Thanking God that we're not like this Pharisee

Over at the always ironically titled Catholic and Enjoying It. I'm going to miss that blog.  So seldom do you see such flagrant examples of caving to the whims and winds of change on the part of someone who believes he is evangelizing those who are clearly doing a better job of evangelizing him.

I partly blame Pope Francis, and his strange 'don't label people like those rigid Catholics over there' pronouncements.   Never one to shy from dropping the third person in his assessment of who is causing the problems in the Church, he has served over an era that has seen the biggest spike in Catholics being sure that the problem is 'those Catholics over there' that I've personally witnessed.  And those seeing the obvious progressive sympathies that Pope Francis demonstrates have lapped it up like a thirsty dog with water.

There are two basic readers on Mark's blog.  Atheists, pro-abortionists, pro-gay marriage and post-gender advocates, socialists, Marxists, and hostile critics of Christianity and the Catholic Church.  And left leaning Catholics who routinely show up to high five each other for not being like those conservative Christian and Catholic types who are no doubt sexists, racists, bigots, Islamaphobes, homophobes, transphobes and any other phobes we can think on.

It's not difficult to see the problems with this, and to bet which side is in the wrong.  That's not to  say all conservatives are right, or traditionalists without problems, or that there are no bad apples in the mix.  But when the conversation constantly rotates on 'I can't believe how deplorable those other Catholics are', you can bet that the moral high ground isn't on that side.  Especially when you add a dismissive attitude about an entire demographic of people who might be suffering purely on the basis of their gender and race,  and that in the name of Christ.

Anyone can be the pharisee without realizing it.  And far be it from anyone to cast too many stones at those other sinner types.  But there is a point in which we must step up and admit that it is at least partly because of, not despite, Pope Francis that so many Catholics today seem content with assuring themselves that the problems of the Church must be due to almost anyone else who disagrees with them.  And that is never a good thing.