How Jesus Christ entered my life: I met him first, not in literature or philosophy, but in the faith of the Church. That means that from the beginning he was not, for me, an important figure from the past (like Plato or Thomas Aquinas, for example), but someone who lives and works today, someone whom we can meet today.... Jesus and the Church are, for me, as impossible to separate as they are impossible to identify one with the other. Jesus is always infinitely transcendent to the Church. It was not through Vatican Council II that we first learned that, as the Lord of the Church, he is also her standard. I have always regarded this truth as both consolation and challenge. As consolation because we have always known that the scrupulosity of the rubricists and the legalists does not have its source in Jesus, in that infinite magnanimity that comes to us from the Gospels like a fresh breeze and collapses all excessive literalness like a house of cards. We have always known that nearness to him is as totally independent of the ecclesiastical rank one may hold as it is of one's knowledge of juridical and historical details. To that extent, the person of Jesus has always been for me a source of optimism and liberation. On the other hand, I have never been able to ignore the fact that he asks more of me than the Church would ever dare ask, that the radicalism of his words can be equated only with the kind of radicalism displayed by Anthony, the Desert Fathers, and Francis of Assissi in their wholly literal acceptance of the Gospel. If we do not do that, we have already taken refuge in cauistry, and cannot escape the corroding restlessness, the knowledge that, like the rich young man, we have turned away when we should have taken seriously the words of the Gospel.
I think that shows some potential for reaching into souls and hearts. It grabbed mine.
Good.
This is the greatness of this pope. He can communicate that he knows God in a personal relationship can convey that message to Christians and the lost.
2 entries found for casuistry.
ca·su·ist·ry Audio pronunciation of "casuistry" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kzh--str) n. pl. ca·sui·ist·ries
1. Specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead.
2. The determination of right and wrong in questions of conduct or conscience by analyzing cases that illustrate general ethical rules.
Websters-casuistryp [From casuist.]
2 entries found for casuist.
ca·su·ist Audio pronunciation of "casuist" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kzh-st)
n. A person who is expert in or given to casuistry.
[French casuiste, from Spanish casuista, from Latin csus, case. See case1.]