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Pope Francis’s
10-Step Program to Happiness
without God
“How
happy your people must be! How happy your officials,
who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom!”
(2 Chronicles 9.7)
The year
following his election,
ABC News enumerated the “10 Steps to Being Happy, According
to Pope Francis”.
This is significant in two
ways: first, it provides us — at last — with the
erstwhile cryptic formula for being happy that had eluded all the philosophers
and all the oracles from classical antiquity to the present. We are
speaking here of man’s ultimate ambition! His happiness! This is no
small achievement.
The
second way, however, in which it is significant is that this formula
— articulated by no less than a Roman Catholic Pontiff,
as the means to attain happiness itself … neither mentions nor
invokes:
The Formula for Happiness —
according to Francis:
1.
“Live and let live.”
2. “Be giving of yourself to others.”
3. “Proceed calmly” in life.
4. Have “a healthy sense of leisure.”
5.
“Sundays should be holidays.” Spend Sundays with family and friends.
6. “Create dignified jobs for young
people.”
7. “Respect and take care of nature.”
8. “Stop being negative.”
9. “Respect others’ beliefs.”
10. “Work for peace.”
No, this
is not “fake news”
You are not experiencing cognitive
dissonance.
For the head of the Roman Catholic Church
of over 1 billion souls, the fulfillment of these 10 “steps” constitutes
happiness. Contrary to what the Church has taught
from its inception over 2000 years ago, for Francis, apparently,
God is not man’s happiness. In fact, He is not even alluded
to.
“And no
religion, too”
Does it sound familiar?
“Why, now that you mention it!” It is an enervated reiteration
of the lyrics of the Beatles’ John Lennon’s song “Imagine”.
You can find the lyrics
here
. It is, arguably, the anthem of post-Christian man.
“Imagine”!
Different — by a Quantum
Leap
Quite
different, yes? … I mean, from anything that you may have once learned
(or heard rumor of) from that “outdated” Baltimore Catechism
that put things in clear and unambiguous perspective, distinctly Catholic,
Scriptural, Patristic, and relevant. Here, let us help you. Below
are three questions concerning happiness, its nature and the means of
its attainment that vastly differ from what Francis would
have us believe to the contrary.
-
Question 3. Why did God make
us?
Answer: God made us to show
forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness
in Heaven.
-
Question
4. What must we do to gain the happiness of heaven?
Answer: To gain the happiness of Heaven
we must know, love, and serve God in this world.
Answer:
God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world,
and to be happy with Him forever in Heaven.
If you wonder to whom you should defer,
we would suggest that tens of thousands of Saints stand as testimony
— so often indited in the blood of martyrdom — that happiness
is to be found in God alone — to the tedious meanderings of one
man in the Church who appears to find happiness elsewhere than God —
when he ought not, nor encourage others to.
Do we maintain that Pope Francis does not hold that authentic
happiness is to be found in God alone? Ten years after this
scandalous statement, it increasingly appears to be the case. Each
successive year we have found Francis promoting, not so much the
authentic Catholic Faith (which is his job description), as
what increasingly appears to be an an ideology, one rooted in
contemporary secular “values” that derive from and are
promoted by a society hostile to God — values not simply distinct
from the Gospels that the Church has consistently proclaimed and
defended for over two millennia, but more alarming still, opposed to
them, especially in the way of sexual ethics and what can only be
construed as pan-ecumenism.
Francis, of course, has made many
(very many) absurd and heterodox statements since then — and
perhaps that is why we find such utterances so consistently
troubling. More and more he appears to be what one close military
officer describes as “a loose canon.”
He does not appear to be on a
trajectory vectored at arriving at the Gospels anymore so now than
he was ten years ago. And given his Petrine office,
this continues to be deeply troubling indeed.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Totally Faithful to the Sacred
Deposit of Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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