By Rudy Barnes,
Jr.
Pope Francis has put a new face on
institutional Christianity. He has been
called a Pope for all seasons for his
willingness to address controversial issues and consider changes in traditional
Catholic doctrines, but he is also “old school.” When asked about gay priests, he said, “Who
am I to judge?” But he called the rise
of the LGBT community “a new sin against God.” He has offered forgiveness for those who have
had abortions and streamlined the annulment process for the divorced, but he has
stood fast opposing birth control while telling Catholics they should not breed
“like rabbits.”
Pope Francis has condemned
consumerism and the unrestrained greed of capitalism as the enemy of the poor,
and issued an encyclical on climate change that he described as moral guidance rather
than a resolution of scientific disputes.
Conservatives like George Will have criticized the Pope’s idealistic
positions as “fact-free flamboyance,” but Fareed Zakaria has noted that any criticism
of the message of Pope Francis is a criticism of the message of Christ.
While emphasizing moral ideals, the
Pope has also addressed politics in the real world. When he met with Turkey’s Erdogan last year the
Pope condemned the fundamentalism and fanaticism of ISIS and asserted that the
freedoms of religion and speech should be a matter of faith as well as law, and
repeated that theme in his address to Congress last week. The Pope has also challenged the 21,000 Catholic
parishes in Europe to each take in a refugee family.
Pope Francis has exemplified the greatest commandment to love God and
one’s neighbor as oneself. Translated
into real-world politics, that is not just an ideal but a moral imperative to
put love over law and balance individual
freedom with providing for the common good.
That means emphasizing the common good in libertarian democracies where individual
rights have often obscured public obligations, and emphasizing individual rights in Islamic nations where apostasy and blasphemy laws preclude the fundamental
freedoms of religion and speech.
Religion and politics are
interrelated forces in the real world that can help us or hurt us. They can bring us together or polarize us. When Jesus spoke of reconciliation and
redemption in a universal family of God
it was not based on belief in any religion, but on sharing the power of God’s
reconciling love to overcome our fear and suspicion of others—especially those
of other religions. Islamic scholars
have asserted that the greatest
commandment to love God and neighbor is a
common word of faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. But is it?
Religious fundamentalism is an
obstacle to religious reconciliation.
Its exclusivism creates fear and hate among religions, polarizing them in
a world of increasing religious pluralism.
Religious fundamentalists—whether Jew, Christian or Muslim—believe that
their holy scripture is the inerrant and infallible manifestation of God’s word
and law, thus preventing them from supporting the supremacy of the U.S.
Constitution and its secular rule of law.
Religious fundamentalists are a minority among Jews and Christians, but recent
polls indicate that fundamentalists are a majority among Muslims—and that has
political implications.
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution
provides, inter alia: The
Constitution, and the laws of the United States…and all Treaties…shall be the
supreme Law of the Land. All officers of
the U.S. and the several States shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to
support this Constitution, but no religious Test shall ever be required.
Kim Davis is a fundamentalist
Christian and county clerk in Kentucky who went to jail for refusing to perform
her duty to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because it conflicted
with her religious beliefs. It would be
the same for any fundamentalist Jew or Muslim who could not put loyalty to the
U.S. Constitution ahead of submission to Mosaic Law for Jews or to the Qur’an
and Islamic law, or shari’a, for Muslims.
The 1960 Presidential election
provided an example of such questioned loyalty.
As a Catholic John F. Kennedy had to assure the American public that his
ultimate loyalty was to the U.S. Constitution and not to the Pope, the Vatican or
to cannon law. Today any person of faith
seeking public office—whether Jew, Christian or Muslim—would have to pass the
same political loyalty test. And it is
hard to imagine any fundamentalist believer passing that test.
Believers in the U.S. who are not
public officials can resort to peaceful civil disobedience to assert the moral
supremacy of their religious standards of legitimacy over those of secular law,
but they must still acknowledge the supremacy of secular law over religious
law. That is a prerequisite for anyone holding
public office in the U.S. and applies to Christian fundamentalists like Kim
Davis as well as to Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists who cannot subordinate
their religious laws to the supremacy of the U. S. Constitution and its secular
rule of law.
The visit of Pope Francis to the
U.S. has come during a messy debate over religion, politics and law, and his
emphasis on moral ideals underscored the need for religious standards of
legitimacy to be voluntary moral standards rather than coercive laws—but moral
standards that shape our politics and law.
The greatest commandment
summarizes the moral imperative of Jews and Christians to love their neighbors
as themselves—including their unbelieving
neighbors. If Muslims can join with Jews
and Christians and truly embrace that moral principle, then the three great religions of the book can be reconciled and
coexist with a lasting peace.
Notes and
References to Resources:
Previous
blogs on related topics are: Religion and
Reason, December 8, 2014; Faith and
Freedom, December 15, 2014; Religion
and New Beginnings: Salvation and Reconciliation into the Family of God,
January 4, 2015; The Greatest Commandment,
January 11, 2015; Love over Law: A
Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy, January 18, 2015; Jesus Meets Muhammad: Is There a Common Word
of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims Today? January 25, 2015; Wealth, Politics, Religion and Economic
Justice, March 8, 2015; A Fundamental
Problem with Religion, May 3, 2015; Liberation
from Economic Oppression, May 31, 2015; Christians
Meet Muslims Today, June 14, 2015; Fear
and Fundamentalism, July 26, 2015; Freedom
and Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015; Balancing
Individual Rights with Collective Responsibilities, August 9, 2015; Accommodating Religious Freedom under the Rule
of Secular Law, September 13, 2015; and Politics
and Religious Polarization, September 20, 2015.
On
Pope Francis as a pope for all seasons,
see http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2015/09/14/a-pope-for-all-seasons/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_evening.
On
George Will’s criticism of the fact-free
flamboyance of Pope Francis, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pope-franciss-fact-free-flamboyance/2015/09/18/7d711750-5d6a-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines.
On
Fareed Zakaria noting that those who criticize the message of Pope Francis are
criticizing the message of Christ, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-main-message-of-pope-francis-and-jesus/2015/09/24/997e1e54-62ea-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines.
On
welcoming Pope Francis to the messy U.S. religious and political debate, see
On
the address of Pope Francis to Congress, see http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/us/pope-francis-congress-speech.html and
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pope-francis-to-address-divided-congress-in-washington-on-thursday/2015/09/23/971b0a9e-6260-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html.
On Pope Francis
condemning religious fundamentalism and promoting religious freedom, see
As many have observed, Pope Francis has not pushed any real changes in official church teaching, and yet he has made the various statements you mentioned here. (The recent procedural change regarding annulment and the directives regarding the sacrament of reconciliation, including post-abortion reconciliation, do matter pastorally, but they are not changes in doctrine.) The upcoming session of the Synod on the Family has potential for more substantive doctrinal change, however.
ReplyDeleteFrancis's skepticism toward some of the abuses of capitalism are not new; Leo XIII in 1891 expressed similar reservations about capitalism, even as he affirmed a natural right to private property. Benedict XVI was known as "the green pope" for his environmental concern; my hunch is that he is very sympathetic to the message of "Laudato Si'." (And in fact, it is likely that some of Benedict's close advisors also advised Francis on the encyclical.)
And yet there does seem to be something different about Francis. I think, and this is no unique insight of mine, that it is his intense pastoral style that sets him apart. This is not to say that John Paul II or Benedict XVI were not pastoral; in fact, the trend away from the monarchial papacy has been decades in the making. But Francis seems to present himself as a pastor first, in many of his interactions with people. Benedict, I think, projected himself as a teacher, and John Paul, perhaps, as a political figure -- you could group him not just with Reagan and Thatcher but with Walesa and Mandela, too. Of course, a pope is all of these things, though few can fulfill all three roles very well. (And some in history have not been able to do any of them well!) Francis's gift may be in his ability to connect pastorally, meeting people where they are in order to bring the gospel to them, even on a large scale.
Thanks for your comments, Jon. Those of us who are not Catholic don’t see Pope Francis in the same context as those, like you, who are so familiar with Catholic history and doctrine. Even if Pope Francis isn’t revolutionary, he seems to me more willing to challenge convention than his predecessors. And while I don’t agree with all of his views, I greatly admire his commitment to challenge our worldly values with his Christ-centered ideals. Viva Papa!
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