“To to humble papal suites quickly, driver.”
Pope Francis has said something again that doesn’t sound right. Then again, when you think about it, it just sounds really wrong.
If you give the key to your heart to greed, it will leave the door wide open to vanity, arrogance and all of the other vices, squeezing God out of the way, Pope Francis said at his morning Mass.
This on its face isn’t true. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. Greed is not the worst sin; always giving way to pride or anger, lust or jealousy, etc. Pope Francis is just making that up.
Wealth isn’t “a statue” that stands inert and has no impact on a person, the pope said June 19 during the Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
“Wealth has the tendency to grow, to move around, to take a place in one’s life and heart,” and once it moves in, fanning the desire to always accumulate more, the heart becomes “corrupted,” he said.
Wealth does not make you want more wealth. You want more wealth no matter how little you have. If you are able to gain wealth through hard work, sacrifice, or cunning, then you will be able accumulate it too. It does not corrupt the heart unless you let it, but it can weigh it down and tempt you to shirk your Christian responsibility, to compromise and sin. Hence vows of poverty.
Pope Francis is a rich man in every respect. He has control of billions of dollars and a huge infrastructure at his command. Every single priest, religious, and employee worldwide is obliged to him.
Pope Francis has power. Isn’t greed simply an inordinate desire for the power to possess or the power to command? If he chooses to live simply and give back it is a good example, but it can’t truly be said that he isn’t rich. So his blanket and indiscriminate attack on wealth is, much like his attack on weapons manufacturers, plain hypocrisy.
The pope focused his homily on the day’s reading from the Gospel of Mark (6:19-23), in which Jesus tells his disciples to “not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” but rather “store up treasures in heaven,” because “for where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”
Pope Francis said that deep down, people’s search for more is rooted in a desire for a sense of security, but there is a high risk that person will become a slave of wealth, accumulating it only for oneself and not in order to serve others.
If greed were rooted in a sense of security than it’s also cowardice. But greed isn’t cowardice. Cowardice is.
Soon, any sense of security gives way to vice and division, even in the family, he said, according to Vatican Radio.
This is gibberish. ‘Any sense of security gives way to vice and division?’
“Also the root of war lies in this ambition that destroys, corrupts,” as so many wars are being fought because of “greed for power, for riches,” he said.
So if I’m cozy in my blanket until 6am, I’m inevitably causing war? My security is my greed and my greed is my possessions, therefore the killing? Is there some point to the Pope’s endless smoke and rambling about people having things and liking them?
It’s a war that can be raging in one’s own heart, he said, “because greed keeps going, keeps moving forward,” stringing the person along a path of vice one step at a time.
Greed “opens the door, then comes in vanity — to think you’re important, to believe you’re powerful — and, in the end, pride, and from there all the vices, all of them,” he said.
Greed is the king of every sin and its cause lies not in the heart but in the wealth you possess?
This FrancisChurch theology is really just all about money and power, not Jesus.