text: The Pope condemns making people feel unloved, unwanted, and unaccepted because they have been told over and over they lack the "merits." Don't we often so abuse  many fellow Catholics  who, authorities claim, do not "merit" full and unconditional trust,  voice, and acceptance within the Church?
  
  If you're told often enough by secular society, by the Church, by teachers, by spouses, by media, or by parents that you lack the merits, you come to believe it, as Francis  wisely said. 
  
  And that sick sin of intentionally creating unworthiness is seldom--if ever--admitted,
  worsened by a familiar abuser's voice, "We hurt you out of love,  for your own good." Francis says for the sad and lonely love is the "medicine;" but some folks think that's artificial mirth control.  
  
  The loneliness epidemic Francis notes is real, and never more so than for a discerning, prayerful, dissenting-on-some issues Catholic isolated from her/his Church family so cruelly, so frequently, and so unnecessarily.