Fr. Robert Barron
comments on The Pope Francis Interview.
As by now, everyone in the world knows
Pope Francis gave a wide-ranging interview
to "Civiltà Cattolica," which is the Jesuit Journal in Rome
and it was then simultaneously published
by sixteen Jesuit sponsored journals
from around the world.
And as we've come to expect,
every time this Pope speaks, there's a bit of a media-frenzy.
Judging from the headlines in the New York Times and CNN,
you'd think that there was a revolutionary
maverick Pope leading this recalcitrant
institution into the modern world.
I would urge everyone to take a deep breath
and prayerfully, or at least thoughtfully,
consider what Francis actually said, because I think it is an extraordinary interview
and is in its own way quite revolutionary,
but not the way the press has it.
I think the interpretive key
is the answer he gave to the first question.
The interviewer simply said to him:
Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope's given name)?
And he said, after a substantial pause,
the Pope said: "I'm a sinner,
who's been looked upon by the gaze of Christ."
And I think that's an extraordinary answer to give.
It was not just for rhetorical effect.
It comes out of his very deep spirituality.
He names himself as a "sinner," who has been addressed by grace.
That, I would submit to everyone,
is the heart of the Catholic thing. That's the Gospel.
We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We are all sinners, without exception, but we've been addressed by grace.
Before we get to abortion, gay marriage,
birth control,
all the issues that we usually talk about,
long before we get of any of that, we have to start with this moment
of encounter between a sinner and amazing grace.
And I think what he keeps saying on this interview is
"keep our priorities clear".
It's interesting how he made reference to Caravaggio's masterpiece
"The Conversion of Saint Matthew," which is found
in the wonderful church of Saint Louis of the French in Rome.
Christ addresses Matthew.
He puts his beckoning hand out to him, and the light falls on San Matthew,
and Matthew gestures to himself as if to say, "How could you possibly be calling someone like me?"
That's the moment.
That's the moment of encounter.
Think too in Giussani, who is very influencing in Pope Francis,
the moment of the encounter with Christ, between the sinner, who knows it
(there's Matthew, in the midst of his tax collector work)
who is addressed by the light of grace. That is the heart of the Catholic thing.
Now, we'll get to all of the others issues you wanna talk about,
but if you forget that central moment, you've forgotten everything.
And then also I think he sheds light
among the most controversial remarks he made, namely that the Church
is not a little chapel for a handful of people,
but is meant for the whole world.
This goes right back to the Bible of course, but coming right up through Vatican II.
Paul VI, in the wake of Vatican II said:
"The Church doesn't have a mission, the Church is a mission".
The Church's whole reason for being is to draw everybody into that moment of encounter
so that every sinner can see
the face of Christ's mercy and can bathe in His light.
We are not like a little chapel for the morally perfect.
God help us! I mean, how many people are morally perfect?
Well, nobody! We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We are not a little chapel for those who are living the moral life perfectly.
Rather, we are meant to be a community
that gathers in the whole world to look at the face of Christ.
I think the missionary, evangelical side of the Church, is being strongly emphasized there.
And then, in light of these two moves,
we might understand the most controversial statement he makes.
I want to read it, so I get the wording just right.
The Pope said: "The Church sometimes has locked itself up in small things,
and in small-minded rules.
The most important thing is the first proclamation,
"Jesus Christ has saved you."
Well, see, there it is.
What comes first? Before you get to
moral rules or liturgical prescriptions
or spiritual programs, what comes first?
Jesus Christ has saved you.
That's the look that Saint Matthew got.
That's Bergoglio, who says I'm a sinner, who's been looked upon by grace.
That comes first and then we get, in time,
to the rules and regulations and specificities of the life.
What you don't want to do, and of course I've argued this as well,
what you don't want to do is lead with this rule.
If you do that, in our post-modern culture, all the defenses go up,
nobody wants to be told, "They are living their life in the wrong way."
When you lead with that, you tend not to get a very good reaction
from our post-modern culture. Rather, the Pope says:
"Lead with Grace. Lead with the moment of encounter
with the Jesus Christ who offers you salvation."
Now, I might have offered this analogy before and perhaps it's a little bit trite, but it helps me...
If you are trying to draw a little kid
into the beauty of baseball, what you do is bring him to the stadium.
You show him people playing the game,
you show great hitters and pitchers and runners.
He maybe takes in the smells, and sights, and sounds of the stadium.
You get him into lyricism and poetry of baseball,
which in turn will lead him to want to play, which in turn will lead him
to understand the rules from the inside.
What you don't do is begin with the "infield fly" rule.
You don't begin with the rule book of baseball because it probably will just turn somebody off,
they won't find it compelling. Rather, draw him to the poetry
of the game and then he will come to inhabit the rules from the inside.
I think that is precisely what the Pope is arguing here.
In our situation, especially today, to begin with the rules is a non-starter.
But we get there--- Yes.
He is not saying (I think you need to read this text carefully) he is not saying,
"These are unimportant, let's jettison the rules, who needs all this small-minded stuff?"
It's a question of prioritization
and pastoral strategy.
I think that's a point that was often missed by the media,
as they had the first coverage of this.
The image that I thought was the greatest
in the interview and it is part of this Pope's
unique ability to find really telling and memorable phrases.
Think of "the pastor has to smell like his sheep"
or think, famously, when he was in Rio,
and he talked about "making a mess." He has a gift for this kind
of lively turn of phrase. Well, in this one we have:
"The Church is a field hospital." It's really telling.
A field hospital. It's a place where gravely
wounded people come as they leave the battlefield of life.
What are we living in now?
Especially in the West, we are living in this post-modern culture
that has left so many people spiritually wounded.
They are adrift in the sea of moral relativism.
They are cut off from God. Look at the aggressive New Atheism
that dismisses God as a medieval superstition.
They've lost their way. More than that, as Chesterton said,
they've lost their address. Chesterton said,
"People have always lost their way, but the point is now, they've lost their address."
They don't even they know where they are supposed to be going.
Spiritually speaking, these are people who are gravely wounded.
So, as the Pope said, "If someone comes gravely wounded from the battlefield
into the field hospital, you don't check their pulse and their cholesterol levels."
You address these fundamental problems.
So it goes in the life of the Church, especially today. If we are a field hospital,
we have to be addressing first these fundamental points of
spiritual woundedness of people.
And I think again he is scoring us for a certain preoccupation with these smaller issues
when the great issues have to be addressed so immediately.
Now, I love this text. I think is a beautiful text.
I would say this by way of criticism,
I would share with a number of people the critique that sometimes
the Pope's language, again gives the impression, I'm not saying he is saying it directly,
but gives me the impression that some very good people who have fought
the good fight for many years, especially on the pro-life front,
that they can seem to be characterized as
"obsessed with small minded rules" and all of this.
I sympathize with those, who say, "Come on, don't throw good culture warriors under the bus."
I don't think the Pope is by any means saying that directly,
but some of the language might give that impression,
and I think that's regrettable.
But, at the end of the day, and looked at in sum, I think it's a
very powerful spiritual testimony. It's not an encyclical
and maybe that's a good thing for the people today
who might be put off by something as formal as an encyclical.
This interview, and it is more personal and it's more wide-ranging
and it's more associative, might draw people today in,
in a way that a formal encyclical would not.
And I think what they will find if they look at it carefully and prayerfully,
is a very powerful articulation at what stands
at the very heart of the Catholic thing.