Hello me lads! Greetings from the land of blood pudding (ick) countless stone castles and the glorious Union Jack flag.
Across the Channel--and a country or two--it appears that the Popish pontiff has gone off again against a most loathsome human shortcoming: Conviction. (He calls it "rigidity.")
Right on cue, the pontifical patriarch is decrying good old-fashioned gumption in the very year that he is planning the funeral of the historical hallmark of gumption. The Reformation. Coincidence? I think not.
He began his tirade against "rigidity" last October, by saying "Rigid people are sick." Folks who unbendingly follow the Law of God are "sick and in need of the Lord's help." I am quite certain (possibly even rigid) that he would be quite happy to help stubborn Christians divest themselves of their pathological grip on biblical truth. Rigidity is, after all, not only a stubborn load of tosh, it can be downright nauseous, invoking chunder.
Or more likely, it makes him sick when brave souls nail theses to the door of Wittenburg and challenge the Roman stranglehold on the Christian neck. But I digress . . .
Last Friday, Pope Francis doubled down on his disgruntlement towards rigidity by warning young people to avoid it, in favor of mercy and benevolence. I should say, mercy and benevolence are splendid traits, when accompanied BY standards. Disconnected from standards (or convictions) mercy tends to see good in all evil with the inevitable result of believing evil of all good.
In spite of the pontiff, our young generation is not in danger of too many standards, but rather of too few. Lawlessness is the cause of many ills tonight.
So if you insist on honoring God's Law by keeping it, expect to be labeled "Unmerciful, Rigid, Pathological, and Hypocritical. But, in the end, it is far better to be called pathological by a porcelain pontiff than to be spewed out by The Great Physician.
Stand firm on The Word, me lads. Help is coming!
Cheerio,
ChurchMouse