Look Carefully at Pope’s Words

Details: 27 September 2013

Our Holy Father’s recent statements in a lengthy interview with one of his fellow Jesuits has caused some to worry that his sentiments were dismissive about the seriousness of moral evils like abortion, homosexuality and contraception. For those who are tempted to such concern, I humbly suggest reading the entire interview, or at least an analysis of it by someone who doesn’t wish that such dismissiveness was the pope’s intent.

One of the first reactions I read was from George Weigel, whose keen intellect and fidelity to the Church’s moral teachings I trust. Mr. Weigel believes that Pope Francis’ description of himself as "a sinner whom The Lord has looked upon" is the key to understanding his emphasis on the Church’s primary role of evangelization and conversion.

In response to the question, "what does the church need most at this historic moment," Pope Francis said:

"I see clearly that 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. I see the Church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else." And the way to heal those wounds, says Pope Francis, is through an encounter with Jesus Christ.

Mr. Weigel points out that the "moral law is important, and there should be no doubt that Francis believes and professes all that the Catholic Church believes and professes to be true about the moral life, the life that leads to happiness and beatitude. But he also understands that men and women are far more likely to embrace those moral truths—about the inalienable right to life from conception to natural death; about human sexuality and how it should be lived—when they have first embraced Jesus Christ as Lord."

A couple of my own experiences illustrate this point. The first is a conversation I had with a Catholic friend who is an active and generous member of his parish and who is strongly pro-life. He shared with me that earlier in his life he didn’t practice his faith and was also pro-abortion. I asked him which conversion came first. First he returned to practicing his faith and then he realized that he was wrong about abortion.

The second experience was an encounter with a college student. A few years ago, a group called Justice for All (JFA) brought its display of abortion pictures to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. Over the noon hour one day I ventured over to see the JFA display and noticed a spirited, but civil, discussion between one of the JFA representatives and a student. As I was observing the discussion another student standing nearby said to me, "I don’t know why they bother with the discussion... neither person’s mind is going to change."

I took the opportunity to talk with him about his views on abortion. To each of his arguments in support of abortion I respectfully responded with my best counter arguments. I felt confident in the persuasiveness of my responses but when our dialogue was ending he said something to me that really caught me by surprise. He said, "thanks for not yelling at me!"

I don’t have any idea if he found my arguments persuasive and ultimately changed his views about abortion. But what apparently impressed him most about our encounter was the respect I showed him, not the arguments I made. This was a poignant lesson to me about how our first objective in building a culture of life must be to imitate the person of Jesus Christ; to embody His love and mercy in our encounters with others.

Referring to "Francis’s radical Christocentricity—his insistence that everything in the Church begins with Jesus Christ and must lead men and women to Jesus Christ", Mr. Weigel says, "If you don’t believe in Jesus Christ as Lord—if you’ve never heard the Gospel—then you aren’t going to be very interested in what the Catholic Church has to say in Jesus’s name about what makes for human happiness and what makes for decadence and unhappiness; indeed, you’re quite likely to be hostile to what the Church says about how we ought to live."

You can contact Greg at The Nebraska Catholic Conference, 215 Centennial Mall South Suite 310, Lincoln, NE 68508; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.