Listening Must Give Way to Love, and Hearing to Sacrifice, by Dr. Jeff Mirus

By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture, Jan 25, 2022

Sorry, my cork has just popped—after reading Pope Francis’ insistence that we “learn to listen” in his statement for World Communications Day. My cork has popped because Pope Francis himself has never given the slightest evidence of listening to those throughout the Church who have pleaded and prayed that he would help the Church to combat the infection of worldly values in her highest offices, her dioceses, her parishes, her religious communities, and her universities. This is a pope who has, instead, repeatedly accommodated worldly values in his public documents and administrative decisions, and reflexively dismissed as “rigid” Catholics who ask him to clarify what he means by it.

Of course, I would not deny the importance of listening to others, especially when they have grievances. But you will seldom (or, more likely, never) hear the word “listen” used that way by Jesus Christ, His apostles, His evangelists, or St. Paul, whom Our Lord commissioned “as one untimely born” to be a special apostle to the Gentiles. The word “listen”, along with its variants, appears in thirty-three New Testament verses. As a simple demonstration, I will quote ten examples at random: …

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