Bergoglio Shows He Doesn't Get Christianity ... or Gnosticism

1) New blog on the kid : Bergoglio Shows He Doesn't Get Christianity ... or Gnosticism, 2) HGL's F.B. writings : Bergoglio NOT Getting Gnosticism, Discussion on FB, 3) Ruari McCallion Tries to Make Allowances for my English, 4) Bergoglio misuses "Fundamentalism" too ....

Here is the quote:*

"As pastors may you not be preachers of complex doctrine, but pronouncers of Christ, dead and resurrected for us," he said. "Aim for the essential, the kerygma."

Sounds more New Age than Christian.

Anyone can SAY "love your neighbour", but that leaves out certain shades about "who is my neighbour" (answered by Christ with reference to a righteous Samaritan) and "what is Christian love". And if the answer includes some reference to truth, this leaves the pastors asking, like Pilate, "what is truth".

If you want complete Christianity, you want truth, if you want truth, you want a complex doctrine.

Speaking to Gnosticism, which widely held that people should shun the material world in favor of the spiritual realm, Francis identified such thinking today with that which "brings us to trust in logical and clear reasoning ... which however loses the tenderness of the flesh of the brother."

"The difference between Christian transcendence and any form of gnostic spiritualism remains in the mystery of the incarnation," said the pontiff. "Not putting it in practice, not guiding the Word to reality, means building on sand, remaining in pure idea ... which does not give fruit, which make sterile [God's] dynamism."

Well, there may be or indeed is a connexion between putting the Word - the Complex Doctrine of the Catholic Church through 20 Centuries, to which Christ bore witness - into practise and the Incarnation.

But that does NOT add up to one specific false reason of rejecting the Incarnation (namely Gnosticism) being identical with believing Catholicism but not practising it. A real Gnostic would certainly often enough practise his Gnosticism. But he is putting the WRONG "word" into action. If Bergoglio can't get that ...

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris, Beaubourg
or closeish
St Martin of Tours
11-XI-2015

* And the source:

Vatican Insider : Catholicism can and must change, Francis forcefully tells Italian church gathering
11/10/2015, by joshua j. mcelwee
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/44584/