POPE FRANCIS' ARTFUL PARRY OF CARDINALS' ATTACKS

A parry is a fencing maneuver intended to deflect or block an incoming attack.

To execute a parry, fencers strike the opponent's foible, or the area near the tip of the blade, with their forte, or the part of the blade near the bell guard (or handle) of the weapon. This deflects the opponent's blade away from them, protecting them and placing them in a good position to strike back. 

A fencer’s proficiency is often judged by the skillfulness and craft of his parries.

In the firestorm of debate which Amoris Laetitia has ignited, Pope Francis has shown himself to be expert in his ability to parry against the many and varied attacks aimed at the Exhortation istelf and him personally.  

How so?

In November of 2016, four Cardinals openly disseminated a letter they had sent to the Holy Father earlier in the year consisting of five questions (dubia) regarding what they considered to be problematic inferences which could be drawn from the moral implications contained in the document.  

A not-so-subtle and very public threat accompanied the publication of the dubia in the form of a promised “formal act of correction” should the Holy Father continue to ignore their questions.

Rather than publicly acknowledge the dubia and the thinly veiled warning, Francis parried by offering some pointedly critical remarks about clericalism in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he lives, while celebrating Mass and marking the 47th anniversary of his Priestly ordination.

Francis parried the Cardinals’ attacks, not by addressing them directly, but by referencing clerics who are self-righteous and who so intellectualize faith that they ostracize sinners who wish to repent and experience the merciful forgiveness of Christ and His Church.

Such Priests uphold their own rules and “erase the law made by the Lord,” who told Abraham to “walk in my presence and be blameless,” the Pope said.

In his homily on the day’s Gospel,  Matthew (21:28-32), in which Jesus asks the Chief Priests and elders which of two sons did his father’s will, Francis stated that Jesus warned the chief priests and elders that they were repeating the second son’s mistake of being unfaithful and that, like the first son, “tax collectors and prostitutes” were following the Lord and, therefore, entering God’s kingdom first.

“The men Jesus is talking about”, the Pope said, “had juridical, moral and religious authority” and “decided everything,” including to kill Lazarus because Jesus had raised him from the dead, and to make a deal with Judas to betray Jesus.

These Chief Priests and Elders demonstrated “bullying and tyranny toward the people” by exploiting the law, the Holy Father said. They used their intelligence to regulate everything, but they had forgotten God’s law to Abraham, the Ten Commandments given to Moses and the way of the Lord.

“They were always stuck in their own convictions and they were not blameless,” he said. Their victims, the Pope said, were “the humble and poor people who trusted in the Lord.”

With “vanity, pride, arrogance,” they treated those who had failed to follow the law, but later repented, with “injustice” making them feel “condemned,” “abused” and “rejected,” the Pope said.

Judas, for example, “was a traitor. He sinned badly,” but he regretted what he had done and returned the money to the chief priests and elders who had given it to him. However, the men did not protect or forgive him, but scoffed, turned their backs and told him to fend for himself, he said.

“Because they forgot what a pastor was,” the Pope said. “They were intellectuals of religion, those who had power, who carried out catechising the people with a morality made from their intelligence and not from the revelation of God.”

Even today, Francis said, there is this “spirit of clericalism” in those priests who “feel superior and distance themselves from the people,” who don’t have time to listen to the poor, the suffering, prisoners and the ill.

Jesus never played the same “game” as the elders, Francis stated.  “Instead he went to the sick and the sinners, which was seen as a scandal to the faith of His time.”

Neither does Francis play the same game as the elders of today’s Church.  Instead, he too extends a hand or welcome and comfort to sinners, seen as a scandal by some today.

I dare say, thus far, Francis' skillful parry of recent attacks upon Amoris Laetitia and his Pontificate have been quite successful and effective.  The Church has not witnessed this caliber of artful defense since the time of Pope Julius II, who parried attacks against the Church not with words, but by gleaming edge of the sword itself.