Category Archives: Pope Francis

WHITE SMOKE!

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Congratulations to my diocese — as far as I’m concerned, Bishop Jacques Fabre-Jeune just scooped the world. I received first a text, then an email, from his office without having heard a word ere that.

Which is a bit surprising. I must have turned off more notifications from news sources than I thought.

Anyway, I then looked, and sure enough:

So now, everybody can pack up and go home, and stop trying so hard to predict who the new pope is. Or at least, they can when we actually know who he is.

I don’t remember this kind of blanket coverage in the past — when we lost John Paul II, or when Benedict retired. It has seemed, well, unseemly.

Some things should be done in private, without the jostling elbows of the world intruding. This is one of those things.

That may sound odd coming from an old newspaperman, but I’m also a (sort of, dating to my conversion in 1981) old Catholic. And I’ve got this archaic thing of trusting the Holy Spirit on this.

Oh, I may complain now and again about the new Holy Father — hey, no mortal is perfect — but I assure you I’m quite at peace on this as we receive the news…

Francis, who did not seek to be great, but was

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Peggy Noonan dubbed John Paul II “John Paul the Great,” and who can argue with that? Not I. He certainly fit the description.

From the beginning, Jorge Mario Bergoglio did not seek to be great, in the coarser senses of the term. He signaled that by the first thing he did after his surprise election as pope — deciding to be the first pontiff in our time named “Francis,” after the man who chose a life of poverty, becoming a plain-robed itinerant preacher, a beggar in a time of particularly worldly clericalism.

If you wish to be a cynic (and too many do), you can call Pope Francis’ gestures — living outside the imperial quarters reserved for the pope, riding in a Ford Focus instead of a limo, saying “Who am I to judge?” — a theatrical form of PR if you like. The point, though, is that he chose to display thoughts and behavior consistent with being, first and foremost, a follower of the carpenter from Nazareth.

From the moment he came out on that balcony and said “Buon giorno” to the crowd, he was humble. He was kind. He bestowed his blessings and his love upon the poor, the suffering, the marginalized. He lived the Great Commandment: He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and he loved his neighbor as himself. Or more than himself.

He lived his life as an example, one that the world in our time sorely needed, and still needs. And as our pope, he expected us to do the same.

And now, as badly as we need him, he’s gone.

There’s a lot of simplistic conjecture about whether his successor will be a liberal or conservative — reducing the choice of a Supreme Pontiff to the same gross, ones-and-zeroes foolishness that we allow to destroy our politics in this century.

As I grew to love Francis, I listened to those who deprecated him from both the “right” and the “left” — the kind of Catholics who would vote for Trump, and the Culture Warriors who kept saying he didn’t go “far enough,” as though his purpose was to please them by granting all their fondest wishes.

All of them helped me see that this good man was my kind of pope. And we need another just like him — except maybe younger, so he can stay with us longer.

I’m so glad Pope Francis is safely back in Rome. Thank God…

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Mosul welcoming Pope Francis.

Mosul welcoming Pope Francis. Some wore masks, but not all…

Since last night, and through this morning, I kept checking social media and Google News to see if Pope Francis was back in Rome yet. I kept finding stories about his last day in Iraq, and even stories saying he was wheels-up leaving Iraq. But nothing showing him having safely landed.

Finally, I found this on the Vatican’s news service:

Pope Francis makes a brief visit to the Basilica of St. Mary Major to thank the Blessed Virgin Mary for her protection during his visit to Iraq.

Well, thank God. And his mother, too, although not being a cradle Catholic myself, I don’t habitually think in those terms. (Marian devotion is one of those things that I’ve mentioned before that cause me to think, I suppose these Catholics do these things…)

And now, I can be glad he went to Iraq, despite so many urging him not to. I still wish he hadn’t had those huge gatherings with the often maskless people (not for his sake — he’s had his shots — but for the sakes of the maskless people and all they will come in contact with). But I’m glad he met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and talked tolerance. I’m glad he went to Mosul and talked about the terrible cost of religious fanaticism. I think he made a positive impression, and it will do good.

But boy, am I glad he’s back. Because we need Pope Francis. The Church needs him — especially the American Church. Joe Biden, our second Catholic president, needs him, because Francis has Joe’s back. I need him, for some of the same reasons Joe does. The Catholics who voted for Trump need him even more, even though they probably don’t realize it. Iraq needs him. The world needs this man to be at the head of the Church right now.

And I think it’s great he now wants to go to Lebanon. But I hope he waits, at least until COVID is behind us. People — especially Christians — in these countries are thrilled to have him visit. And while I prefer not to see him taking risks, I don’t want to see them be enticed into taking risks, either….

More on the problem afflicting many fellow Catholics

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America screenshot

Here I am again posting about my other recent obsession (as opposed to the one about what the web is doing to our brains and society): Trying to pull back some fellow Catholics from their recent political (and theological) madness.

Reading frequently on this topic, I realized recently that I’d find a lot of good stuff (such as Jeannie Gaffigan’s great column I wrote about before) in America magazine, the Jesuit publication. So I subscribed. And yesterday they alerted me to this piece, which I thought was good.

It’s headlined, “The same Catholics who condemn ‘relativism’ and a ‘culture of death’ have built a deadly, post-truth world.”

True, sadly.

An excerpt that sums up the point:

To speak of the “culture of death” and “dictatorship of relativism” is to invoke a recognizable formula that neatly sums up a particular sense of Catholic countercultural identity that has increasingly allied itself socially and politically with evangelical Protestants and the Republican Party. In this usage, this combined mantra has become a truism at best and a slogan at worst, even beyond its Catholic usage. Worse still, it has become a performative contradiction and scandal that makes a mockery of the Gospel.

In its final days, the Trump administration went on a killing spree, executing federal prisoners at an unprecedented rate; the number of Americans killed by Covid-19 broke 400,000; and five people died in a violent failed insurrection at the Capitol. Add to this the ongoing refugee crisis, the existential threats of climate change, the rise of populist authoritarianism around the world and the struggle against anti-Black racism in America, and it is not hard to see that the culture of death is alive and well.

But those who are most prone to support capital punishment and refuse Covid-19 safety protocols, who explain away and excuse violent insurrection, reject refugees and migrants, and deny the reality of climate change and racial injustice, are precisely the ones who have decried the “culture of death.” The tragedy and the farce of this situation is perhaps only rivaled—or sharpened—by the graphic and horrific images of Blue Lives Matter flags flying in the same place where a Trump-supporting police officer was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher. A culture of death, indeed. Lord have mercy….

It’s worth reading, if you have access (and they allow a certain number of freebies to nonsubscribers).

Oh, by the way, I post these items in the hope that some of my fellow Catholics will see them and engage. The rest of you are certainly welcome to join in — even those of you who use all such posts as another opportunity to express your distaste for us nasty papists. Whatever, knock yourselves out.

But my fellow papists out there — this is mainly for you, so I hope to hear from you…

More friction between the Pope, and American bishops who don’t understand that the Pope is Catholic

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Sorry. I couldn’t resist referring to the old joke in the headline. A more straightforward way to say it would be, “don’t understand that the Pope outranks them.”

At moments such as this, it seems they tend to think of him as “just the bishop of Rome,” rather than the Holy Father.

Or maybe they do get it, since it seems they pulled back their harsh statement when the Vatican stepped in.

Anyway, the conflict persists. Following up on my earlier posts on this subject, here are some excerpts from a piece in the Jesuit magazine America, rapidly becoming one of my favorite sources:

In a message of “cordial good wishes” to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. after his installation as the 46th president of the United States, Pope Francis assured him of his prayers “that Almighty God will grant you wisdom and strength in the exercise of your high office.”Pope Francis

He told the president that he prayed that “under your leadership, may the American people continue to draw strength from the lofty political, ethical and religious values that have inspired the nation since its founding.”

“At a time when the grave crises facing our human family call for farsighted and united responses,” the pope wrote, “I pray that your decisions will be guided by a concern for building a society marked by authentic justice and freedom, together with unfailing respect for the rights and dignity of every person, especially the poor, the vulnerable and those who have no voice.”

Furthermore, the pope said, “I ask God, the source of all wisdom and truth, to guide your efforts to foster understanding, reconciliation and peace within the United States and among the nations of the world in order to advance the universal common good.”…

Pope Francis’ warm message contrasted with the public statement that had been prepared by Archbishop José Gomez in the name of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. While the bishops’ statement included much the pope would agree with, it nevertheless adopted a confrontational tone over the issue of abortion especially, as well as contraception, marriage and gender. The Vatican only learned of the U.S.C.C.B. message hours before it was due to be released, and a senior Vatican official told America that “it was reasonable to say” that it had intervened but did not confirm or deny the details first reported by The Pillar.

There was a negative reaction from Vatican officials contacted by America in Rome to the statement issued by Archbishop Gomez in the name of the U.S.C.C.B. “It is most unfortunate and is likely to create even greater divisions within the church in the United States,” a senior official, who did not wish to be named because of the position he holds at the Vatican, told America….

Amen to that.

Anyway, as I said earlier, I feel blessed that Francis is my pope, and Joe is my president….