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...Pope Francis described these Christians as “rigid”, because “they don’t have the freedom that the Holy Spirit bestows."

Yes, that blessed freedom, truly a gift of the Holy Spirit....

A robot like Nancy Pelosi just doesn't get it.

Thank you dear NYer for posting this splendid article. And thank you, dear YHAOS for the ping.

The pope is right on this one. The ‘businessists’ are humorous in a way, deadly in another. I had one lady once describing herself to others as ‘the church Mary Kay representative.’ (I didn't know we had one, lol, and I'm the pastor. Maddeningly, these people are so bold as to pass sales catalogues even during worship.) She just up and left one day for a bigger church — more customers, I imagine, for their newly self-appointed ‘Mary Kay Representative.’ She was not a Christian she was a proclaiming “Mary Kayist”.

The ‘alternativists’ are the ones always arguing the angles, the self-appointed ‘theological lawyers’ looking for loopholes in teaching. Catholics probably have it in spades with their distinctions between types of sin, ex cathedra statements, and the like, but we Methodists also have it. Our Constitution, Discipline, and Social Principles are enticing targets for the theological lawyerly. So we have bishops playing that game who refuse to bring charges or bring to trial those who clearly (not just arguably) violate our standards. Nancy Pelosi might have some lawyerly, mental dodge she uses to ignore killing babies and still receiving the eucharist, but she is only eating judgment to herself and her unchristian beliefs. She is no Christian.

The uniformists or rigid really remind me of the Church of Ephesus in Revelation 2. They know all the rules, they can lock your heels with the rules, but they ‘have lost their first love’. That was the only church threatened with the loss of their candlestick of the 7 listed in Revelation 2-3. And some of the others sounded pretty vile, especially Pergamum and Thyatira. The Spirit's lesson is that a loveless church, no matter how rightly they can enunciate their doctrine, is not a church that even needs a candlestick. Candlesticks are used to lift up the light to spread more light. If there is no light, then what's the use of the candlestick? Moreover, if there's no light possible there, then it is as the pope says, not really Christian at all.