What to make of Pope Francis? Fr. Deo's take

Here is a talk I gave to the Serra club of New of Orleans on October 8 on this subject.

Soon after Pope Francis was elected, one of the most common questions asked of Catholics was “How do you like the new pope?”  Although I should have known better, I too jumped on the bandwagon, and whenever I had exhausted material for conversation, I would ask friends: “How do you like the new pope?”

I was talking to a friend in Uganda on the phone and asked her: “So how do you like the new pope?”  My friend Agnes immediately responded: “Father, how can you ask such a question?  Do I have a choice?  He is the Pope, the man whom God has given me, to be my spiritual father at this moment.  Of course I have to like him, not necessarily for who is in himself or what he does, but simply because he is the Pope.”  Agnes is no theologian, but in my opinion, hers was a truly theological answer.  And from that time I stopped asking that question.

Many of us are perhaps wresting with a similar question: “What are we to make of Pope Francis?”  He is doing all kinds of things different from his predecessor.

·        He is not living in the Apostolic Palace, driving himself in a beaten up old fiat and making his own phone calls.

·        In his ministry, he goes around kissing babies, washing feet of women and allegedly Muslim women and making off the cuff remarks in his homilies.

·       And then there is the issue of these interviews he is giving, and to add insult to injury giving them to Jesuits and to atheists.

What is happening to the papacy?  What is happening to the Church?  What is happening to my faith?  That we ask these questions at all is perhaps a good sign that we are interested in our faith and we are paying attention.

Let me suggest three considerations that might help us understand Pope Francis and what he is doing, and might perhaps give us peace of mind and heart.

First and foremost, we have to realize, there is a new sheriff in town.  Things in the Church are not going to continue business as usual.

·        That was the wish of Pope Benedict, who resigned before his time was up, so that another person, with the physical strength and perhaps even the character, would steer the ship of Peter to meet today’s challenges.

·        That was also the wish of the cardinals, who knowing the kind of man Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio was, voted for someone who would shake things up a little.

·        But such change is also the life of the Church throughout history, hence the popular saying, ecclesia semper reformanda (the Church always reforming herself).  And the Church keeps reforming, not its own sake, but for the sake of being always becoming a better instrument of salvation.

And so, we have to realize that there are going to be changes in the way we live as a Church, but also in the way we live as individual Catholics.  Pope Francis is steering this ship in a new direction and if we don’t get on board, we will be left on the shore.

The second consideration is this: if we are to know what the Pope is saying, where he plans to steer this ship of Peter, let us get this message from the horse’s mouth.  In other words, let us read his words for ourselves and not get the message through the media, even certain media that claims to be Catholic.

·        We are fortunate enough to have access to the internet, to the Vatican website and to the USCCB website, which contains the Pope’s message in its original language and in approved translations.

·        We would never allow someone to chew food for us to eat and shallow.  This is not only disgusting, it is also not nutritious – for they will chew the nutrients out and leave us with the dregs.  So why then do we learn about the Pope’s message through the often twisted words of the media?

o   For when the liberal-leaning media reports the Pope’s words, it is to pick out those parts of what he says, for their agenda.  For example, when he spoke about homosexuality, they picked out only that part that called for respect and love for the homosexual person, but not the part that called that person to a chaste life.

o   As for the conservative-leaning media, they too will take his statements out of context, to show how unorthodox he is.  Using the same example of homosexuality, many on concluded that the Pope had changed the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.

And if in reading his words for yourself there is something that you cannot understand, ask someone you trust to help explain: your pastor, another priest or go to authentically Catholic commentators.

The third and final consideration is filial trust.  We ask our children to trust us their parents, even when they think that we are bumbling idiots, are out of touch with the world.  As children of the Papa Francis, why don’t we accord him the same benefit?  We too ought to trust our papa, whom God has given us to lead us to heaven, even if we don’t get it yet.  The apostles trusted Jesus, who rocked the boat as he steered it.  We trusted Pope John Paul II, who also rocked the boat, for example, by all the foreign trips he made and by his charismatic speeches.  Let us trust our papa, who is digging deeper into the treasure of our Catholic faith, to remind us of things that we have forgotten in recent years.

And so, what are we to make of Pope Francis:

·        There is a new Sheriff in town.

·        Let us listen to the new Sheriff, by going to the horse’s mouth.

·        And finally, when we listen, let us trust that despite rocking the boat a little, the new sheriff knows how to steer the boat.