Back in September, The American published this interview with Pope Francis, which contained some very interesting comments concerning homosexuality and how the Church cannot focus on simply a few specific issues.
In response to the Holy Father's comments on homosexuality, more traditional Catholics bloggers and Facebook posters have bent over backwards to diminish the Pope's words along the lines of, "Well, the Holy Father didn't say anything that contradicted Church doctrine."
Wow! Really? Was that a concern? Common Catholics, aren't we kind of riding this Mathew 16:18 thing to the end? Does it appen that every time His Holiness talks there is a great big holding of breath until we can dove tail everything the Pope says into our predetermined focus at which point there can be a collective sigh of relief? If that is the case, I really think that we're missing out. There was never a question if Pope Francis was going to break Church doctrine, and so if that is all people were looking for, they were really missing the point.
But what I found more interesting in that interview was when the Pope said, "We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. . . . The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently." These words probably got less play overall, but I think they prove very challenging to us American Catholics who in the name of our faith, are actively supporting a party who at least on a platform level, are aligned on the first two issues. And while there is a strong temptation to go back to that interview and blog about the finer nuances of the Holy Father's words, it isn't necessary, because he has reinforced his message through Archbishop Vigano's address to the American Catholic Bishops where he said, "the Holy Father wants bishops in tune with their people,” saying that when they met in June, Pope Francis “made a special point of saying he wants 'pastoral' bishops, not bishops who profess or follow a particular ideology."
These thoughts echo one of the Holy Father's homilies where he says, "The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology. And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid.
And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements.
The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians."
There are a multitude of ways to construe what the Pope is saying, but given his consistency of message, and the fact that he expressed these words in anticipation of Vigano's address to the US Bishops, to me it seems there is a clear challenge to Catholics. Are we following our faith, or a GOP ideology? And in following our faith, how do we balance what the Pope instructs in proclaiming the Gospel and being "ministers of mercy above all" with Pope Benedict saying that not all moral issues have the same moral weight and in voting one needs to follow the hierarchy of values.
Again, challenging words by the current Holy Father. My hope is that instead of trying to diminish what Pope Francis is saying, there will instead be an effort to meet the challenge.
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