The Pope has in effect said this to his Catholic flock: Let our rhetoric be liberal; Let us sound like a Church that is moving from harsh rigour to soft friendliness. Does that mean he seeks the reform of any of the Church’s traditional teachings? God knows.
He began his US tour in Washington, where he warned the bishops that there is a temptation ‘to think back on bygone times and to devise harsh responses’. They should try to persuade people ‘with the power and closeness of love’ rather than obsessively condemning ‘their positions, distant as they may be from what we hold as true and certain’.
In his final address, in Philadelphia, he presented himself as the enemy of legalism, like Jesus railing at the Pharisees. ‘The temptation to be scandalised by the freedom of God, who sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, bypassing bureaucracy, officialdom and inner circles, threatens the authenticity of faith.
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