Aug 29 Tue
Rigidity or Firmness?
Recently, the Pope remarked: “Is there some rigidity in my heart? Which is not firmness; rigidity is awful, firmness is good.” It would seem, that the Pope is praising firmness while denouncing rigidity. How, then, are we to perceive the difference?
There are many people who suffer from what we would normally call “inflexibility”, which is bad “rigidity,” wanting things to be how we want them to be, which also entails a difficulty in adjusting rapidly to contradictions or changes of plan.
Some automatically judge those who react in “conservative” ways to be rigid, while automatically regarding those who react in “liberal” or “progressive” to be charming or with spiritual flexibility.
We can easily identify psychological rigidity in ourselves and others: The priest who insists that everything must be done his way; the parent who confines his family to behavior patterns which allow little room for growth; and each one of us when we become upset and angry and perhaps a bit self-righteous about the insufferable behavior of those who contradict us or interfere with our precious plans.
Moreover, most of us tend to identify our own spiritual preferences (among many acceptable to Christ and His Church) with sweetness and light, while denigrating the preferences of others as immature, foolish, dark, or evil. Consider the liturgy wars; this example helps us to recognize that rigidity can affect all in any given question.
We should also notice that rigidity can affect “liberals” as well as “conservatives”, each simply tend to be rigid about different things.
Right now, the worldly way of assessing rigidity is that those who defend what is now “not cool” culturally are routinely condemned as inflexible or rigid (in other words, “closed”); while those who change their spots with every cultural shift are praised as flexible or responsive (in other words, “open”).
The question is, Should we approve each new fashionable moral trend, no matter what? Don’t we show a more authentic flexibility when we reject the rigid slavery of sin, and remain open (“flexible”) to whatever God expects from us? This is, precisely, the freedom of the children of God.
Moral flexibility is a virtue only when it is exercised in the service of God and the Good. Human rigidity, in the deepest sense, consists in the inability or refusal to respond promptly to God’s will. This is, I believe, what Pope Francis means when he uses “flexibility”, together with “firmness” in learning, upholding and adhering to whatever is God’s will.
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