Letter 2 America for March 26, 2013

Dear America,

For the first time in my life I am interested in the ascension of a new Pope.  Pope Francis I seems to be a new breed of Pope in that he is ascetic in his nature and humble to the point that his first gesture toward the mass of Catholics in St. Peter's Square, and the world for that matter, was to ask that the faithful pray for him.  He has been known to wash the feet of the poor and infirm not just as a ritual but as an act born of humility, and to visit apostates like a bishop who married and was thus excommunicated and forgotten.  He rides the bus, and sometimes cooks for himself, and while still a prelate in Brazil he lived in his own small apartment, eschewing the temptation to live in splendor amidst plenitude with servants in the opulence of a prelate's mansion.  He is doctrinaire in some of his thinking about issues relating to personal conduct like homosexuality, but he reportedly may be open to allowing contraception, and he seems to have been chosen because the church establishment wants the kind of reform that it has not been able to engender with European leadership, but wants to be sure that it is administered compassionately.  However, the reform that can be expected with regard to pederasty among priests may not suffice to change the nature of the church as a whole in such a way as to save it from itself.  A day after Francis's election, I heard an interview with a young seminarian who was in Rome with a group of his fellows for the conclave of cardinals.  The interview was about the firsts that Francis represented: the first to choose the name Francis, the first Jesuit, and the first from "the Americas."  The young man then said, when it was pointed out that he was from South America, not North America, that "we will claim him," meaning that we in North America, the United States in particular, can take credit for him...effectively be proud of ourselves because we have produced a pope, implicitly somehow reflecting well on us.  I wondered when I heard him say that whether pride is still a sin.  Not that I am without sin, but I don't presume to tell others how to live their lives or to define virtue for them either.  That seminarian was on the path to doing so however, which begs the question of whether the Catholic faith is being taught on the local level by pious men or cheerleaders, and if the latter, what sins other than pride need to be illuminated for close examination.  Local ministry is going to be the seminarian's job, but his prideful-ness would seem to call into question how well he can guide a new generation of Catholics through a modern life that is replete with values altered by time, and not necessarily for the best, when he apparently is vulnerable to their siren's call.  As a species, it seems to me that we are stalled in our spiritual evolution, and the question is, how can this Pope help us resume our forward progress as a species, even those of us who are not Catholics.

My wife and two now-adult children are Catholic, and none of them goes to church for anything other than special events like weddings and funerals.  They believe in contraception as a means of curbing population growth not to mention family management, and as a matter of general principle, they would never permit The Church to dictate their political positions to them, or even the moral precepts on which they live their lives.  They do not give sex the primacy among moral issues that Catholic doctrine dictates, nor do they eschew modern phenomena like premarital cohabitation and birth control.  Yet they continue to lead lives that respect others and demonstrate concern for them...lives of compassion, commitment and a sense of communal duty.  They would probably be good Catholics in the conventional sense if The Church would face the realities of the modern world and confront the real issues of the day: pridefulness, Chauvinism, greed, venality, mindless materialism and a kind of Solipsism that seems to afflict Americans in particular, but that is a danger to humane instinct all over the world, not that they are above such lapses, but because they need reminding that lapses is what they are, as do heathens like me.  So, in my estimation, that is the manner in which Pope Francis's ministry can distinguish itself.  The problem for the Catholic Church today is not the proliferation and perdurability of the church as an institution; it is the proliferation and perdurability of a moral and ethical code that is consistent with Christian values but consistent with the incumbencies of modern living as well, which will in turn bring people who live in the real world back to The Church.  Over the centuries, Catholicism, and religious denominations in general, have sometimes served themselves rather than those who need them, proselytizing for growth of the order rather than spiritual edification.  Thus, the concepts of evangelism and dogmatic purity have assumed a kind of primacy deracinated from the world that needs churches for the things that people cannot do for themselves.

Though I am not religious myself, I concede that there is something uplifting about going to a place at least once a week in which people who are committed to the same or similar values as you are have assembled.  It is a specific kind of comfort that church is particularly suited to dispense, but that solace of being among one's own is being denied those who find their churches, of whatever denomination, stodgy at best, misguided, myopic, acquisitive and inhumane at worst.  That is the area in which Pope Francis can serve his flock, I believe.  Instead of bringing people back to The Church, he can recognize that it is more important to bring The Church back to people.  Francis' role in the resurrection of faith in the lives of his parishioners, and perhaps in all our lives, will be to change The Church in such a way as to allow access to faith for those who wish to live in the world in such a way that they can feel the same satisfaction from religious living as they do from adherence to their secular humanistic beliefs now.  This pope's commitment to the simple life advocated by Saint Francis seems to me a good beginning to what we can all hope will be a papacy that will be restorative not just to Catholics, but to even secular people all over the world.  It is my ardent hope, and I believe it is one shared by many non-Catholics all over the world, that he can be a man above reproach who advocates for the modern life of virtue--one that can actually be lived in the twenty first century and beyond, and that embodies a basic moral duty to our fellow human beings.  As I said, I am not a Catholic, or even a religious man, but if Pope Francis I wants my prayers, he has them.  As the world plunges headlong into an ethos that emphasizes competitiveness over accomplishment for its own sake, social Darwinism and kill-or-be-killed micro-economics, we need someone to lead us back to decency and basic human kindness.  Who better than a pope...regardless of our denominations and affiliations.

Your friend,

Mike