Pope Francis Warns Against ‘Spirit of Curiosity’

pope francis
  • (Photo: Reuters/Tony Gentile)
    Pope Francis blesses during a prayer calling for peace in  Syria, at St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican September 7, 2013. A sombre-looking  Pope Francis made an impassioned appeal before 100,000 people on Saturday to  avert a widening of Syria’s conflict, urging world leaders to pull humanity out  of a “spiral of sorrow and death”.

Pope Francis warned against the “spirit of curiosity” when  attempting to find God and religious messages in outside forces, or trying to  predict when Jesus Christ will return, reminding believers that the “The Kingdom  of God is among you.”

Stoyan  Zaimov, Christian Post Reporter

November 15, 2013|12:49 pm

“When we want to be the masters of the projects of God, of the future, of  things, to know everything, to have everything in hand … the Pharisees asked  Jesus, ‘When will the Kingdom of God come?’ Curious! They wanted to know the  date, the day… The spirit of curiosity distances us from the Spirit of wisdom  because all that interests us is the details, the news, the little stories of  the day,”

Editor’s Note:
I think we read that the Lord’s disciples asked about his Kingdom. The Pharisees were too busy trying to preserve theirs.. [See Matt 24:3;Luke 21:7].

Francis  said in his Thursday homily during Mass at Casa Santa Marta.

Such a spirit, he warned, brings about dispersion and distances people from  God. The Vatican leader further noted that Jesus himself warned against a  worldly spirit of curiosity, as it causes confusion and impels people to want to  feel that God is “here or there.”

“[It] leads us to say: ‘But I know a visionary, who receives letters from Our  Lady, messages from Our Lady.’ And the Pope commented: ‘But, look, Our Lady is  the Mother of everyone! And she loves all of us. She is not a postmaster,  sending messages every day.'”

Francis added that the Kingdom of God does come in a state of confusion, just  as God did not speak to the prophet Elijah in the wind or in a storm, but spoke  through “the breeze of wisdom.”

“The Kingdom of God is among us: do not seek strange things, do not seek  novelties with this worldly curiosity. Let us allow the Spirit to lead us  forward in that wisdom, which is like a soft breeze,” he continued. “This is the  Spirit of the Kingdom of God, of which Jesus speaks.”

In May 2012, the Vatican translated decade-old rules for confirming reported apparitions of  the Virgin Mary in an effort to ensure that more discretion is used in such  cases.

“Modern mentality and the requirements of critical scientific investigation  render it more difficult, if not almost impossible, to achieve with the required  speed the judgments that in the past concluded the investigation of such  matters,” the rules state.

The document was originally written in Latin by the Vatican in 1978, but  until now had only been used by clergy and specialists, and was not made  available to the general public.

The rules require “psychological equilibrium, honesty and rectitude of moral  life … sincerity [and] healthy devotion” for those claiming to have seen a real  apparition, while “evidence of a search for profit” and “psychological disorder  or psychopathic tendencies in the subject” as well as “psychosis, collective  hysteria” would speak against the validity of such a vision.