#398: The Pope’s New Role: Troublemaker

Pope Francis put his style AND his substance on display in Rio to stunning effect...

By the end of World Youth Day in Rio, everyone--bishops, priests, politicians, journalists, even the youth themselves--were left a bit breathless trying to keep up with this elderly but ever-youthful “phenom” called Pope Francis.

Not only did he wade on foot into Rio’s most dangerous slum, not only did he draw more than 3 million to Copacabana Beach, not only did he initiate an unprecedented 80-minute no-holds-barred press conference on the plane home--but he used the Rio trip as the occasion to begin spelling out his agenda on the major issues facing our Church and our world. 

And that spelling out spelled “trouble” for a wide variety of audiences.

Rather than offering lengthy complex analyses of a few issues, Francis made brief comments on many current concerns.  In that spirit, let me suggest just how much trouble he is stirring up.

Clericalism:  When Francis says this: I want to tell you something. What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses!...I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!

That spells trouble for any churchmen who strive for status, who cling to privilege or power, who exploit their authority for themselves, OR who expect laypeople to be docile and compliant like obedient little children.

Culture Wars:  When asked why he had little to say about abortion and same-sex marriage, Francis said that the Church’s official positions are well established, and besides he wanted to keep a positive focus during World Youth Day.  

 This spells trouble for anyone who thinks the Church is only strong when it is fighting the culture wars or obsessing over sexual matters like contraception.

Gay Priests:  Asked about gay priests in the Vatican, Francis quipped:

"I have still not seen anyone in the Vatican with an identity card saying they are gay"--and then went on to say:

So much is written about the gay lobby…They say there are gay people here.  I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good.

This spells trouble for all who thought Benedict XVI’s policy against ordaining gay men (which led to purges of some seminaries and seminaries faculties) was an absolute, eternal edict.  It now appears that the Church’s many gay priests can breathe a little easier.

Gays: And Francis also made these remarks about gay people in general:

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge? The catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this [orientation] but that they must be integrated into society.  The problem is not that one has this tendency; no, we must be brothers.

This spells trouble for pastors and bishops who want to boycott the Boy Scouts of America just to keep out gay members—as well as many other Catholics who discriminate against gays.

An Introverted Church: At Rio’s cathedral, Francis urged the gathered bishops and clerics that they must not:

Keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the gospel…I want the church to go out in the street.  The seminaries, the institutions must go out in the street.

This spells trouble for all church officials content with “business as usual” even as our numbers decline.

Youth: When Francis focused on youth, he said this:

A young man who doesn’t protest doesn’t suit me…A young man is essentially a nonconformist, and that is a very beautiful thing. You need to listen to young people, giving them outlets to express themselves and ensure they don’t get manipulated.

This spells trouble for parents who pressure their kids to conform, to simply accept things as they are and fit in--and spells trouble too for youth who are content to simply follow the path laid out for them.  Francis, who came of age in the 1960s, seems here to echo that decade’s call to question both established ways and the authorities that defend them.

And when he called on youth to be “actors of change,” he challenged a whole generation to make a difference in the world:

Keep overcoming apathy and offering a Christian response to the social and political concerns taking place in different parts of the world.

Materialism: This went along with his warning not to idolize the seductive comforts of modern life:

It is true that nowadays, to some extent, everyone, including our young people, feels attracted by the many idols which take the place of God and appear to offer hope: money, success, power, pleasure…Often a growing sense of loneliness and emptiness in the hearts of many people leads them to seek satisfaction in these ephemeral idols.

This spells trouble for young people conditioned to believe that materialism holds the key to the good life.  It invites them to realize that life is fullest when understood as a spiritual journey.

Inequality, Injustice, and Peace: No doubt the destitution of Rio’s favelas reminded Francis of its own poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires, so it’s no surprise he made his typical concern for the poor a main theme in Rio.  But he made it clear that his concern went beyond charity to justice, and beyond poverty to its causes:

The measure of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need…those who have nothing apart from their poverty!

I would also like to tell you that the Church, the “advocate of justice and defender of the poor in the face of intolerable social and economic inequalities which cry to heaven” (Aparecida Document, 395), wishes to offer her support for every initiative that can signify genuine development for every person and for the whole person.

No-one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world."

This led him to appeal to the world’s rich:

"I would like to make an appeal to those in possession of greater resources, to public authorities and to all people of good will who are working for social justice: Never tire of working for a more just world, marked by greater solidarity.

And it also led him to dismiss the naive notion that we can pursue peace at home and abroad without attacking inequality:

No amount of pacification will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes a part of itself.

All this spells trouble for those American Catholics--and Americans generally--who fail to see that our way of life has produced the worst inequality of any rich nation, has also perpetuated inequalities between the rich and poor nations, and has impeded peace while providing fertile soil for terror.

The Church’s Methods: When Francis offers this criticism of the way the church communications with its members and the world at large:

At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people," he said. "Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery.

Perhaps the church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas," he said. "Perhaps the world seems to have made the church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions. Perhaps the church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age.

This spells trouble for all those who fail to see that, even when Catholic truths are convincing, their communication may not be persuasive.  

This repeats, of course, John XXIII’s distinction between that truths of Catholic faith and the way those truths are expressed--which was his argument for the “updating” that he expected from Vatican II.

The Value of Mercy: When Francis speaks of mercy:

We need a church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy…Without mercy, we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of “wounded” persons in need of understanding, forgiveness and love.

He echoes John XXIII’s opening address at Vatican II, more than 50 years ago.

That spells trouble for all those who are convinced that a stricter, calmer, sterner church leadership will produce a smaller, purer, better Church. Francis clearly prefers a bigger, messier, more “catholic” and less puritanical Church.

By now you may realize that, when I say “trouble,” I do not mean a negative consequence--any more than Francis did when telling youths to cause trouble in their dioceses.  By “trouble,” Francis and I mean simply to challenge the accepted ways and establish paths that keep many of us from promoting the “civilization of love” that is the Church’s mission in the world.  This challenge applies to so many--to bishops, priests, church officials, parents and youth, political and business leaders, teachers, parents, and the youth themselves.

The more I hear this man, the more convinced I become that we must understand him as the first truly “post-Vatican II” pope.  By that I mean that he is the first pope since Vatican II who was not a participant at Vatican II.

His five predecessors experienced firsthand the ambivalence in tension that built toward the Council’s end --a tension that weakened some support for the Council’s final document:  The Church in The Modern World.  Neither John-Paul II nor Benedict XVI were entirely happy with that document, for they did not share its optimistic tone about the outside world.

But Francis was a seminarian--still a layperson--during the Council.  And his experience of it was like millions of other Catholics: secondhand, by media coverage and word of mouth.  Instead of witnessing the infighting and negotiations among the council fathers, he witnessed the euphoria that greeted the council’s work--and he witnessed too the love and gratitude for John XXIII’s courageous decision to call the Council.

I believe we are now witnessing the “troubling” openness and simplicity of a man formed, not by the Council itself, but by its impact on the rest of the Church.  Like many of us, he seems to feel that its great legacy has been neglected and compromised--and he seems determined to restore its place as the central event in Catholic life even in the 21^st century.  So more and more his papacy feels like an extension of John’s, for he seems committed to making John’s vision real--no matter how much “trouble” that causes.

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013

#363 What is "Real Presence"?

Can our Church make room for virtual community, and reach out and welcome those who live in it?

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics my nephew Jared Connaughton ran sprints and relays for team Canada, but his parents could not make the trip to watch him in person; instead they settled for watching the events on TV.

But August 2012 finds them flying to London to be present for Jared’s performances. “Seeing” him race in Beijing was wonderful, but being with him will be the proud moment any parent dreams of.

The rest of us, of course, will be watching Jared on TV --but if we’re watching during primetime, he and his parents will be sound asleep. London is 5 hours ahead of Boston, after all-- so most Olympic TV is actually on tape, not live. If we want to be surprised by the outcome, we’ll need to avoid any news of it during the day.

This is typical of our age, an age that has almost totally blurred the once-sharp lines between presence and absence, between the real and the imaginary.

Maybe this began in 1895, when Parisians panicked during the first public movie show. Seeing a train arriving head-on toward them, the audience bolted for the exits. (See the original here http://www.schooltube.com/video/bf11a6cb123389d19b53/  ) We now know that “suspension of disbelief” is the key not only to cinema, but also to TV, videos, and streaming tubes online. They are all just images on a flat surface, pure optical illusions--yet we take them for real people, real places, real events.

Of course, even before cinema people suspended disbelief. Greek theatre featured actors wearing masks and allowed violence only off-stage, yet the whole point of Greek tragedy was to evoke “pity and terror” in audiences. Mystery plays and passion plays aimed to evoke Christian devotion. Written fictions from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Dickens evoked an entire imagined world that touched and moved readers.

When photography arrived, people could see themselves and others without the filter of an artist’s impressions: we saw whatever the camera saw.

Then, with cinema, we saw things moving! So movies seemed to be, not an alternate reality, but reality itself, captured and reshaped and requiring no imagination by the viewer. So strong is cinema’s psychic blurring of real and imaginary that, when the Aurora gunman began firing at the midnight showing of “Dark Knight Rising,” many viewers thought it was simply a movie-related gimmick.

Next came radio and telephone, and suddenly the voices of others were in our homes. I’m too young to have witnessed my parents’generation’s awe at hearing FDR’s fireside chats as they sat in their living rooms, but I still recall their astonishment whenever they got a long distance call: “I can’t believe you’re in California! It sounds like you’re right next door!” For millions, the world was suddenly smaller, since absent loved ones were no longer so absent.

Then TV arrived, and overnight the entire world seemed to be right there, before our eyes, in our own homes. US Catholicism, despite its long fear of cinema and the “Legion of Decency” that protected Catholics from sinful images, quickly embraced TV with televised Masses and the theatrical “live” teaching of Bishop Sheen. Thus even Church came into homes.

Nearly 20 years later, cassettes made personal recording possible, and by now videotape and DVDs and flash drives allow us to preserve live action all of all sorts, to keep our pasts present in living moving color. With such technology, those who have left us live on in the images we keep to lessen their absence. (My own voice mail contains a saved message, now four years old, from a pastor who died suddenly the day after he called. Somehow I cannot delete that “live” voice.)

“Reality TV” has also been a cultural phenomenon for more than 20 years now. My youngest son, who does camera work for reality shows, can attest that the appearance of real life is achieved by careful, even tedious manipulation, repetition, and editing of images. And this is not only true of so-called “reality” shows. Talk shows, however live they seem, are generally taped and edited. Local news stations routinely run tape loops that repeat the same “live” newscast hour after hour. And just the other night I heard a dramatic Red Sox victory on radio and then--with the game already ended--I still had time to turn on the TV for the “live” image of the batter hitting the game-winning home run (since the TV broadcast is on 15 second delay)!

Moreover, since 2000 digital technology and the internet have revolutionized all our communications. Cellphones, instant messaging, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Skype--all these enable us to see and hear anyone anywhere.

Studying in France in 1968 I was almost totally isolated from family and friends, except for the occasional letter. But when my son studied in Barcelona 35 years later, he was handed a cell phone at the airport so he could call home. And now, when I return to my Paris school to meet students, I find them in constant contact with everyone they know that by text, voice, and webcam. The absence I experienced, which so transformed me, is no longer possible. Distance no longer counts.

We see this every day, of course, when people absent themselves from a restaurant table to answer their cellphone, leave a meeting to take a call, or drive along oblivious to the traffic around them as they talk to someone who is not there.

This survey of our era begs the question: What difference does this make for Catholic life and faith?

One clue comes from pressing pastoral question that arose at the dawn of the TV era: “If we watch Mass on TV, do we fulfill our Sunday obligation to attend Mass?” The answer was: no. Walking into Mass fulfilled the obligation even if one merely sat or slept or daydreamed, even if one did not receive communion, even if one left early. But watching on TV--even if one used a missal, followed all the readings, said all the prayers, sat and knelt and stood--watching on TV did not count.

This reflected the long-held notion that the Body of Christ, even though sometimes called a mystical body, is actually composed of people who physically assemble in a real, physical space. “Wherever two or more of you are gathered together, I am with you.”

The Last Supper was a real physical gathering; those who witnessed the crucifixion were really there; the disciples learned of the Resurrection gathered in the upper room, and Pentecost occurred at a similar gathering. Early Christians gathered in homes for worship. The movement to convert Roman basilicas to Christian worship reflected the need for larger gathering spaces. The thousands of churches worldwide, and the great cathedrals and basilica spread over six continents, are not primarily shrines for private devotion. Above all, they are places for assembling the faithful.

Jesus said, “Do this in memory of me,” and Catholics gather to do as he said. Jesus said, “This is my body,” and “This is my blood,” and Catholics proclaim the belief that during Mass Christ becomes really present among us--and we call this our “Communion,” our coming together.

This idea of “real presence,” of course, reflects a simpler time when people were either present or absent. Catholics also believed, however, in a spiritual community that went beyond our physical community: the Communion of Saints who remain present in our hearts and prayers.

But now “presence” means something new. Someone answering a cellphone may seem more present to the caller then to those in the same room. Someone Skyping may feel more present to the person appearing on the screen than to someone two feet away.
The phrase “virtual reality” became commonplace because “real” reality now has a rival--and for millions, especially millions of the next generation, that virtual reality is often “more real” than the other reality. Virtual connections can feel more real. Virtual friends can feel more real. Virtual meeting can feel more real.

If entire future populations will inhabit two realities, if “community” comes to include virtual community, does this mean that as Church we must tell these people that “virtual community does not count”? That virtual connections do not count? That a virtual presence is not a real presence?

As Church, we must resist the temptation to dismiss this cultural phenomenon as irrelevant.

Can we find a way to expand our notion of “Communion” to include a new, third Communion, recognizing that the body of Christ maybe not only the sacramental Communion of faithful gathered to worship, and the spiritual Communion of saints--but also the virtual Communion now made possible by human ingenuity?

In short, can we find a way to make all these Communions part of the reality in which Christ’s real presence can redeem us all?

©Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012