The pope’s recent interview has gotten a lot of attention.[1]
Rumors are swirling that the free-wheeling pontiff from Argentina is changing everything,
from the Church’s fundamental position on homosexuality, to abortion, to birth
control. One recent headline reads, “Pope Francis assures atheists: You don’t
have to believe in God to go to heaven.” Christian conservatives, both Catholic
and Evangelical, are scratching their heads as liberals everywhere are touting
the pope as their own personal champion (depending on their particular
agenda).
Whatever your proclivity, this invigorating time in the
Church’s two thousand year history promises both comfort and challenge. While I
can assure you that the longstanding theological foundations of the Catholic
Church are not, and I repeat, not changing
before our eyes, I can also say that we are indeed experiencing bellwether
changes in the Church’s pastoral posture and missional emphases. You know the winds of change are blowing
when in response to the question “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” (that is his
non-regnal name), Francis utters, “I am a sinner. This is the most accurate
definition. . . I am a sinner.”
With the election of Pope Francis we are seeing an
extraordinary resurrection of an ecclesial vision that isn’t exactly new, it
has dotted the Christian tradition for over two millennia, but one that is
being articulated and embodied in unprecedented fashion. “It is pure genius,”
noted Vatican correspondent John Allen, “that a pastor [Pope Francis] is able
to present Catholic doctrine to 21st century man in an original
way.”[2]
We are living in bracingly exciting times.
In his recent interview, Francis uses the image of a “field
hospital” to convey the pastoral priorities of the Church in the postmodern
world. “The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and
to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.”[3]
In an address earlier this year, Pope Francis called for a veritable “revolution
of tenderness” and an approach to evangelization that engenders a “culture of
encounter.”[4]
The church sometimes has locked itself
up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the
first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. . . We need to proclaim the
Gospel on every street corner, preaching the good news of the kingdom and
healing, even with our preaching, every kind of disease and wound.
Yet it is more than just dedicated preaching that will reach
the lost and heal their wounds today. Pope Francis goes on to say, “The
ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who
can walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to
descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without
getting lost.” This is the vision of incarnational evangelization par excellence, the vision of
organizations like Young Life, modeled after the life of Jesus Christ who
“being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be
grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.”[5]
The pope is calling the Church to “be merciful, take
responsibility for the people and accompany them like the good Samaritan, who
washes, cleans and raises up his neighbor.” It is taking the time to step out
of our own world and into another, with tenderness and mercy, patience and
longsuffering, so that they might encounter the healing and restoration found
only in Jesus Christ. “This,” Pope Francis says, “is pure Gospel.”
The missional moment is upon us. Beyond the distraction of
headlines and political jockeying is the clarion call for a new evangelization. Pope Francis is
showing us what that looks like.
[1] Over
the course of three meetings held in Rome in August of 2013, Pope Francis
offered an unusually candid interview to Antonio Spadaro, S.J., the editor in
chief of La Civilta Cattolica, a
Jesuit journal in Italy, in association with sixteen Jesuit periodicals around
the world. The interview was conducted in Italian then translated into English,
a 12,000 word piece issued last week in America,
a national Catholic magazine published in the United States. You can access the
complete interview at: http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview.
[2] John
Allen, “Francis always acts on his own initiative and encourages others to
follow him,” Vatican Insider (September
12, 2013), accessed 9/21/2013 at http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/inquiries-and-interviews/detail/articolo/papa-pope-el-papa-francesco-francis-francisco-27789/
[3] Ibid.
[4] Pope
Francis, “Address to the Coordinating Committee of CELAM,” Sumare Study Center,
Rio de Janiero, July 28, 2013.
[5]
Philippians 2:6-7.
