Pope and "keyboard warriors"
Pope Francis has told “keyboard warriors” to put aside online polemics and get out from behind their desks to proclaim the Gospel.
Speaking in St. Peter’s Square on April 12, the Pope said, “One does not proclaim the Gospel standing still, locked in an office, at one’s desk or at one’s computer, engaging in polemics like ‘keyboard warriors’ and replacing the creativity of proclamation with copy-and-paste ideas taken from here and there. The Gospel is proclaimed by moving, by walking, by going.”
The Pope warned that it is possible
to have “misdirected zeal” that is “doggedly persistent in the observance of
purely human and obsolete norms for the Christian community.”
“We cannot ignore the solicitude with which some devote themselves to the wrong pursuits even within the Christian community itself; one can boast of a false evangelical zeal while actually pursuing vainglory or one’s own convictions.” he said.
"Keyboard warriors." Hmmm. I wonder. Is he talking about us, here at Happy Jack's hospitable forum? I suppose he must be.
ReplyDeleteIt's a timely reminder for all of us who post articles/comments on social media.
ReplyDeleteKeyboard samurai, please. Let's strive for inclusion.
ReplyDeleteWhat the Pope says is correct, but is there not also a sense in which the internet is the modern 'marketplace of ideas' (Acts 17:16 ff), with which Christians need to be able to engage? One can also 'boast of a false evangelical zeal while actually pursuing vainglory or one’s own convictions' out in the real world, too - turn or burn street preachers or 'holier than thou' workplace Christians spring to mind, for example.
雲水,
DeleteWishing you (and anybody else here following the Eastern calendar) a blessed Easter, Lain!
(I'm not sure in what sort of workplace a 'holier than thou' Christian would survive too long these days! Charities? They seem to have their share of not-particularly-holy mammon-pursuers in my experience. Churches? In my experience, anyone there bold enough to risk looking 'holier-than-thou' has to do plenty of good work to avoid accusations of hypocrisy).
'Today is suspended on a tree He who suspended the earth upon the waters.
DeleteThe King of the angels is decked with a crown of thorns.
He who wraps the heavens in clouds is wrapped in the purple of mockery.
He who freed Adam in the Jordan is slapped on the face.
The Bridegroom of the Church is affixed to the Cross with nails.
The Son of the Virgin is pierced by a spear.
We worship Thy passion, O Christ.
We worship Thy passion, O Christ.
We worship Thy passion, O Christ.
Show us also Thy glorious resurrection.' ☦️
A blessed Pascha to you, too, Gadjo.
(In my experience, the holier-than-thous aren't particularly holy. They just cultivate a sense that going to church makes them better than 'those other sinners'. I say this as the chief among them).
Thank you, Lain.
DeletePaşte fericit!
Fully agreed, @Lain. Those are very good points, in particular the wrong approach that Pope Francis himself constantly denounces as "proselytism".
ReplyDeleteI think there's a place for it. I've seen people on Catholic and Orthodox fora who are considering the Church but are struggling with certain issues: the intercession of the saints or the Theotokos usually. It does help when people take the time to explain it to them properly and can genuinely break down barriers. On the other hand, there are many places on the internet which are just people bashing each other with 'my God is better than yours', which I don't think does anyone any good.
Delete"Keyboard samurai, please. Let's strive for inclusion."
ReplyDeleteHJ is sure Pope Francis will respond positively should you make this point to him. Why not drop him a comment on Twitter.
How about "Keyboard Crusaders"? Or would that be just a little bit TOO inclusive?
Delete@Jack - Pope Francis is 86. Nobody over the age of 60 can use a computer 😁
Delete@ Bell
DeleteToo controversial given the Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period.
Unless you mean the New Zealand rugby team.
Many years ago, when I was a young kid, my parents sent me a few times to a Sunday School run by an outfit called Crusaders. I thought it had now become extinct, but it turns out I was wrong. It’s still there, but they have stopped using the name “Crusaders” and renamed themselves “Urban Saints” instead.
DeleteOr the American jazz-funk combo.
Delete"Urban Saints” is an excellent name whichever way you look at it.
Jack is mistaken about the Crusades. If I were to make a movie about them, I would cast Kurt Russell as Pope Urban II. "All right, Islam, You called down the thunder, well now you got it!"
DeleteAll right, Islam, You called down the thunder, well now you got it!
DeleteShame about the sack of Constantinople permanently cementing the split between the Eastern and Western Church and weakening Eastern Christendom to the extent where it was effectively delivered into the hands of the Ottomans, though. Bit of an own goal that one, some might say.
I would say so too, but it doesn't change the point. The Crusades were a counterattack against a belligerent enemy who had attacked Christendom without provocation.
DeleteThey were also a territorial dispute with a religious rime that generated a large amount of wealth and prestige for those who took part in it (sounds familiar). But the folly of seizing short term temporal gains at the cost of long term spiritual loses seems to be a lesson that Western Christendom was still struggling to learn well into the 18th century and beyond.
DeleteNot just the west. Remind me again what the Russian Orthodox Church is up to these days, and how much they're making from the tobacco import business Putin gave them to pay for all those onion domes.
DeleteWhich is why you won't see me defending the ROC's actions or making casting suggestions for future movies about calling thunder down on Ukrainians.
DeleteThis is known as the tu quoque fallacy, for future reference.
As opposed, we assume, to the argument from motives. You will note that my original criticism was of Islam, not the Orthodox. Unfortunately, I have noticed that when it comes to the Catholic Church, the Orthodox just cannot keep their guns holstered.
DeleteI can't see much criticism of Islam in your comments about casting Kurt Russell as Urban II. Your criticism was of Jack being 'wrong about the Crusades'.
DeleteIf you feel that pointing out the lasting and irreversible damage that the Crusades did to Christendom is the 'Orthodox not being able to keep their guns holstered' when it comes to Catholics, I'd suggest you might be being a bit overly sensitive (and it was you whom attempted to deflect onto the OC in the first place). Or perhaps you'd prefer to spend some time living in a country where the Crusades are still justification for Islamists 'not keeping their guns holstered' - in a very real sense against Eastern Christians, instead of metaphorically feeling victimised on the internet.
雲水 & Bell,
DeleteI think that both your original points - about the impetus for the Crusades and the later unfortunate events - are both quite correct, though rather different, and you probably don't need a Protestant commenting on them further.
But the Russian Orthodox Church making money from tobacco imports to pay for onion domes seems a rather trivial concern compared to other things that are currently going on in 'Christendom'! Clergy blessing alternative forms of marriage, Latin Mass adherents being targeted by security agencies, whole church denominations going 'social justice', and Catholic journalists who challenge the hierachy dying unconcincingly... I suppose I could go on, but anyway.
you probably don't need a Protestant commenting on them further
DeleteNot at all, Gadjo, your comments are always welcome.
Which came first, the keyboard or the warrior?
ReplyDeletehttps://onlineonly.christies.com/s/three-northern-masters/albrecht-durer-1471-1528-37/72154
That's not an iPad St. Jerome is using, Ray!
Delete(My, £5,000 doesn't actually seem a bad price for such a genuine work of art...)
Look at the fierce expression on his face and the angry glare in his eyes! It looks as though he’s penning a cutting retort to someone who wrote to him pointing out a translation mistake.
DeleteA cutting critique of St. Ambrose, more likely.
DeleteI love the lion there in the foreground, not sure what the significance is, but am sure that there is one.
DeleteLike Androcles, St Jerome is said to have pulled a thorn out from a lion’s paw.
Delete@ Gadjo - The Golden Legend - a collection of hagiographies written in the C13th - records:
DeleteOne day toward evening, when he [St. Jerome] was seated with the brethren to hear the sacred lessons read, a lion suddenly limped into the monastery. The other monks fled at the sight of the beast, but Jerome greeted him as a guest. The lion showed him his wounded foot, and Jerome called the brothers and ordered them to wash the animal’s feet and to dress the wound carefully. When they set about doing this, they found that the paw had been scratched and torn by thorns. They did what was necessary, and the lion recovered, lost all his wildness, and lived among the monks like a house pet.
Jerome appears to have been an interesting chap - possibly the greatest Slovenian that I never knew about - though exactly in which wildernness he found the lion is still unclear to me.
Delete@Gadjo
DeleteSt Jerome lived most of his life in the Middle East, first in Syria (Antioch and Aleppo, then named Beroea) and later in Bethlehem. In between he spent a few years in Rome, where he held a senior position in the Lateran under Pope Damasus. Jerome seems to have been the main organizer of the Council of Rome in 382, which settled the Biblical canon in its present form.
When Damasus died in 384, Jerome had to leave Rome in a hurry. He had made too many enemies there, in particular, so it seems, the new pope, Siricius. That was when he moved to Bethlehem, where he ended up spending the rest of his life. His first few years there were occupied in translating the Bible, a job that Damasus had given him to do.
The lion incident is said to have happened somewhere in the Middle East, though in which place and at what date I don’t know. Maybe @Lain can help?
@ Ray - It seems that he spent around five years after his conversion in 373 (through visions he had when seriously ill) living as a hermit in the Syrian desert, near Antioch, which is where he first learned Hebrew from a convert Jew. In 378, he returned to Antioch and was ordained priest and become a close advisor of Pope Damascus.
DeleteAs you've said, after Damascus' death (who was Jerome's protector against various allegations and conspiracies) he was forced to leave Rome. With some of his wealthy female benefactors - noble Roman widows and virgins, most notably a woman named Paula - began a pilgrimage across Palestine and the monastic centres of Egypt. By 386, he had settled in Bethlehem and by 389 he had established a monastery, a convent under Paula's supervision, and a hostel for pilgrims. He remained in the monastery until he died in around 420 and was buried there. His relics are said to have been later translated to Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
It seems from the story that the lion incident took place in a monastery, which would place it either in Jerome's own monastery at Bethlehem or one of the Egyptian ones he visited on his travels. The Golden Legend goes on to tell several more stories about the lion and its interactions with the monastery and the other brethren, which seem to imply a long period of settlement - i.e., that it was at his Bethlehem monastery and not a sojourn on his pilgrimage. There were lions in the region until they were hunted to extinction comparatively recently.
However, there doesn't seem to be any record of the story of the lion prior to the Golden Legend, which was complied from various other sources by an Italian Archbishop, the Blessed Jacobus de Voraginem (beatified in 1816 by Pius VII) and published around 1265. So how much of the story is true and how much is pious legend, we don't know. There are, however, many stories of the saints and their supernaturally close relationship with animals and the natural world - perhaps symbolic of a healing of the rift between humanity and the natural world that came after the Fall, when animals learned to fear man.
#Ray & 雲水,
DeleteThanks for the info! I have actually been to Bethlehem, though we weren't encouraged to visit Jerome's monastary or Paula's convent (if they still exist) but to get back on the bus as quickly as possible and return to Jerusalem as they were explosions going off in the town.
That's sad. A friend's church also organised a trip to the Holy Land, much of it to the accompaniment of small arms fire in the background. Still, amidst all of our troubles Christ is risen! Alleluia!
Delete(The foundations of St. Jerome's monastery are thought to lie underneath the C14th Church of Saint Catherine: a Catholic church and Franciscan monastery - itself built over the ruins of a Crusader-era Augustinian church and monastery - located near the Basilica of the Nativity. There are a series of caves cut into the rock beneath the church, one of which is said to be St. Jerome's cave).
HJ are you ok, you seem to to have disappeared?
ReplyDeleteHJ is fine, Clive. Just have a bit of a cold at the moment and been ordered to bed.
DeleteThanks for the information, Jack. I wish you a speedy recovery.
DeleteChanging the subject -- Have you considered the possibility of giving us your views on the SNP suddenly running into turbulence? From what I've been reading it looks like typical third-world politics. Neither left nor right but just old-fashioned self-enrichment.
That's a relief, I was worried that we would have to arrange another Cranmer replacement 😎
DeleteGet well soon, Jack, and do as you're told. Wives know best.
DeleteHi Ray, I second that! Have we been told why the SNP needed a campervan?
DeleteHi Jack. Glad you're on the mend. On the main point of the thread, how many here are familiar with the error of "archeologism"?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3A571jGvEE
“First among these (liturgical errors) is a kind of false archeologism which echoed the slogan: “let us go back to the liturgy of the early Church.” In this was an implicit assumption that only what happened in liturgy in the first millennium of the Church was valid.
Delete"Mediator Dei indicates that this view is in error when it states: “The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savour and aroma of antiquity."
(Cardinal Ranjith)
But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable ... on the simple ground that it carries the savour and aroma of antiquity.
ReplyDeleteBut this isn't the argument I'm seeing from (thoughtful) traditionalists. The argument I see is that ancient usage is esteemed more suitable on the grounds that it's more theologically sound and/or complete than modern iterations (or 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' - one of the main reasons why you find little liturgical innovation in the East). Whether that is or isn't the case is a separate discussion, but I rarely see anyone making the argument from antiquity.
Conversely, the same logic could be (and is) applied to all doctrine: why not allow women's ordination and same sex marriage - ancient understandings of sexuality and priesthood mustn't be deemed more suitable for later times and new situations simply because they carry the savour and aroma of antiquity.
I appear to have rather stubborn belief in the "argument from antiquity". Our church wants to swap out (at great expense) our old, perfectly formed, custom-designed pews for modern chairs, and I found myself saying that I didn't attend attend there because the place looked modern but because (up to now) it still adhered to old and correct traditions. (Or maybe that's the argument from parsimony). I've got a Catholic seminarian friend who hates the argument around the TLM, but if it is sound, time-honoured Christian teaching then long may it continue (and may its adherents learn the necessary Latin).
DeletePews, sir? What new fangled trickery is this? You should be standing on rush-strewn floors!
DeleteI've been in churches that have gone through the whole pew/chairs argument. In my experience, it's usually a lot of expense and work for not much gain: pews are much more practical.
Yes, it's a pity that the TLM has become politicised. The Eucharist should be what brings Christians together, it shouldn't be a symbol of division. I think that there is an argument that liturgy becomes hallowed by the ages, and there's a power in having a form of language 'set aside' for addressing God (our English Liturgy uses traditional English, not modern). The TLM was also gaining popularity among the youth, and it seems to me that no church can really afford to turn away the chance of discipling young people, so I think its suppression is misguided.