I reiterate my call to Catholic conservatives to approach Francis as I approached Benedict: accept that he is challenging your faith and inviting you to deepen it. Let the unfamiliarity of his words and approach encourage you to go out into the deep, not to shun or spin or minimize. As mentioned last week, Notre Dame’s Rick Garnett has said this, and he is to be applauded for saying it, but more than that, his example should be followed. Not every conservative is greeting this papacy as a sign of the end times.
My liberal friends also are being challenged by Pope Francis. They warm to his words and to his style, yet they too must be careful not to trim his comments or mischaracterize what he is saying. The pope rightly said that the church should not only be obsessed with the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage and contraception, but some Catholic commentators have described these concerns as “narrow” when, in fact, our Catholic teaching against abortion is foundational, our Catholic witness to marriage is sacramental, and our Catholic concern about contraception is, I believe, prophetic, if nonetheless more problematic. And the decision to laicize Fr. Greg Reynolds in Australia indicates that Pope Francis wants to remind us that while the rules should not be the first thing people know about the Catholic church, there are still rules, and clergy especially should be expected to follow them.
This is, as Father Reese said, an exciting time, a fun time to be a Catholic, and not just for those of us who range ourselves on the left. Pope Francis is inviting the entire church, from the Curia to the pews, to get out of ourselves and get over ourselves and, trusting in the Lord, go out into the world with confidence and joy. He is not asking us to abandon our moral doctrines. He is asking us to live them in such a way that they shine and do not scold. He is inviting us to love the poor, to encounter Christ in the poor and not to be so overly concerned with our own moral purity that fear of the messiness of life deters us from being with the poor. He is calling us to trust, to really trust, in God’s mercy. This is not doctrinal imprecision. This is not a slur on his predecessors. This is the Gospel.
Defending Pope Francis
At First Things, William Doino sticks up for Pope Francis against his critics on the Catholic Right. Excerpt:
Most astonishing of all is the idea that Francis is accommodating his papacy to the ways of the world, ignoring the Gospel’s command not to conform to it. Sandro Magister wrote about Francis’s mission: “There is nothing in this program of the pontificate that could turn out to be unacceptable to the dominant secular opinion.” Yet, the day after he was elected pope, Francis declared:
When we journey without the cross, when we build without the cross, and when we confess a Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord: we are worldly . . . I would like for us all, after these days of grace, to have courage, precisely the courage, to walk in the presence of the Lord’s presence . . . to build the Church upon the blood of the Lord, which is poured out on the cross; and to confess the only glory there is: Christ crucified.And the day after Magister published his piece, Francis continued at Asissi: “A Christian cannot coexist with the spirit of the world, ” for worldliness “leads us to vanity arrogance and pride,” it “is an idol,” and “worldliness is a murderer because it kills souls, kills people, kills the Church.”
This is the spirit of cultural appeasement?
On the Catholic Left, Michael Sean Winters sounds the same note, even speaking out against fellow liberals who gripe about certain aspects of Francis’s papacy. Excerpt:
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