[Apologetics] John Allen, NCR: Council of Cardinals; pope interviews; Assisi; Francis the mystic; and war on Christians

[Art Kelly]

This article states in part:

Perhaps the most insightful take on all this came from Lombardi himself, who said we're seeing the emergence of a whole new genre of papal speech -- informal, spontaneous, and sometimes entrusted to others in terms of its final articulation. A new genre, Lombardi suggested, needs a "new hermeneutic," one in which we don't attach value so much to individual words as to the overall sense.
"This isn't Denzinger," he said, referring to the famous German collection of official church teaching, "and it's not canon law."

"What the pope is doing is giving pastoral reflections that haven't been reviewed beforehand word-for-word by 20 theologians in order to be precise about everything," Lombardi said. "It has to be distinguished from an encyclical, for instance, or a post-synodal apostolic exhortation, which are magisterial documents."

Implicit in that reaction is that the pope is probably going to continue to shoot from the hip, and sometimes he'll allow voices outside the narrow circle of authorized spokespersons to tell the world what he said, trusting them to get the gist of it and perhaps not sweating the details. Trying to put every line or every anecdote under a microscope in those circumstances may be a waste of time.

If the pope wants to express himself formally and with precision, Lombardi implied, he has other ways of doing it.

AND

Veteran Italian Vatican-watcher Andrea Tornielli, who has a personal relationship with Francis predating his election, wrote Wednesday that he has doubts about some lines attributed to the pope in the Scalfari interview, including that Francis asked for a delay before accepting the papacy in order to go into a small room to collect himself. As Tornielli correctly notes, there are no small rooms immediately adjacent to the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica as described by Scalfari, and in any event, cardinals who were there say the pope accepted his election immediately.

BUT

In the relevant portion of the interview, Scalfari asks Francis if he's ever had a mystical experience. Here is the response as presented by La Repubblica, concerning the moments immediately after he was elected to the papacy:
"My head was completely empty and I was seized by a great anxiety. To make it go way and relax I closed my eyes and made every thought disappear, even the thought of refusing to accept the position, as the liturgical procedure allows. I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion."

That experience, Francis suggests, gave him the courage to accept the job and to forge ahead.

It's an important insight because it helps explain something that otherwise seems inexplicable: How to account for the transformation that's come over Jorge Mario Bergoglio since he became Pope Francis?

Consider that during his entire 15 years as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio gave a grand total of five interviews. In the seven months he's been pope, he's already done three, and they've all been humdingers.

Journalists who covered Bergoglio in Argentina report that he shunned the spotlight, and on those rare occasions when he did have to appear in public, he often came off as formal and, some would say, a bit boring. As pope, he's become a rock star. As archbishop and as president of the bishops' conference in Argentina, Bergoglio was careful and measured in his public declarations, while as pope he's letting it all hang out.

Back in April, I interviewed his sister, Maria Elena Bergoglio, and even she told me that something was different about her brother since he took over the church's top job.

Recently, I spoke to one of the cardinals who elected Francis (not an American, by the way), who had been received by the pope in a private audience. The cardinal told me he had said point-blank to Francis, "You're not the same guy I knew in Argentina."

According to this cardinal, the pope's reply was more or less the following: "When I was elected, a great sense of inner peace and freedom came over me, and it's never left me."

In other words, Francis had a sort of mystical experience upon his election to the papacy that's apparently freed him up to be far more spontaneous, candid,and bold than at any previous point in his career.

Art

----- Original Message ----- 
From: NCR: John Allen 
To: art.kelly at cox.net 
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2013 10:41 AM
Subject: All Things Catholic: Council of Cardinals; pope interviews; Assisi; Francis the mystic; and war on Christians


 
                    
                  John L. Allen Jr. | All Things Catholic | October 4, 2013  
                 
                  Accountability 
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                        John Allen's column has been posted.


                        Council of Cardinals; pope interviews; Assisi; Francis the mystic; and war on Christians

                         

                        I've been covering the Vatican for almost 20 years, and aside from the two conclaves during that span, I'd be hard-pressed to recall many weeks with more breaking news than what we experienced the last seven days.


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