Pope: "I Feel Like Saying Something Which May Sound Heretical..."

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Please don't

Must the Vicar of Christ speak this way?

Seriously, must he?

In a May 23rd video address to a Christian unity gathering sponsored by the John 17 Movement, Pope Francis said:

I feel like saying something that may sound controversial, or even heretical, perhaps. But there is someone who ‘knows’ that, despite our differences, we are one. It is he who is persecuting us. It is he who is persecuting Christians today, he who is anointing us with (the blood of) martyrdom.

I'm not now going to get into a discussion of if or when ecumenism becomes heretical, except to say that in fairness, Francis isn't really saying anything here that modern Church sources going at least as far back as Vatican II haven't already said or at least implied. And obviously, this was no solemn Papal pronouncement or document.

But the wording still disturbs. Does the Pope believe that for the contemporary Church the term "heresy" has meaning? If not, then I suppose that would be heretical. But if so, why is he using the word in that way? Clearly, he doesn't believe his (and the modern Church's) version of ecumenism is heretical. But then why does he say that it might sound heretical? How and to whom exactly? Wasn't this matter "settled" by numerous statements and official documents starting with Unitatis Redintegratio?

Now, one might say, the Pope is merely using a common turn of phrase--"this may sound heretical but I like the Designated Hitter rule" or whatever--but he's the Pope, for goodness sake, and he's speaking about issues--Christian unity and the alleged primacy of the Catholic Church, among other things--that have always been at least implicitly partly about what can and cannot be said in truth by faithful Christians and Catholics so as to be in conformity with Scripture and Christian tradition--in other words, what can and cannot be said without being heretical.

Yes, the Pope is being casual and imprecise (as he so often is) and even flippant (as he so often is) about theological terminology. But that's precisely the problem.

And of course this is against a background of the contemporary Church being rife with actual heresy.

Is this the worst from this Pope? Of course not. But that's partly because the list of these sorts of things is so long by now.

Do I take it seriously?

Yes and No.

Which, by the way, is the same answer I would give to the question of whether I take this Pope seriously.