Pope Francis sounds like he wants to blow things wide open.

[pnwmom]

Merry Christmas!

The Pope was asked about the Church's prohibition against birth control, including condoms, given HIV and other problems. His answer is unlike anything we've heard a Pope say.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/francis-frightening-inviation-freedom

“

The question seems too small to me,” Francis responded. “It seems to me also like a partial question.”

“The morality of the church is found on this point, I think, in front of a perplexity,” he said. “Fifth or Sixth commandment? Defend life, or that sexual relations be open to life? This is not the problem. The problem is bigger.”

I found the response stunning, in a very good way. A pope admitting that the church’s view of morality finds itself “in front of a perplexity,” caught between commandments, as it were, and the questions of whether life is to be defended or the requirement that sexual relations be open to life in every circumstance upheld without exception.

That alone would have made it, in my estimation, a papal response unique in my lifetime, a papal response, in a conversational circumstance, admitting that the church might be caught in a difficult situation, that absolute certitude about a sexual issue might not provide the unassailable answer.

However, he went well beyond that admission, essentially climbing inside one of those parables that demonstrate what Jesus meant when he said he did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

“This question makes me think of what they asked Jesus one time: ‘Tell me, master, is it licit to heal on the Sabbath?’“ Francis continued.

[rug]

1. He picked the right passages to make the point

Matthew, chapter 12
.
1 At that time Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath.a His disciples were hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them.
2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the sabbath.”
3 He said to them, “Have you not read what Davidc did when he and his companions were hungry,
4 how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering,d which neither he nor his companions but only the priests could lawfully eat?
5 Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath and are innocent?e
6 I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.
7 If you knew what this meant, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’f you would not have condemned these innocent men.
8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”

9 Moving on from there, he went into their synagogue.
10 And behold, there was a man there who had a withered hand. They questioned him, “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?”* so that they might accuse him.
11 He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep that falls into a pit on the sabbath will not take hold of it and lift it out?
12 How much more valuable a person is than a sheep. So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.”
13 Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it was restored as sound as the other.
14 But the Pharisees went out and took counsel against him to put him to death.

It's time those in the Church remembered that the message is about life, not sex.