Monday, August 26, 2013

Why does Pope Francis want people to call him "tu"?

Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith, "With the use of one word, Pope Francis is signalling to the Vatican insiders that their day is over" (Catholic Herald-UK, August 23, 2013):
... “He said to me, do you think the Apostles would have used the polite form with Christ? “Would they have called him your excellency? They were friends, just as you and I are now, and with friends I’m accustomed to using ‘tu’.” Where to begin to unpack this? What this remark implies is that the way Christians should relate should take as its template the relationship between Christ and his disciples, a relationship of love not power. It implies that much of what goes on in the Vatican (where the polite form is de rigeur) is based on the worldly power template, and needs to change. People in the Vatican will be horrified by this, for they will see it, quite rightly, as an attack on the entire modus operandi of the Papal court and the Roman Curia, all of which is based on a rigid if unwritten pecking order. With the use of one word, Pope Francis is signalling to the Vatican insiders that their day is over.
Indeed: where to begin to unpack this?

[Hat tip to Sir A. Sistrom]

2 comments:

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

So, this Pope will not have any insiders within the Vatican , huh?

Cue, I am a rock by Simon and Garfunkel as the revolution enters, yet another, new stage of rear guard antirestorationsim.

It is about damn time we had some more novelties because the revolution was starting to get pinned down and a revolution that mutates is tough to target.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Who needs insiders when the Pope is making such splendid choices his own self

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350582?eng=y\


If Herb Morrison was alive today he could say O, the humility