The cycle is familiar: A pope says something about a controversial issue that doesn’t fit the media’s semi-informed preconceptions about Roman Catholic teaching, a firestorm of coverage follows, and then better-informed observers are left to pick up the pieces and explain that no, actually, the pope is just reasserting an idea — an openness to Darwinian evolution, the possibility that nonbelievers might go to heaven, pick your controversy — that the church already accepted or believed or allowed to be considered.
… Pope Francis said it was important to “distinguish between a person who is gay and someone who makes a gay lobby,” he said. “A gay lobby isn’t good.”
“A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will — well, who am I to judge him?” the pope said. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons, they must be integrated into society. The problem isn’t this (homosexual) orientation — we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else, the problem is lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby.”
Now it’s certainly true, as a host of Catholic writers quickly pointed out [ http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/07/29/pope-francis-and-gay-priests/ ], that this doesn’t depart from official church teaching on human sexuality, and indeed invokes the language of the Catechism (commissioned by John Paul II and overseen by Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI) to make its point. Which, means, in turn, that a lot of the more breathless coverage [ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/07/pope-francis-wont-judge-gay-priests/67702/ ] has exaggerated the significance of the pope’s words, and overhyped the gap between what he’s saying and what his predecessors might have said.
But at the same time, the context of the remarks — the specific subject being addressed, and the larger pattern of Francis’s words and deeds — do magnify their significance beyond the “newsflash: pope still Catholic” norm that defines a lot of these soundbite controversies. First, the pope does seem to have been talking specifically about gay Catholics in the priesthood. Indeed, according to this translation [ http://saltandlighttv.org/blog/world-youth-day/a-note-on-the-popes-remarks-to-journalists-en-route-to-rome ], the words quoted above followed a question about the case of Monsignor Battista Ricca, a recent papal appointee with an alleged gay relationship in his past [ http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100227781/pope-francis-joy-in-brazil-worsening-scandal-and-a-possible-resignation-in-rome/ ], which inspired Francis to a long riff about the importance of forgiving past sins. And given that Benedict XVI’s Vatican specifically reasserted the rule that men with a “deep-seated” attraction to the same sex should not enter holy orders, the tone of Francis’s remarks alone — the forgive-and-forget response to a particular case, and the broader “who am I to judge” — does seem striking and newsworthy. Consider, by way of contrast, what Benedict said to Peter Seewald [ http://www.ignatius.com/Products/LIWO-H/light-of-the-world.aspx ], his longtime interviewer, when asked about the subject of gay priests:
Q: It is no secret that there are homosexuals even among priests and monks. Just recently there was a major scandal on account of the homosexual passions of priests in Rome.
A: Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise, celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation. It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into the priesthood who don’t want to get married anyway …
Q: But there is no doubt that homosexuality exists in monasteries and among the clergy, if not acted out, then at least in a non-practiced form.
A: Well, that is just one of the miseries of the Church. And the persons who are affected must at least try not to express this inclination actively, in order to remain true to the intrinsic mission of their office.
The settings are different and the questions are different, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Vatican issued a clarification shortly explaining that the official rules for seminary formation are still very much in effect. But still, such a tonal difference, from ”the miseries of the Church” to “who am I to judge,” on a fraught, high-profile topic is surely newsworthy, even if the news media inevitably offered misinterpretations of its significance as well.
And it’s especially newsworthy since a latitudinarian statement on this topic is of a piece with the tone of Francis’s pontificate as a whole. Popes do not change doctrine, but they do choose what to emphasize and what to downplay, which issues to elevate and which to set aside, where to pass judgment and where to talk about forgiveness, and so forth. And we’ve seen enough of this pontificate to sense where Francis’s focus lies: He wants to be seen primarily as a pope of social justice and spiritual renewal, and he doesn’t have much patience for issues that might get in the way of that approach to Christian witness. Thus the headline-grabbing rhetoric and symbolic gestures emphasizing poverty and simplicity above all else, thus the frequent invocations of “clericalism” as the worst problem facing the church, thus his fairly casual attitude (in his off-the-cuff remarks [ http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2013/06/francis-unplugged-report-claims.html ], at least) toward doctrinal discipline, his frequent calls for experimentation and his apparent hostility to liturgical traditionalism [ http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350567?eng=y ] — and thus, too, his apparent determination to distance himself and his message from the culture-war issues of the post-sexual revolution West.
Again, it’s not that Benedict or John Paul actually prioritized issues like abortion and gay marriage over the church’s social teaching (Benedict, too, visited prisoners and wrote encyclicals critiquing global capitalism and so on … ), and it’s not that Francis is somehow doing the impossible and repudiating church teaching on those hot-button topics. It’s just that he’s going out of his way to place his emphasis on other issues and areas and concerns, and taking clear steps to avoid the kind of “pope versus sex” headlines that so often dominate coverage of the church. (It’s noteworthy, for instance, that in the same post-Brazil interview [ http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1303261.htm ], he was asked why he didn’t address that country’s abortion and marriage controversies during his visit, and he answered that “the church already has spoken on these issues,” and “young people understand perfectly what the church’s point of view is.”)
It seems a bit early and a bit presumptuous to offer any kind of judgment on what all this might mean for the church as a whole. To admirers of the previous pope’s labors, necessary and often thankless, to preserve the core of Catholic faith [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-ratzinger-legacy.html ], it can be a little painful to watch journalists overhype the contrast between Francis and Benedict (much as they overhyped — and often misjudged [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/opinion/12douthat.html ] — the contrast between Benedict and John Paul), and use Francis’s different style to write a “progressive pope, reactionary pope” morality play that doesn’t really fit the facts. At the same time, the issues Francis wants to emphasize lie at the very heart of Christianity, and it is no bad thing for conservative Catholics — especially American conservative Catholics — to think and walk with a pope so focused on the poor. Nor is it a bad thing, in the wake of the sex abuse scandals, to have a pope who persuades reporters to tell a story about Catholicism that doesn’t begin and end with the sins of priests and the cover-ups of bishops.
I’d like to add that many times we seem to seek out the sins of somebody’s youth and publish them. We’re not talking about crimes, which are something else. The abuse of minors, for instance, is a crime. But one can sin and then convert, and the Lord both forgives and forgets. We don’t have the right to refuse to forget … it’s dangerous. The theology of sin is important. St. Peter committed one of the greatest sins, denying Christ, and yet they made him pope. Think about that.”
This is a striking and deeply Christian passage, and the fact that it inspired a Wonkblog meditation(!) [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/29/pope-franciss-beautiful-take-on-sins-we-dont-have-the-right-not-to-forget/ ] on the theology of forgiveness is a testament to Francis’s ability to reach unexpected audiences with his rhetoric. But for anyone who followed the deep history of the sex abuse scandal, it has some troubling implications — because much of what went wrong in the church, in the 1960s and 1970s especially, represented a disastrous misapplication of precisely this message. Christianity and Catholicism insist that no sin is is beyond forgiveness, and that true repentance washes away even the worst stain. But for people in positions of ecclesiastical authority, the obligation to forgive and forget is complicated by the obligation to protect the faithful and satisfy the demands of justice … and too often, far too often, the theology of forgiveness was invoked by authority figures in Catholicism as a justification for returning priests to ministry, for hoping that pathologies could be cured in the confessional, and then for refusing to do the appropriate thing when confronted with the consequences of these decisions and resign. The sex abuse disaster was a disaster in part for very worldly reasons, involving clerical privilege and the institutional tendency to cover-up. But it was also a disaster because of misapplied Christian theology, which persuaded many churchmen that the confessional was a sufficient response to both others’ evil and their own misgovernment. It was indeed a scandal of clericalism, as the current pope has suggested — but it was clericalism compounded by cheap grace.
Now Francis did specifically exempt crimes against children from his call for a forgiveness that also forgets. But the danger facing the church in the future is not an exact replay of the sex abuse scandal. Rather, it’s a perpetuation of a model of church governance in which any scandal — sexual, financial, you name it — is met with forgiveness but not with penance, with apologies but not accountability.
And I raise this point only because for all that Francis has done, as Thompson puts it, to “decontaminate the Catholic brand,” where reform is concerned his (yes, brief) papacy has thus far been longer on rhetoric and symbolism than action. There has been no noticeable housecleaning in the hierarchy [ http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/lifting-the-shadow-of-scandal/ ], and the badly-needed reform of the Curia — the agenda that Francis was elected to implemented — is in the hands of a commission [ http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=17584 ], which in Rome as in Washington can bury an issue as often as it actually resolves it. As much as the church needs a pope capable of transcending the church’s recent disasters, it also still needs real accountability and real reform — and it does not need another charismatic leader, a la John Paul II, who rallies throngs around the world but neglects the administration of the Vatican. Nor does it need a pope whose media-friendly persona persuades journalists to lay off the church on the one front where a hostile press has often been correct to hold Catholicism to account.
“I believe this is a time of mercy,” Pope Francis said, during the same plane conversation. To which I would say yes, but please God, of discipline as well.
Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of “Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class [ http://www.amazon.com/Privilege-Harvard-Education-Ruling-Class/dp/1401307558 ]” (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream [ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307277801 ]” (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.
Pope Francis’ first 100 days: What we’ve learned so far
.. a look at little things from one on the inside of the religious community ..
Alessandro Speciale | Jun 13, 2013 | 7 Comments
VATICAN CITY (RNS) When Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world in February in becoming the first pope to resign in 600 years, he left behind a Roman Catholic Church weakened by scandals, beset by infighting and suffering from a general sense of isolation from the modern world.
Three months after the election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis, much of the gloom seems to have lifted.
Pope Francis waves from the pope-mobile during his inauguration Mass at St. Peter's Square on Tuesday (March 19) at the Vatican. World leaders flew in for Pope Francis' inauguration Mass in St. Peter's Square on Tuesday where Latin America's first pontiff will receive the formal symbols of papal power. RNS photo by Andrea Sabbadini
St. Peter’s Square is again a magnet for legions of pilgrims, and the communications problems that dogged Benedict’s papacy have receded. Francis’ simpler, direct style, together with his focus on the poor and the marginalized, has captivated the world.
The first pope from Latin America has now amassed more Twitter followers in Spanish .. https://twitter.com/Pontifex_es .. than any other language.
As Francis prepares to mark his first 100 days in office next week (June 20) — an admittedly arbitrary measure for a 2,000-year-old institution that thinks in centuries — here’s what we’ve learned so far about this most unconventional of popes:
Style is substance
For the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit and editor of the Vatican-sanctioned magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, the most important change Francis brought to the papacy is his knack for “significant gestures that immediately convey very powerful messages.”
Francis started changing the tune of the papacy straight from day one, when – to the shock of his Vatican handlers – he insisted on personally settling his tab at the clerics’ residence where he stayed during the conclave that elected him.
The Argentine soon made it clear that he had no appetite for the creeping traditionalism and pomp of church power that had begun under his predecessor. He abandoned Benedict’s signature red cape, shoes and hats, preferring a simple white cassock and the plain iron cross he wore in Buenos Aires.
Francis says he’ll stay at the Vatican this summer rather than escape to the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. In a world so steeped in tradition and choreographed rituals as the Vatican, a change in style really is a matter of substance.
“He took up this new mission with great enthusiasm and warmth,” said the Rev. Miguel Yanez, an old friend and former student of the new pope.
Avoiding isolation
The break with the past culminated with Francis’ decision to shun the ornate papal apartments for a small suite at the Domus Santa Marta, the modern Vatican guesthouse for visiting cardinals and priests.
He did so, Francis explained in a letter to a priest friend, in order to avoid becoming “isolated.”
It’s a telling indicator of how Francis envisions both himself and his new job, especially after the Vatileaks scandal in which Benedict’s personal butler — arrested for leaking personal documents — described the scholarly pope as out of touch with the world and his own staff.
At Santa Marta, Francis started celebrating a daily Mass with different groups of Vatican employees. The colorful, provocative and off-the-cuff homilies he delivers have become one of the distinctive features of his pontificate.
Nevertheless, Francis’ informal sermons have puzzled Vatican officials, who still aren’t sure what to make of his candid denunciations of the church’s “triumphalism,” careerism and pride. For months, they didn’t even appear on the Vatican page where all the pope’s activities and speeches are listed.
A poor church
Newly elected Pope Francis appears on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Wednesday (March 13) in Vatican City. Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th pontiff and will lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. RNS photo by Andrea Sabbadini
Francis has used his daily homilies to focus time and again on what is emerging as the central theme of his pontificate: building a “poor church, for the poor,” as he put it in his meeting with the world media a few days after being elected.
The focus on “the poorest, the weakest, the least important” has dominated Francis’ public outings since his inaugural Mass on March 19. Almost on a weekly basis, Francis has urged his fellow churchmen leave their comfort zone and reach out to those who live at the margins of society.
It was most visible during Holy Week, when Francis washed the feet of 12 juvenile inmates, including two girls, during a visit to a Rome prison. In a Vatican still struggling to reform its scandal-ridden bank, Francis more than once remarked that neither St. Peter nor St. Paul had any bank accounts.
“When (St. Peter) had to pay taxes, the Lord sent him to the sea to catch fish and find the money in the fish, to pay,” he said on Tuesday (June 11).
Francis has repeatedly denounced consumerism and what he called the “culture of waste” of modern economies, and making it clear that environmental protection will be a priority for the church.
Francis’ condemnation of runaway capitalism and an exclusive focus on profit are ideologically in line with his predecessor – but the vigor and frequency with which he strikes these chords are definitely new.
A different kind of culture war
While Francis minced no words in highlighting the “social gospel,” he has been less eager to engage in the culture wars over abortion or gay marriage cherished by his predecessors.
If Benedict warned of the “dictatorship of relativism,” Francis, in a speech to a group of ambassadors from tax havens such as Luxembourg and Antigua, berated the “dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”
Money, he said, must “serve” man, not “rule” over him.
No one doubts the new pope’s anti-abortion credentials, but the fact that he has condemned abortion isn’t the same as making it a touchstone issue of his pontificate.
And even as France’s Catholic Church was engaged in a very visible fight against the legalization of gay marriage, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets, Francis only seldom referred to it.
Rather than blaming the media, the pope has constantly reminded Catholics that the devil is a Catholic’s true enemy, arguing that they are engaged in a spiritual fight for renewal and salvation that overshadows petty politics and partisan interests.
Unfinished business
Even with the successful charm offensive, the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics are still wondering whether the jovial 76-year-old Jesuit will be able to deliver real reform to the Vatican’s centuries-old bureaucracy.
One month after his election, he appointed a group of eight cardinals to draw up a plan to reform the Curia. Their first meeting, though, isn’t scheduled until October.
In the Vatican, all of Benedict’s aides and appointees – including the gaffe-prone Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone – remain in office, at least provisionally.
For Spadaro, Francis is still in a “listening phase,” as he gets to know the people around him and evaluates the issues facing the church.
So, even if Francis came to the papacy surrounded by great expectations for change, “it wouldn’t be right to pass judgment on his capacity for reform just now,” he said.
Francis’ record as a Jesuit leader and an archbishop shows that he can take hard decisions. “But he won’t do it abruptly, he will do it deliberately and after long consideration.”
------
Alessandro Speciale has been covering the Vatican since 2007 and started writing for Religion News Service in 2011. Born in Rome, he studied literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and journalism at City University, London. He has appeared as an expert on Vatican affairs on CNN, BBC World and Al Jazeera English.
.. do 'little things mean a lot'? .. sometimes they do .. in Pope Francis' case, understanding he's only been there a short time, and putting all negative 'church' feelings aside .. looking at the positives .. i feel they do .. Pope Francis is a kind and decent church chappie, i reckon ..
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Francis Revolution is underway. Not everyone is pleased.
Four months into his papacy, Francis has called on young Catholics in the trenches to take up spiritual arms to shake up a dusty, doctrinaire church that is losing faithful and relevance. He has said women must have a greater role — not as priests, but a place in the church that recognizes that Mary is more important than any of the apostles. And he has turned the Vatican upside down, quite possibly knocking the wind out of a poisonously homophobic culture by merely uttering the word “gay” and saying: so what?
In between, he has charmed millions of faithful and the mainstream news media, drawing the second-largest crowd ever to a papal Mass. That should provide some insurance as he goes about doing what he was elected to do: reform not just the dysfunctional Vatican bureaucracy but the church itself, using his own persona and personal history as a model.
“He is restoring credibility to Catholicism,” said church historian Alberto Melloni.
Such enthusiasm isn’t shared across the board.
Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, had coddled traditionalist Catholics attached to the old Latin Mass and opposed to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. That group greeted Francis’ election with concern — and now is watching its worst fears come true. Francis has spoken out both publicly and privately against such “restoratist groups,” which he accuses of being navel-gazing retrogrades out of touch with the evangelizing mission of the church in the 21st century.
His recent decision to forbid priests of a religious order from celebrating the old Latin Mass without explicit authorization seemed to be abrogating one of the big initiatives of Benedict’s papacy, a 2007 decree allowing broader use of the pre-Vatican II Latin liturgy for all who want it. The Vatican denied he was contradicting Benedict, but these traditional Catholics see in Francis’ words and deeds a threat. They are in something of a retreat.
“Be smart. There will be time in the future for people to sort what Vatican II means and what it doesn’t mean,” the Rev. John Zuhlsdorf warned his traditionalist readers in a recent blog post. “But mark my words: If you gripe about Vatican II right now, in this present environment, you could lose what you have attained.”
Even more mainstream conservative Catholics aren’t thrilled with Francis.
In a recent interview with the National Catholic Reporter, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput said right-wing Catholics “generally have not been really happy” with Francis.
To be sure, Francis has not changed anything about church teaching. Nothing he has said or done is contrary to doctrine; everything he has said and done champions the Christian concepts of loving the sinner but not the sin and having a church that is compassionate, welcoming and merciful.
But tone and priorities can themselves constitute change, especially when considering issues that aren’t being emphasized, such as church doctrine on abortion, gay marriage and other issues frequently referenced by Benedict and Pope John Paul II.
The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, used the word “gay” for perhaps the first time in its 150-year history on Wednesday, in an article marveling at the change Francis has brought.
“In just a few words, the novelty has been expressed clearly and without threatening the church’s tradition,” the newspaper said about Francis’ comments on gays and women. “You can change everything without changing the basic rules, those on which Catholic tradition are based.”
The biggest headline came in Francis’ inflight news conference on the way home from Brazil this week, when he was asked about a trusted monsignor who reportedly once had a gay lover.
“Who am I to judge?” he asked, when it comes to the sexual orientation of priests, as long as they are searching for God and have good will.
Under normal circumstances, given the sexual morality at play in the Catholic Church, outing someone as actively gay is a death knell for career advancement. Vatican officials considering high-profile appointments often weigh whether someone is “ricattabile” — blackmailable.
But Francis said he investigated the allegations himself and found nothing to back them up. And that regardless, if someone is gay and repents, God not only forgives but forgets. Francis said everyone else should too. By calling out the blackmail for what it is, Francis may well have clipped the wings of an ugly but common practice at the Vatican.
Francis also made headlines with his call for the church to develop a new theology of women’s role, saying it’s not enough to have altar girls or a woman heading a Vatican department given the critical role that women have in helping the church grow.
While those comments topped the news from the 82-minute news conference, he revealed plenty of other insights that reinforce the idea that a very different papacy is underway.
—Annulments: He said the church’s judicial system of annulling marriages must be “looked at again” because church tribunals simply aren’t up to the task. That could be welcome news to many Catholics who often have to wait years for an annulment, the process by which the church determines that a marriage effectively never took place.
—Divorce and remarriage: He suggested an opening in church teaching which forbids a divorced and remarried Catholic from taking communion unless they get an annulment, saying: “This is a time for mercy.”
—Church governance: He said his decision to appoint eight cardinals to advise him was based on explicit requests from cardinals at the conclave that elected him who wanted “outsiders” — not Vatican officials — governing the church. Francis obliged, essentially creating a parallel government for the church alongside the Vatican bureaucracy: a pope and a cabinet of cardinals representing the church in each of the continents.
And then there was Rio.
From the moment he touched down, it was clear change was afoot. No armored popemobile, just a simple Fiat sedan — one that got swarmed by adoring fans when it got lost and stuck in traffic. Rather than recoil in fear, Francis rolled down his window. Given that popes until recently were carried around on a chair to keep them above the fray, that gesture alone was revolutionary.
He told 35,000 pilgrims from his native Argentina to make a “mess” in their dioceses, shake things up and go out into the streets to spread their faith, even at the expense of confrontation with their bishops. He led by example, diving into the crowds in one of Rio’s most violent slums.
“Either you do the trip as it needs to be done, or you don’t do it at all,” he told Brazil’s TV Globo. He said he simply couldn’t have visited Rio “closed up in a glass box.”
Church Of England Still Has £80,000 Wonga Stake, Admits Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Reverend Justin Welby deep in thought during the National Housing Federation's annual conference at the ICC in Birmingham. 31/12/2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/12/31/church-of-england-wonga_n_4522945.html [with comments]
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