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Guest
I’m less than sixty, and think I don’t fit that mold.
I’m orthodox (scrupulously so), but I dare say that my strategic preference in how to reach the goals of bringing the Kingdom of God to the world differs fairly radically from the majority of self-professed orthodox with whom I’ve interacted on this forum. To me, how we reach goals like care for the poor, the unborn, and successful evangelization are matters of prudence, which need to be guided by Catholic social teaching. Not only that, I believe that we are obligated to use methods that are successful in advancing goals like eliminating abortion and restoring a sense of the sacred in sexuality (measured by such objective measures as the divorce rate, STD infection rate, and rate of extramarital birth). Toward these ends, a scrupulous care for objective scientific assessment of what is successful is critical. And in everything we do, we must be there bringing the joy of the Gospel and, as Anglican theologian N.T. Wright has said, “praying in the places where the world is in pain.”
In my eyes, there has been a segmentation of the Church, at least in the U.S., and maybe throughout the world, largely along the lines of partisan politics. To me, this equation of orthodoxy with one political party and Satan himself with another is a radical violation of the one of the most fundamental teachings of the Bible: that the Church must be united. Any who share in the kerygma are part of the Body of Christ. This teaching is so fundamental to 1 Corinthians (plus 1 John, John 17, a good part of Romans) that it shocks and disturbs me how much we have lost it. Not just as an abject failure of ecumenical dialogue with our Protestant and non-Chalcedonian brothers and sisters, but as a willful division of the Church against itself – almost to the point of idolizing electoral politics.
Liberals and conservatives are both at fault here. Most of us attend the parish that makes us most comfortable. Most of us don’t fellowship with Catholics who don’t think, talk, shop, and vote like we do. Most of us depict “the other side” as a grim caricature, and then call that caricature anathema.
I see Cardinal Burke as feeding the fire of division in the Church. To me, as someone who admittedly does not know him well, it seems that version of Church unity he espouses is compliance with the teachings of the Magisterium, not a celebration of shared kerygma. That, to me, would go a long way toward explaining why Pope Francis has chosen not to renew his tenure. Pope Francis has a distinct and radical pastoral emphasis on the awesome power of the kerygma to change lives that does not include the reductionism of Catholic teaching to issues of the culture war in a manner that Cardinal Burke seems to have professed.
It’s easy to say that Pope Francis really isn’t changing any element of Catholic teaching, and be 100% correct. However, he seems to make love the center of the gospel message, the overflowing love of God for each and every human being – born and unborn. He does not promote a pastoral approach that reduces Catholic moral and social thinking, in fact Catholic political theology, to a checklist of “non-negotiables.” For Pope Francis, his emphasis is on the transformative power of a heart on fire with the love of Christ – the joy of the Gospel. From most of what I’ve read of Cardinal Burke, his pastoral approach has been juridical, divisive, and just up to the edge of partisan. To me, compliance seems to be the virtue he sees as most important in a Catholic.
I see Pope Francis’ approach paying dividends before my eyes. My neighbor, who grew up in India as a Hindu, just this morning approached me to tell me that Pope Francis has made him consider becoming Catholic. He said that the Pope’s emphasis on love of the outcast has made him realize that the Catholic Church is not just about a stern holding the line on moral issues. I told him how I see Catholic teaching on sexuality as consistent with some of the feminist scholarship I’ve seen on how our culture objectifies women, portraying them as commodities or products designed to please men. He and I will be talking more. Thank you, Pope Francis for all you’ve done!