I would encourage you and everyone, including my brothers, not to box in the pope. Allow me to give a personal example. I run a program for our archdiocese called Project Joseph. It’s a ministry for expectant fathers and fathers in crisis pregnancies. The end goal of the program is found in the name itself, to evangelize men so that they may be the kind of fathers and spouses as St. Joseph.
If we’re speaking about the day to day situation of my dads, I would probably say something like, “The biggest problem my dads have is a lack of self-control and discipline.” On another day, I may reflect on the fact that most of my dads are unemployed and have serous material hardships. I can understand the despair when an unwelcome pregnancy occurs. They need jobs; but they need education to get those jobs . . . and so forth.
I am by no means placing the temporal and emotional needs over salvation. I would expect that if someone who is talking to me and they see that I’m wearing a worn out habit, have a long grey beard, have holes in my shoes and put cardboard in the inner sole to keep my feet dry would get some kind of an inkling that there is more to me than social work. In other words, I don’t have to go to the soul each and every time I reflect on the needs of the people whom we serve. The fact that I don’t do so does not mean that it’s not important to me. It simply means that at this moment the fact the John Doe is looking for an abortion, because he has no money to support a child is a major preoccupation for me. If I start to talk to John Doe about chastity and sin, while he’s worried about his next meal, we’re going to pass each other like two ships in the night. I have to start where he’s at, not where I want to go.
In addition, I am still a human being. The soul does not occupy my attention 24/7. This does not minimize the importance of our eternal salvation. It’s simply a fact of life. Jesus made breakfast for the Apostles. Mary was concerned over wine at a wedding.
God became man to save humanity. We can’t just separate what is temporal from what is immortal and focus on the immortal. Humanity is both. As I said before, anyone who is looking at a man in a white cassock who happens to be the Bishop of Rome and the Pontiff of the Catholic Church should know that he is concerned about the immortal soul. Maybe, just maybe, at this moment he’s thinking that it is best to begin where people are at and progress from there rather than passing them as ships in the night.
Just as there is the danger of overdoing the social dimension of service to the point that charity is reduced to social work, there is also the danger of over emphasizing the spiritual dimension of man that one falls into Docetism.
I’m certainly not concerned with Francis’ ability to lead the Church. I think that he’ll do just fine. He won’t be perfect. We have not yet had the perfect pope and we never will. First of all, Jesus is not in line for election. Secondly, even if Jesus were elected Pontiff of his own Church, human beings would find something to complain about.
I do believe that we’re in for a very different papacy. I believe and have said this over and over again, that part of the problem here (not all of it) is that this man is a religious. He thinks like a religious. He is very attached to his religious family and its traditions. He uses Ignatian pedagogy when he speaks. He is the typical Jesuit, a public relations disaster, but genuine to the core. He will, if he lives long enough (he’s not that young) transform the papacy into a paradigm that is very Jesuit.
I can see this already. The Council of Cardinals is not a new idea. It’s an Ignatian idea. Ignatius always believed that the Church should be governed by the pope, but that the pope, like a military commander, should have a council, a sort of privy council. When he wrote the statutes for his order, Ignatius refused, I mean absolutely refused to use a rule of life as do other religious orders. His reason was simple. A rule of life is too structured. He wrote statutes that the Jesuits could change at any time according to their needs and preferences. However, he established that the order had to be governed by one superior general. All authority rests on him. He is elected by the order and he governs with a council. That council has no authority and no special place in the order. The superior must talk to the council, but the council may not dictate to the superior. The superior can ignore it. This council is a body that is totally off limits to anyone else in the Church except the pope. Sounds very similar, does it not?
