I had the gift of two unusual blessings last week. The first was a moment to greet Pope Francis in Rome after his Wednesday, September 18, general audience. We had met and served as delegates to the 1997 Special Assembly for America. Sixteen years have passed, but this Pope has a remarkable memory to match his generous spirit. He recalled a friendly conversation we’d had in great detail, and the events of those days that helped shape both of us as young bishops.
The second blessing was being away from the United States on September 19 when Jesuit magazines around the world released the Pope’s remarks to Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J. Thanks to my schedule, I couldn’t read the full interview until I was on the plane home, four days after it appeared. But the emails I received about it – some of them happy; some of them angry; some of them gloating; some of them from Catholics feeling confused or even betrayed – were instructive.
Some people grasped at the interview like a lifeline – or a vindication. One person praised the Holy Father for stressing that the “Church must focus on compassion and mercy, not on enforcing small-minded rules.” She added that “we’re at last free from the chains of hatred that have ruled the Catholic Church for so many years and led to my unease in bringing my own children into that Church.”
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More common though were emails from catechists, parents and everyday Catholics who felt confused by media headlines suggesting that the Church had somehow changed her teaching on a variety of moral issues.
I heard from a mother of four children – one adopted, another disabled from birth — who’d spent years counseling pregnant girls and opening prolife clinics. She wanted to know why the Pope seemed to dismiss her sacrifices. A priest said the Pope “has implicitly accused brother priests who are serious about moral issues of being small minded,” and that “[if you’re a priest,] being morally serious is now likely to get you publicly cast as a problem.” Another priest wrote that “the problem is that [the Holy Father] makes all of the wrong people happy, people who will never believe in the Gospel and who will continue to persecute the Church.”
We can draw some useful lessons from these reactions. First, we need to be very careful in taking mass media coverage of the Catholic Church at face value. Second, we need to actually read the Holy Father’s interview for ourselves, and pray over it, and then read it again, especially in light of the Year of Faith. A priest here in Philadelphia asked for a show of hands at a Mass last Sunday, and nearly everyone in the church, which was full, had heard about the Pope’s interview. But only five persons had actually read it. Third and finally, we need to open our hearts — all of us — and let God lead us where he needs us to go through the words of the Holy Father.
Pope Francis does not at all turn away from Catholic teaching on matters such as sexuality and the sanctity of human life. How could he? We should remember that Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day – two women with an intimate, passionate devotion to the poor – also saw abortion as a brutal crime against the poorest and most defenseless of the poor: the unborn child.
Among the many vital things the Pope reminds us of in his interview is the new and drastically different condition of the modern world that God seeks to save. It’s one thing to argue about abortion and sexuality when both disputants in the debate share the same basic moral framework and language; the same meaning to words like “justice;” the same set of beliefs about the nature of the human person. But it’s quite another thing when we no longer have that common vocabulary. The modern world is mission territory. It’s morally fractured. Our politics, as Alasdair MacIntyre once famously wrote, is civil war pursued by other means. The modern heart can only be won back by a radical witness of Christian discipleship – a renewed kind of shared community life obedient to God’s Commandments, but also on fire with the Beatitudes lived more personally and joyfully by all of us.
There’s a passage from the Pope’s interview we need to remember in a special way in the weeks and years ahead:
“Proclamation of [Jesus Christ] in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: This is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the Church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel . . . The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.”
The Holy Father asks none of us to abandon the task of bringing the world to Jesus Christ. Our witness matters. Every unborn child saved, every marriage strengthened, every immigrant helped, every poor person served, matters. God calls on us to help him sanctify every aspect of our shared lives – at home, at work and in the public square.
But if, as the Pope describes her, the Church is a “field hospital” for the wounded in a cruel world, then the goal of our witness is to create a space of beauty and mercy; to accompany those who suffer; to understand the nature of their lives; to care for and heal even those who reject us. We need to speak the truth, and work for the truth, with love. And we need to realize that nothing we do – either as individuals or parish communities — will bear fruit unless we give ourselves to the whole Gospel with our whole heart.
Pope Francis has admitted (as Cardinal) that he was not very self-disciplined. Unfortunately, he continues to confirm that self assessment on a regular basis as Pope. The collateral damage is unnecessary confusion to the faithful which emboldens the unfaithful. God Bless him but he really needs to think a bit more before he speaks.
The thought that Pope Francis was minimizing fidelity to what The Church has taught us, and in our attempt to be faithful,
Would try to evangelize about, both disturbed and shook my very roots. Living in a society where white is black, and black is white, and where Our Lord is ridiculed, it was tough to think that even the Pope was equivocating.
Blaming the media for the Popes words only made matters worse. He did use words like “obsessed”.
He did chide us for concentrating on small matters. Indeed he made the work of evangelization more difficult, as well aas insulting his friends. He owes us a better explanation than we have gotten so far.
I am certain his overall message is extremely important, and I would like to understand it, and be challenged by it.
But The Holy Father owes us a better explanation, and if so moved an apology.
The fact that Archbishops Chaput has felt it necessary to write what he has written here does seem to indicate that Pope Francis needs to be more careful in what he says in interviews. The fact is that matters such as abortion, so called gay marriage and the anti-life mentality in general are not minor matter which the Church can side track whilst it focuses on evangelizing on those in the “field hospital”. All human beings are deeply wounded by the original sin and its results, traditionally called concupiscense, expressed in a masterly way by St. Paul in Romans 7,14ss: “I know of nothing good living in me -in my natural self-, that is, for though the will do do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not…” The will to help others, solidarity, sacrificing oneself for others etc, are not something natural to human beings nor the culture. It didn’t exist before the Christianization of the West in the early centuries of the Middle Ages. Disposal of unwanted born babies was common among the Romans. What Jesus proposes in the parable of the Good Samaritan, or the criterion for judgement “whenever you do it to one of these the least of my brothers, you did it to me” (see Mt 25,31-46) are truly revolutionary and unknown to other cultures. Pope Paul in his “Evangelii Nuntiandi” affirmed that the evangelization of the culture is a top priority for the Church. Obviously it is a gradual process,something which St. Paul also knew when he said that gave the Corintians children’s food as they were not prepared for more solid fare, and we cannot give up the fight against the “culture of death”, based on egotism and expressed in the conversion of abortion as a supposed human right, a right to kill, or killing off the elderly, or other handicapped people. Likewise we cannot give up the fight in favor authentic marriage and the family, as these are essential to a sane society. As for contraceptives, I assume that Pope Francis has’t forgotten what Pope Paul wrote in Humanae Vitae in such a prophetic way: Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.¨(Paragraph 17).
I have carefully read the interview and also taken not of what he says at the beginning that he is not used to being inverviewed. In the context of the way media report on the Church, and the fact that all such issues are complex and it is practically impossble to reduce them to the size of a headline, it seems to me that he would need to take more care of what he says in such interviews. They are not talks given to bishops, theologians, or pastoralists who are accustomed to such nuances as he mentions. The interview undoubtedly has caused some confusion and discouragement among Catholics who have been deeply committed in the pro-life movement. Maybe they would need to read it carefully and pay little attention to what the media says. Maybe he could find someone who is media savvy to prep him on future interview, which should be scarce. In fact, when Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he didn’t give many interviews.
Joe:
Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. Luke 15:3-7
I, on the other hand, say amen to that priest. The Holy Father, why well meaning, talks too much and without thinking that his words give aid and comfort to the enemy. The reaction of the liberal media is proof positive of that.
You may well be right, Your Excellency, but think about this. If our pope is saying things that are so close to being inconsistent with traditional Catholic teaching that many decent Catholics who might have only read it “once”; does that really make sense? And tell us, why in the world would he want to go so close to the line of what is Catholic and what is not-Catholic anyhow?
I guess you see your role as one of offering a defense for the pope no matter what he says; but to quote you from one of your earlier talks, “God will one day demand an accounting”.
In reading Archbishop Chaput’s article above and all of the comments listed, it definitely gives all of us lots to ponder. My opinion is this, only good can come from all of it because the Church is all about God’s love and bringing the lost, abandoned, rejected, shunned and forgotten back into our Church. As I mentioned in another post in an article last week, those who are away from the Church or who are not following the Church’s teachings will come back because of the concern and love we show them. Not in accepting sin, but in befriending them, just as Jesus befriended the sinners. And when Jesus befriended the sinners, the people who were the most angry were the highly religious and “Letter of the Law” individuals at that time. We, as Catholics follow the “Letter of the Spirit” and of course, if we have are committed Catholics, yes, we do our best to follow all of the doctrines and laws of the Church, too. I think the reason this article has “stirred the pot”, so to speak, may possibly be some miscommunication, but it may also be that the faithful feel “betrayed” because the Pope has given all of us a little bit of fraternal correction regarding issues aside from morality. (Meaning, how we treat people.) As I said in an earlier post, here are some good questions for all of us regarding loving others, espcially we faithful: How do I treat people I interact with on a daily basis? How do I treat people I do not like or who are different from me? Do I shun anyone or have purposely decided to ignore a person or a group of people because I don’t know them or because they are not in my current group of friends? Most importantly, am I holding back forgiveness to those who seek it of me? Jesus asks us to “love our enemies”. I think if we look beyond all of the Church’s rules, which are all good… we need to ask ourselves if we are living the Gospel in our day to day lives. I believe when we do, we will get a good response from the people we encounter, and it will spread for the good. And maybe unbelievers and the fallen away will be inclined to want to be a part of the Catholic Church and will believe in all of the Church’s rules on morality. Thank God for this Pope, he is a living example of humility and just as the Pharisees questioned Jesus, that is what we are seeing here. God has already won the battle, we just need to be faithful to Him, and let the Holy Spirit work through all of us to make the Church grow. God bless!
As a priest who has accepted the label of “ultra-conservative” that has been given by many who do not truly know me, I admit my own multiple moments of going “hmm…where is our Holy Father going with us…” during his pontificate.
However, thanks to this interview, something finally clicked for me in two ways. First, on the level of the Holy Father himself, (noting that who am I to try to know his mind,) I believe he is seeking to refocus us on the core of the Gospel: Jesus Christ himself and his saving mission. All other teachings/activities/apostolates/etc. of the Church must be rooted in the very definite footsteps and actions of Jesus. This being the first observation, the other way I have been awakened is more as a confirmation of a hypothesis: I think that the mass media coverage of Pope Francis has been tried to manipulate him to weaken the Church from within. Because he burst on the scene last March as an unknown figure who immediately connected with “real people,” and because he has such an emphasis on the poor, the marginalized, and any others who more “liberal” types would consider to be victims, the media is embracing these priorities as a means to use him to divide the Church from within. Thus, we can either give in to their manipulation and believe he is dividing us, or we stay rooted in the essential message that Pope Francis is conveying (that Jesus Christ himself defines who we are,) and we will not go wrong; we will instead be able to become MORE EFFECTIVE in pro-life advocacy, in defending marriage, and all the other issues, because we will be rooted in Jesus Christ, and not simply appear to be carrying out these works for their own sake. Such rootedness in Christ is a truth that the media can not handle.
I am just worried that the waters may have been muddied as far as the priorities for voting purposes during election times, are concerned. Do we still all know that abortion is the number one issue …….
Voting? Election time? The Pope is making the point that love of all mankind is the number one issue.
I was an active Catholic for 66 years, including 16 years of Catholic school education and teaching for four years in a Catholic high school. In January I realized that I heard political messages, poorly disguised as homilies, from the pulpit one too many times.
In January I decided to explore alternatives to satisfy my interest in a more fulfilling spiritual and Christ-like life. I selected a local Episcopal congregation and have yet to hear any “message” other than helpful thoughts on how to be a good Christian through prayer, tolerance, sharing, and most important through Christ’s “number one issue”, love.
Thank you, Your Excellency!
The response of the priest who is concerned about making the “wrong people” happy because they’re hopeless and “will never believe in the Gospel” breaks my heart. How can any priest use those words to describe suffering souls in need of his witness to the joy, beauty, and truth of God? Has he forgotten his responsibility is to every soul in his geographic parish, not only to the well-catechized registered and tithing parishioners, or the poorly catechized we’re reaching with the new evangelization? There are a lot of souls on his shoulders who need to hear the Good News in the plain old evangelization, too, and none of them are beyond hope.
Pope Benedict said we are “a people of joy, heralds of the unfailing hope born of faith in God’s word, and trust in his promises.” Those very people the priest discards are so filled with chaos and darkness in their lives that they’re precisely the ones in need of encountering our joy in Jesus Christ. We have something so unlike anything they’ve experienced that they can’t yet comprehend it. They must first encounter He who is that Joy before they will give a whit about what it takes to be in communion with Him.
This isn’t fuzzy-wuzzy watering down; it’s the core of our commission as Christians. As a faithful Catholic who shares many similarities with the mom you reference, I can’t understand how anyone in our shoes can listen to Pope Francis day after day and not hear affirmation for the great work we do. It is in perfect alignment with Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul II, our Catholic faith, and Jesus Christ. It is the priest’s concern you express here that undermines the hope and witness we live for in Christ. I call him to see those suffering souls as Christ seems them and to see himself as the instrument with the responsibility for reaching them with the message of goodness, joy, community, and life that we have the privilege of knowing that they have not yet experienced. As soon as we think someone is beyond hope, or we take offense that we are left in the flock while the lost are sought, we know we’re off the tracks. I’m so grateful that Pope Francis is so clear and direct in calling us back.
“Warriors”?”body slam”?
Seems to me the Pope is trying to wake us all up so that we can all work together as one body of Christ comprised of many members with different gifts and callings to carry the Good News to the ends of the earth.
I am grateful, but not surprised,
that Cardinal Chaput sees that as well.
Everyone’s comments about any topic are subject to distortion and misunderstanding. I am tempted to read the archbishop’s comments as containing reprimands to the pope for articulating his views in such a way as to lead to confusion or disappointment for some of the faithful. But surely archbishops never reprimand popes even though Francis made an allusion to such in his interview concerning this very matter of hot button issues. I think we should all keep in mind that not even Jesus is above reproach in terms of the way he expressed himself on numerous occasions. If fact, he provides Francis with a model for bluntness and directness. “I have come to bring division, not peace.” “Woe to you pharisees, you hypocrites…..whitened sepulchres.” “Get behind me, Satan” (spoken to Peter no less). “Better that you be hot or cold, for if you be lukewarm I will spew you out of my mouth.” Where we ever got the idea of “sweet” Jesus is beyond me given these and his other acerbic comments. He was certainly compassionate and merciful, but he could not be described as nice or always artful in his speech. Francis is provoking concern in the very people who may need to be provoked including those who have come to expect Pope’s to be cheerleaders for their favorite beliefs, doctrines, and practices. It would be good to remember that Jesus did come to comfort the afflicted, but only while afflicting the comfortable.
Not to mention whipping the moneychangers and knocking over their tables. Sounds like a justifiable temper tantrum to me. Christ makes no distinction between those who fail to supply for the the needs of the naked, hungry, and thirsty and those who are adulterers and corrupters of children. They will all “be cast into Gehenna” if they do not repent of their ways. This is the hypocrisy of those of heterosexual orientation who are flamboyant fornicators who condemn homosexually-oriented persons who at least recognize their sin and attempt to be chaste. I get all that, but what on earth is a “small-minded ‘rule'”? The only “rules” in the Church belong the Benedictine, Dominican, Franciscan, and other religious orders. I know what a doctrine is. I know what a dogma is. I know what canon law is. I know what liturgical rubrics are, but what on earth is a “small-minded ‘rule'”? His language is very imprecise, even sloppy, and therein Francis’ diction is imprudent, and irresponsibly spoken in this culture. To the press? We talk “too much” about abortion? Really? Tell that to the 125,000 who can’t speak for themselves slaughtered each day. So, just tell those who are making personal sacrifices, even jail time, for the unborn to just shut up? Very responsible and compassionate.
What the Holy Father wanted to convey and I get is that the Church wants to be open to all. Instead of creating divisions, we need to be reminded of what is called of everyone who has been baptized, and that is to spread the message and be a good witness to others so we can show an attractive joy. Not easy to do, but prayer is what we turn to. It’s adopting a different approach – a kinder and humble one. Also, let’s pray for the Pope everyday as he is one of our contact points with the Lord.
Link to the interview
http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview
I’ve being in the front line against abortion for many years…and I found some militants obsessed with “against abortion” that had lost the opportunity to bring the heal among the wounded. I discourage the vision of it as a war against the evil, we need to open the heart to those has not the tools of faith and accept mass media choices because have no foundation. Only love will change the world. Not the romantic pink tale, the experience of the renewal and heal of the resurrection. That joy only begins with acceptance not with the finger point priest and “perfect fellows” use to declare good or wrong. In the other hand can’t denied our Pope is some tacky… Yes he is. Let’s face it. Thanks God for this gift of simplicity in this complicated world.
At a minimum the new Pope has the same problem as Pope Benedict, namely, “foot-in-mouth disease”. The secular media can’t be blamed for being confused if the Catholic laity are confused. The Pope should be careful in the way he says what he wants to say because the secular media will report only what it hears. There is no question that Pope Francis is more like Pope John XXIII than he is like Popes JP II or Benedict XVI but the conservatives in the Church should realize that he was elected by the College of Cardinals under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit just like Popes JP II and Benedict XVI were; they should simply shut up and obey.
Invaluable perspective, as always, Your Excellency. It’s never either/or, but truth *and* love. We all need the reminders–but I admit I was unsettled by first reports of The Interview. Happily, the Holy Father quickly “clarified” by calling abortion the taking of innocent life and by removing a priest who advocates gay “marriage” and women’s ordination. We must always love people without ever loving evil.
I think one of the things that is confusing people, at least Americans, is that our Holy Father is simply not quotable. By that I mean he doesn’t give little one sentence soundbites that perfectly encapsulate an entire speech or interview worth of material. He is much more careful than that.
True, he seems to love to do things ‘off the cuff’. But even when he does, he chooses his words carefully and builds from one point to the next. He doesn’t throw out ‘Rah Rah!’ lines because he cares too much about what he is saying.
Then again, Benedict XVI didn’t do that either, but I don’t think people noticed because they didn’t EXPECT him to. With Francis people suddenly think, it seems to me, that you can take a couple of lines at random from what he says and toss it around without any context.
I did read the interview. When you carefully read the whole thing, even the lines that some people expressed alarm over don’t seem out of place. His ‘positions’, are that of the Church. They are the same as Benedict. They are the same as JPII.
Remember this: Take one or two lines, standing on their own with zero context, from the New Testament and look at them in isolation. Doing that you can make people think that there is no possible way to be saved, that everyone is saved no matter what they do. That works are unneeded. That works are ALL that are needed, etc.
Calm don, read it all, then rejoice!
Mike, your points are well taken. However, the media doesn’t care about context, and it is their voice (via their interpretation) whom the world hears, not the Pope’s–not JPII’s, not Benedict’s, not Francis’. When Benedict XVI made the statement a few years ago concerning the use of condoms, the same thing happened. As a degreed theologian, I understand the context in which Benedict was speaking, but as a lay faithful with no theological training, I can easily see how it would be extremely confusing to sort out what on earth he was saying. Same thing here with Francis. The office of the Pope needs to be hyper-sensitive to the dynamics of his era, because it is in those dynamics that he lives and speaks. Prudence in diction is the operative phrase in our time, and as much as I loved Benedict XVI, clearly he failed in prudence in trying express a theological nuance to a press looking to trip him up in the same way the Pharisees sought to trip up Christ. Francis seems to put his foot in his mouth every time he opens it. He may be a brilliant and compassionate man, and I do not doubt the promise of Christ to keep infallible the statements spoken on faith and morals ex cathedra from the Pope, but when it comes to prudence, there is one word to describe Francis, “OY!”
I read the interview and understand that the teachings of the Church haven’t changed, but the Pope expressed his thoughts poorly. Why would you say the people who work against abortion, etc. are obsessed and small-minded? These are the current warriors for the Church and you just body-slammed them. My reaction was the same as the mother of four. Why didn’t he say something like “Thank you, pro-lifers, for all your efforts to save innocent lives. But don’t forget about the other Church doctrines that need to be addressed, and do your work with love.” Being supportive while giving some direction would have been better.
Just a note here. The “small-minded” quote occurs at a given point in the interview and is in the section concerning the church as a field hospital. 3 paragraphs later the interviewer asks Francis about the “hot button issues” and Francis comments concerning said issues occur at this later point in the interview. I see no indication that the comment on small minded rules has any connection to abortion, gay-marriage, etc. Of course, that didn’t keep reporters from totally confusing the issue by removing the intervening paragraphs and lumping the 2 totally different bits of commentary together. I still have some issues about the use of the use of obsession (wonder what word was used in Italian) to describe a commitment to pro-life, pro-marriage causes; however, if you read the whole interview, the words are more understandable at least.
Chuck, you hit the nail right on the head. There were a thousand ways Pope Francis could have said what he said to defend the unborn, getting slaughtered at a rate of “125,000 per day” whom he thinks we talk too much about, while reminding us of the balance. This wisdom in speech was something John Paul II understood and did to perfection. It seems to me the words Pope Francis used bordered on the reckless. No matter how you analyze it, at a minimum, he showed major lack of prudence in the words he chose in certain portions of that interview.
Even one of our most respected bishops,Archbishop Chaput can make a convincing case for the Pope’s statements that confuse faithful Catholics while energizing those who equate “social justice” to defending human life. The interview heard (and I read it myself immediately after hearing media reports)is another dark day in the history of the Church. Thankfully the Holy Spirit will not allow his words to bring down the Church “like a house of cards.”