Religion news: Pope warns curia of an elegant demon in their midst

The AP writes on this horror that infests elite Catholic clergy:
Pope Francis warned Vatican bureaucrats on Thursday to beware the devil that lurks among them, saying it is an “elegant demon” that works in people who have a rigid, holier-than-thou way of living the Catholic faith.

Francis used his annual Christmas greeting to the Roman Curia to again put the cardinals, bishops and priests who work in the Holy See on notice that they are by no means beyond reproach and are, in fact, particularly vulnerable to evil.

Francis told them that by living in the heart of the Catholic Church, “we could easily fall into the temptation of thinking we are safe, better than others, no longer in need of conversion.”

“Yet we are in greater danger than all others, because we are beset by the ‘elegant demon,’ who does not make a loud entrance, but comes with flowers in his hand,” Francis told the churchmen in the Hall of Blessings of the Apostolic Palace.

His most blistering critique came in 2014, when he listed the “15 ailments of the Curia” that some suffered, including the “terrorism of gossip,” ″spiritual Alzheimer’s” and of living “hypocritical” double lives. The following year, Francis offered an antidote to the sins by listing the “catalog of virtues” he hoped they would instead follow, including honesty, humility and sobriety.

Traditionalist Catholics have denounced Francis’ emphasis on mercy and openness to doctrinal wiggle room on issues such as sacraments for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Some have even gone so far as to accuse him of heresy for some of his gestures and preaching, including allowing “pagan” statues in the Vatican.

Unless I'm mistaken, it feels like there is a rising hard-edged, Old Testament-style hyper-conservative faction in the Catholic Church is that is bigoted, intolerant and hard core theocratic. Could that be possible? Waddabout those six hyper-conservative Catholic Republican Party judges who sit on the Supreme Court and now openly attack and/or suppress secularism, the LGBQT community and other groups they hate? Maybe the Pope is on to something here.


The pope - he looks sort of feeble


By Germaine: The atheist

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