Understand the Big-Hearted Pope -- Francis

by Susan Fox

“I am a sinner.”

photo by telegraph.co.uk

So begins a fascinating interview with Pope Francis published on Sept. 19. The interview rocked the world, with some claiming the pope is a “flaming liberal” and will take the Church to the left, while orthodox Catholics feel betrayed.

Both sides are wrong. The interview has to be taken in the context of the relativistic world we inhabit. He was trying to give us a strategy for converting the world. He was not pulling back from our positions against abortion, birth control and gay marriage.

“I see the Church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. ... And you have to start from the ground up,” the Pope said in the interview.

He is right! In the context of evangelization, one has to focus on the person and the basic message of Catholicism, not on the hot button issues of the day. I have 30 years of door-to-door evangelization under my belt, and I quickly learned that arguing the issues of abortion, contraception and gay marriage – even defending the church in the priestly sexual abuse scandal – would never win any converts.

Early in my volunteer labor, I visited an elderly single woman who was lapsed from the Catholic faith. She was lonely and wanted attention. Did I give her that? No, I was eager to change her mind (this was 30 years ago). So when I asked her why she left the Church, and she answered because of its position on contraception, alarm bells should have gone off in my head. She was not living with anyone. She was too old to have children. That couldn’t possibly be the reason she was away from the Church. But instead -- in my enthusiasm -- I began to tell her the wonders of Natural Family Planning. Wrong choice! She naturally ended the interview there.

As the years passed, I learned NOT to explain the Church’s position on any of these hot button issues unless somebody

"I got to know the people,
 where they hurt and why
they hurt. And this method
proved the most effective
in bringing people
 into the church."

asked me to! Instead I got to know the people, where they hurt and why they hurt. And this method proved the most effective in bringing people into the church. I learned to look for the good things they were already doing, and emphasize this.

St. Peter Claver is an excellent model for this type of evangelization. During his 40 years of meeting and greeting the Negro slaves that poured into Columbia through the port of Cartagena during the 1600s, he baptized and instructed 300,000 slaves!

St. Peter Claver ministering
to the slaves

He didn’t waste time arguing the issue of slavery. He marched onto the slave ships, ministered to the naked and ill-treated passengers, brought them food, clothing, tobacco and brandy, and by gentle words and gestures he calmed their fears and after these needs were met, he proclaimed the gospel. After they were baptized, they were still slaves, but they had received the greatest treasure on earth – an intimate relationship with God Himself.

Peter Faber, one of the first companions to St. Ignatius of Loyola, particularly impressed Pope Francis, according to his interview with Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J., because of “(his) dialogue with all -- even the most remote and even with his opponents.” Sometimes we find our pastors hiding in the rectory when the neediest (not in a material sense) in their parish live right across the street. Lay Catholics too sometimes know how to hide in the Church, taking up jobs there, but never reaching out to strangers.

The pope also said he admired Faber’s being available and fully present to others immediately. So the pope admires evangelists that are available and fully present to everyone -- even their enemies. I admire this also.

The secular media was also fascinated by the fact that Pope Francis said he was a sinner. They felt this was the first time a pope admitted such. Apparently, they were asleep during their childhood Sunday Bible classes when St. Peter, the first pope, told Jesus, “Depart from me. I am a sinful man.”

The pope – as a sinful man – identified with St. Matthew, the tax collector sitting in the Custom House holding onto his money when Jesus came by, and said “Follow me.”  Going to the Church of St. Louis of France in Rome, the pope often contemplated the painting of “The Calling of St. Matthew,” by Caravaggio.

“That finger of Jesus, pointing at Matthew. That’s me. I feel like him. Like Matthew.” the pope said. “It is the gesture of

St. Matthew wonders,
"Who me?"

Matthew that strikes me: he holds on to his money as if to say, ‘No, not me! No, this money is mine.’ Here, this is me, a sinner on whom the Lord has turned his gaze. And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff: ‘I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance.’”

Ironically, Jesus went to the apostle Matthew’s home after they met and had dinner. The Pharisees saw this and asked why Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus responded, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

That was the whole purpose and theme of the pope’s interview with Fr. Spadaro. The pope’s words about the “Church as a field hospital” eerily echo Jesus’ own words in the Gospel of Matthew. "For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Yet this so poorly catechized world has chosen to interpret the pope’s remarks about loving sinners as if we also must love their sins -- an illogical conclusion.

One liberal writer reading Pope Francis’ remarks about papal infallibility concludes that the pope  believes the people who support gay marriage and contraception are infallible. The pope said, “All the faithful, considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief, and the people display this infallibility in believing, through a supernatural sense of the faith of all the people walking together. This is what I understand today as the ‘thinking with the church’ of which St. Ignatius speaks. When the dialogue among the people and the bishops and the pope goes down this road and is genuine, then it is assisted by the Holy Spirit. We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church.”

What the pope is saying is nothing new. The smallest person in the Catholic Church uniting his mind and heart with the deposit of faith handed down to us from the apostles (the mind of the church) is infallible. But the smallest person uniting his mind and heart with the thinking of the world (pro-abortion, contraception and gay marriage) is just a plain old fool.

So then Pope Francis says, “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. The teaching of the church is clear, and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”

That is exactly what I am talking about – that our evangelization need not fixate on our differences with others, but rather on the gospel. But the liberal writer I am looking at sees these remarks as a grudging acceptance of the Church’s official positions on abortion, contraception and gay marriage. And he bases it on the pope’s use of the term, “son of the church.” He thinks that is not a defense of doctrine, simply acquiescence.

People with such infantile knowledge of the Catholic Church should not under any circumstances write about it. The term “Son of the Church” means docile, absolute, childlike obedience. To the best of my knowledge St. Teresa of Avila coined it, or at least she used it to describe herself in her later life. She said, “I am the Child of the Church.”

Imagine this. The elderly and sick Saint Teresa wants to go start one last convent in a big city and then rest. Her confessor, whom she has vowed to obey as if his is the Voice of the Church, orders her instead to start numerous small convents all over Spain. If you ever watched the movie, it is really something. She is being carried around from convent to convent in a bed because she is so very ill. And she obeys even this onerous order from a priest who is hanging around Paris getting adored because he is her spiritual director. (Near the end of her life, he gives his orders by letter and never sees her in person.) She – an elderly and sick nun  – starts several small convents. She obeys at great personal cost. She is obedient unto death.

Today, St. Teresa of Avila is one of the incorruptibles. That is, her body doesn’t decay. But she is unique among this class of saints, because her body is not only incorrupt; you can arrange it in any position you want including standing up. Now this is a message from God: St. Teresa of Avila is and was a daughter of the Church. She is still wholly obedient – even in her dead body.

 

Now we have a pope describing himself as a “Son of the Church.” What do you think? Is he only giving grudging obedience? Or is he onboard the speeding train with his whole heart, thinking with the "mind of the Church," thinking with the Catholic people, priests and bishops, who have faithfully followed the Good Shepherd for the last 2,000 years?

The original and complete interview with Pope Francis can be found at A Big Heart, Open to God