Without knowledge, even zeal is not good. Proverbs 19:2
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. One of the things that used to send me up the wall when I was running the “new pastors program” at Saint Meinrad Seminary was hearing stories about young new pastors “cleaning house” in the name of orthodoxy because they believe a “smaller church would be a purer church.”
The phrase above is often attributed to Pope Benedict XVI, although it has not been found as his own expression. It is probably a phrase used by David Gibson in a story at the time of Pope Benedict’s election in his book “The Rule of Benedict.”
“He has said himself that he wanted a smaller but purer church,” Gibson wrote. Gibson was referring to the pope’s suggestion, when he was still known as Cardinal Ratzinger’s, that “Christianity may need to become smaller, in terms of its cultural significance, to remain true to itself.”
This phrase was used in the context of a discussion of Cardinal Ratzinger’s criticism of the German hierarchy during the second World War.
He criticized the hierarchy for having allowed concern for institutional security to dull its awareness of what was going on under the Nazis, not as a command to new pastors to do spiritual violence to their parishioners in an effort to “clean up” the church.
If that is what Cardinal Ratzinger meant, why would he say the following as pope?
“When I was younger I was rather severe. I said: The sacraments are sacraments of faith, and where faith does not exist, where the practice of faith does not exist, the sacrament cannot be conferred either.
And then I always used to talk to my parish priests when I was Archbishop of Munich: Here too there were two factions, one severe and one broad-minded.
“Then I too, with time, came to realize that we must follow, rather, the example of the Lord, who was very open even with people on the margins of Israel of that time. He was a Lord of mercy, too open — according to many official authorities — with sinners, welcoming them or letting them invite him to their dinners, drawing them to him in his communion,” said Pope Benedict in August 2006 in the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone.
That sounds like it could come out of Pope Francis’ mouth! Even the words “open,” “margins,” “mercy,” “welcoming,” “invite” and “communion” seems almost prophetic.
Because of my 10-year exposure running a national program for new pastors, I am convinced that much of the spiritual violence going on in our parishes in the name of orthodoxy is more about the needs of narcissistic, insecure, fear-filled, anti-social and inexperienced clerics with little self-awareness.
I was even in one diocese where about a dozen young priests were “unassignable” because they were too dangerous to be placed.
They are proving how right Blaise Paschal, a 17th-century French Christian philosopher, was when he said, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
Thank God for Pope Francis! May he live long and keep modeling good pastoring.
Fr. J. Ronald Knott
