The Pope & Diognetus
For some reason, I keep thinking about the Letter to Diognetus (Nn. 5-6; Funk, 397-401) lately whenever I reflect on what Pope Francis has said. There's a lot of noise about his interview , given in August this year to Fr. Antonio Spadaro SJ, lots of different interpretations, concerns being expressed, different factions trying to claim his agenda is the same as their own. I was quite surprised by how exasperated he seems to be with Catholics who focus on the wickedness of the world. He thinks this attitude paralyses the Church. As he put it: “The complaints of today about how ‘barbaric’ the world is – these complaints sometimes end up giving birth within the Church to desires to establish order in the sense of pure conservation, as a defence. No: God is to be encountered in the world of today.” This is wonderfully challenging and makes sense when one understands how this man has come face to face with the darker side of life and has spent much of his time on thi...