VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider
In his Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” the Pope describes some ailments of today’s Catholicism
ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY
“A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others.” This is the phase Francis uses in the Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” to describe certain ailments of today’s Catholicism. Francis devotes a number of dense paragraphs of the lengthy document outlining the direction of his pontificate to this. In these paragraphs he explains the various forms of “spiritual worldliness” present in the Church.
“One is the attraction of gnosticism, a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feelings. The other is the self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past,” the Pope goes on to write.
This constitutes a “supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline” which “leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others.” Neither of these cases, which are both “adulterated forms of Christianity” inspire the mission.
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