Pope Francis: A Curious Statement About the Psalms

Francis recalled that “all the books of the Bible are inspired by the Holy Spirit, but the Book of Psalms is especially full of poetic inspiration.” He notes that the Psalms “have a special place in the New Testament.”

It is then that he explains that “Christians and even less modern man cannot take up and appropriate all the psalms – nor everything in each psalm. They sometimes reflect a historical situation and a religious mentality which are no longer ours.”

“This does not mean that they are not inspired,” he notes, “but that in certain respects they are linked to a time and a provisional stage of revelation, as is also the case for much of the old legislation.”

The assertion is more or less scandalous, because the Church, since her origin, has always prayed all the Psalms – the Psalter – and the 150 Psalms were still part of the breviary of St. Pius X up to and including the breviary of John XXIII. Have some become obsolete now?

It should be noted that the papal comparison between the ancient legislation of the people of Israel and the book of Psalms is not valid. It is true that what, in the ancient Law, concerned the organization of the chosen people, no longer has any reason to exist. But the prayer of the Psalms remains entirely valid.

The papal text does not tell us to which Psalms it refers to, but it is not very difficult to discern which. Some of these prayers contain, for example, threatening penalties against enemies, to take just one example. However, this does not detract from the perpetual value of these inspired songs.

Holy Scripture is not read in a univocal manner. It includes several meanings that the Fathers of the Church, the exegetes, the doctors, or theologians, have explored at length. St. Augustine wrote no fewer than three commentaries on the Psalms and St. Thomas left a commentary on the first 50 Psalms.

These commentaries reveal the meaning of these songs inspired by the Holy Spirit. There are four such meanings (as with all of Sacred Scripture): the literal meaning, given by the text; and the three spiritual senses, which are based on the literal sense: the moral sense, the dogmatic sense, and the prophetic sense. Thus, Jerusalem designates the city in the literal sense; the soul in the moral sense; the Church in the dogmatic sense; and heaven in the prophetic sense.

And precisely the passages to which the Pope refers have been explained by the patristic and scholastic tradition to show that they all converge towards the New Testament and towards Christ. 

Thus, all these passages to which Francis alludes can be taken up by men of all times, and even by those of today. What they need are wise, enlightened, and prudent guides, such as the representatives of tradition (patristic in particular) who have never ceased, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to extract treasure from these passages and entrust them to us.

It is unfortunate that the Sovereign Pontiff has turned away from these magnificent explanations and is turning the faithful away from them as well.