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PopeWatch: Big Heart

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Hattip to commenter Greg Mockeridge.  Pope Francis encourages a girl who has been bullied because of her rare skin condition, Valerie Herrera, to sing for him.  Whatever his other faults, no one can claim that the Pope does not have a big heart.

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Paul W Primavera
Friday, September 4, AD 2015 7:26am

Pope Francis has a big heart but lacks the necessary intellect to accompany it. He is sentimental without logic and that is as bad as cold, hard logic without sympathy.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, September 4, AD 2015 9:12am

The respective roles of the heart and the head were very neatly summarised by Pascal

“We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The sceptics, who have only this for their object, labour to no purpose. We know that we do not dream, and, however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from reasoning. And reason must trust this knowledge of the heart and of instinct, and must base every argument on them. The heart senses that there are three dimensions in space and that the numbers are infinite, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double of the other. Principles are intuited, propositions are inferred, all with certainty, though in different ways.”

Ezabelle
Ezabelle
Friday, September 4, AD 2015 10:13am

Another person who had a big heart, but also occasionally lacked intellect- St Peter. Indignant when told by Jesus he would deny him. But ran like a coward when Christ was arrested. Sobbed immensely when he realised his utter weakness.

A big heart will save this Pope. God Bless the Holy Father.

Foxfier
Admin
Friday, September 4, AD 2015 11:08am

I can worry about his other lacks, but yes– he has a very good heart.

Greg Mockeridge
Greg Mockeridge
Friday, September 4, AD 2015 12:44pm

While I think the Pope reaching out to this girl in the way he did was commendable, the real story here is this young girl. She was bullied, but yet did not subscribe to the victim mentality that permeates much of the anti-bullying movement. Kids who are bullied, like any other kid, need inspiration to rise above their rough circumstances, not self-pity.

Pope Francis bore witness to this to a level he may not have realized. For that he deserves praise.

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Friday, September 4, AD 2015 2:22pm

Thanks Michael ! I love that rascal Pascal.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, September 5, AD 2015 2:06am

Anzlyne wrote, “I love that rascal Pascal.”

Me, too. It seems almost a sin to translate him. His heart was certainly in the right place. What can you say of someone, who died on a friend’s sofa, because he had lent his own apartment to a sick man and his family?

« Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. On le sent en mille choses. C’est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison. Voilà ce que c’est que la foi parfaite, Dieu sensible au cœur » – The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which knows God, and not the reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Saturday, September 5, AD 2015 7:57pm

The heart is the one thing we should not judge. It is private between each of us and God. I must step back from temptations to effrontery and simply apply the rule of kind interpretation. Being rather opinionated, I find this very hard to do.

Shawn Marshall
Shawn Marshall
Monday, September 7, AD 2015 5:57am

The pope has a big heart? Is that the big heart that trashes traditional Catholics with a stream of disparaging remarks? Or is he always projecting an image? Mass in Spanish in DC. Chair made by ‘migrants’ in NY. Visiting prisons in PA. Saying Mass in Cuba next to an idol of a murderous atheist before coming to US. Big heart my a…

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