Bishops' Conference, translated the words of the Pope: "The excommunication means that the mafia life is locked from the Church. You have chosen evil over a system of life. And when that happens, you're out of the community. You can not receive the sacraments, not baptism or sponsor confirmation, can not belong to a patronage committee, nothing. It's not your community. And it does not matter that you have the image of the Mother of God or a family altar or the Bible in the rat hole where you hide: that means absolutely nothing."

Do not judge, no way! However, there is a caveat: If the affected mafioso is hiding in a "rat hole", which is a sign that he is volatile and has been condemned by earthly justice, while if he is not convicted, it is not so easy for the Church to condemn him.

Even harder it is, the condemnations of the Pope against the mafiosi to bring "corrupt" and all the others over which he imposes the judgment every day with uninterrupted calls, never to judge anyone. These statements astonish the more so since they come from a successor of Peter, to whom the keys were entrusted to bind and to loose and everything he binds on earth and triggers will be bound and loosed in heaven. A supremacy which he holds over the whole Church.

To be precise, Pope Francis added on June 23 in Santa Marta that "the only one who judges is God and those to whom God gives the power to do it." But he did not say who they are, which is why the rate went down. The mystery continues.

Introduction / Translation: Giuseppe Nardi
Picture: Settimo Cielo