#465: Time Is Running Out for Roe v. Wade

  Roe v. Wade was always a ticking time bomb, and although it’s had a very long fuse, it’s about to go off.

No, I’m not talking about the prospect of a conservative SCOTUS majority overturning the case. I’m talking about the natural outcome of the case itself.

Two major features characterized the legal argument of the majority in Roe v. Wade.  First was the idea that privacy was an implied right under the US Constitution which protected women from the intrusion of government.  Second, it determined that the “viability” of the fetus was the dividing line between the woman’s private interest before viability, and the state’s interest after.

Of course, there were two risky implications in using the idea of “viability.” First, determining when was “before” and when was “after” might prove to be difficult.  And in fact the court chose an arbitrary method: it divided pregnancy into trimesters, and determined that the first was “before,” the third trimester was “after,” and the second trimester was someplace in between.

The second risk is that the very idea of “viability” was, in reality, a sliding scale, a moving target.  The court decided Roe v Wade in 1973, when fetuses rarely survived outside a mother until the third trimester--that is, after 24 weeks.  A fetus born prematurely at six months almost surely died.

As time passed, however, and medical technology and prenatal care evolved, early births received better and better treatment, and premature babies survived at younger and younger ages.  By the 21st century, it was common for babies born at 24 weeks and even younger--that is, in the second trimester--to survive.  Babies born at 24 weeks now have a 40% chance of survival, and babies born at 23 weeks still have a 17% chance of survival.  This represents a remarkable shift in “viability” in the 44 years since Roe v. Wade.

 But now comes a much more dramatic development, with the recent report of the invention of an artificial womb. (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/04/preemies-floating-in-fluid-filled-bags/524181/) Until now, the device has been used only with baby lambs, but the inventors reported it would soon be available to assist “premature babies.”

To be this seems to be a case of under-reporting.  For if we’re really going to have an artificial womb, the implications go far beyond what we now think of as premature babies.  Such a device potentially offers the prospect of bringing fetuses to term in pregnancies much shorter than the current “viability” limit:

Within a decade or so, babies born between 23 and 25 weeks might not be thrust into the harsh outside world at all. Instead, they may be immediately plunged into a special bag filled with lab-made amniotic fluid, designed to help them gestate for another month inside an artificial womb.

--the Atlantic April 25, 2017

The current device is quite primitive, but will surely evolve. Dear reader, imagine the practical impact of a device that could, for example, offer survivability to a fetus in mid-or even early second trimester.

This impact was explored long ago in a hypothetical discussion that was part of a popular Boston TV show called “Miller’s Court.”

Arthur Miller, a Harvard law professor (now at NYU law school), used the program from 1979-1988 to discuss legal issues in a quasi-courtroom forum, usually cross examining several panelists at once.

On the occasion I have in mind, the issue under discussion was abortion.  The panel included then- Congressman Barney Frank and feminist writer Gloria Steinem.

Miller posed this hypothetical question: suppose that an artificial womb could be used to bring a fetus to term AFTER the pregnancy was terminated by abortion. Would that mean that the mother would lose her legal standing, and the state would gain a legal interest in preserving the child’s life? Both Barney Frank and Gloria Steinem agreed that to be the case. They said yes: at that point the state could act to save the child, and the mother’s right to decide would be gone (presumably because her privacy right had ended).

Two noteworthy points here: first, Frank and Steinem were answering a really hypothetical question, which at the time (the mid-1980s) had no practical importance.  Second, it was nonetheless stunning to hear two such prominent pro-choice advocates take the position they took. In effect, they were limiting the women’s control over the effects of her choice, once the fetus was outside her body.

You see, this discussion revealed a generally overlooked element about abortion itself.  It demonstrated that an abortion is really two events at once: it is the termination of a pregnancy, and it is the death of a fetus.  Generally, these two events are inevitably connected; one cannot choose one without the other.  And so most discussions about abortion jumble the two together, with pro-lifers opposing the killing, and pro-choicers defending the woman’s right to end her pregnancy.  In such discussions, the two sides inevitably talk past each other--which is exactly what has been happening for more than 40 years.

But Miller’s hypothesis opens the possibility of speaking of these two elements separately.  In other words, what if women could terminate a pregnancy without killing the child?  Then what?

What Frank and Steinem were essentially agreeing to was the idea that, if it were possible to terminate pregnancy without causing a death, then the resulting life would become a matter, not of the mother’s privacy, but a matter of public interest.  At that point, the state could take over the attempt to save the child.

But if Miller’s hypothesis highlighted the basic fact that abortion does 2 things (terminates a pregnancy, but also kills the fetus)--now it seems the hypothesis itself may soon become real. For now we DO have an artificial womb, and now it may soon be possible to terminate pregnancy yet save the fetus!

What this means that the artificial womb completely explodes the notion of “viability” built into Roe v. Wade.

It opens the prospect that women can retain the right to choose an abortion, but lose the right to kill their fetus.  Since that latter right depends on the location of the fetus within the woman’s body, the artificial womb opens up the entirely new horizon of allowing the fetus to survive outside woman’s body, where a mother no longer has legal jurisdiction.

Depending on how effective the artificial womb is, and how quickly it evolves, this could mean that many abortion cases which are currently treated as private under Roe v. Wade could become legally controversial under the same case.  For example, what if a woman’s partner (or mother or father or sister or brother) sues to save the child using an artificial womb?  What if a state attorney general sues to enjoin any pregnancy longer than, say 12 weeks, to be subject to state review and intervention? 

None of this would require a reversal of Roe v. Wade.  Theoretically, it could lead to cases where the woman has her abortion but the child survives. 

Not only would this prevent many deaths, but it would also pose a new challenge for both the pro life and pro choice communities.  For pro-lifers, it would mean reconsidering their attitude to abortion itself, recognizing a woman’s right to terminate the pregnancy as long as someone else takes responsibility for saving the child.  For pro-choices, it would pose a difficult challenge: acknowledging that a woman’s right to choose extends only to the termination of pregnancy, not to the fate of the child produced by the pregnancy.  In individual cases, this could mean that a woman might choose to abort with the knowledge that her child survive, and grow, and live in the same world she does, without her consent, and without any legal recourse.  In other words, this could mean that choosing abortion means relinquishing any voice over the future life of one’s own child.

None of this represents a change in abortion itself.  None of this represents a change in Roe v. Wade.  This would simply be a long-term final outcome of a time-bomb decision that has been ticking away for more than 40 years.  And it would finally bring to surface the long overlooked reality that abortion is two things at once, and that each side of this long and anguished debate has been arguing about only one of them, and ignoring the other.

Would this mean the end of the debate?  I suspect not.  Would it make people happier?  I suspect neither side would be fully satisfied, since one side would continue to object to the first trimester abortions, and the other side would feel that somehow a woman’s freedom was being curtailed.

But even if the debate continued and both sides remain unhappy, one thing is sure: Sunday, somewhere, each of us might well meet someone who owes their life to an artificial womb, and who can say to us “I am an abortion survivor.”

 © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017

#449: Can Americans Elect a Moral President?

Chagrined observers of the nastiness we call “Campaign 2016” have begun to inject the character question into their coverage of the candidates. 

Even before the KKK uproar, the below-the-belt debating, and Mitt Romney’s aspersions and allegations, commentators (especially on the conservative side) were denouncing mean-spirited tactics and schoolyard taunts as evidence off the candidates’ unethical roots. 

So evangelical talk show host Michael Brown derided the willingness of voters to support candidates who lack a “solid moral base.” He wondered how they can justify voting for “someone who has a long track record of being ruthless, cruel, unchristian, immoral, profane, full of pride, greedy, and double-minded.” He bemoans that people are not looking for “men [sic] of integrity.” This is because he believes that an American president must be “a moral and ethical leader, a leader who will make godly choices.”

On the Catholic side, columnist George Weigel has lamented the anger pervading the campaign, grouping supporters of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders under the same “glandular” label.  Such anger, he claims, cannot be righteous:

Anger is a glandular thing. An angry politics is a politics of the gut. A passionate politics, informed and disciplined by reason, can be a politics of the intelligence, a politics of great ideas: a politics, if you will, of sound moral judgment. And sound moral judgment is rarely, if ever, the child of anger.

(Note that George Weigel neglects the reverse possibility: that anger can often be the righteous child of sound moral judgment--witness Jesus with the money changers!). 

Catholic politics, he says, must always be moral politics:

Catholic political theory is an extension of Catholic moral theology; or to put it another way, Catholic political theory treats politics as an arena of moral reasoning and moral judgment. The Catholic citizen, as the Church understands these things, is obliged to think, not just to feel; to judge, not just to react; to exercise prudence in weighing options among usually-imperfect alternatives, not to indulge in fantasies about simplistic quick-fixes to all that ails us and the world.

I think both men are onto something—but they  fail to go far enough.  The truth is that asking for a “moral president” is really asking for two things.

A Moral Person.  First, it is asking if the president is a moral person, a person of integrity.  Given contemporary politics (perhaps politics in general), this is asking a lot: a public official who is consistently honest, humble, dignified, unselfish, kind-hearted, willing to sacrifice, acts with sound judgment rather than blind anger.  How many past presidents could pass that test?  How many public officials today? 

In my view it is fair to pose the “personal integrity” test, although we risk having no one to vote for.  And anyhow, it may be important to look for more.

A Moral Presidency. A presidential inauguration includes a solemn oath.  In it, the new president promises, not to be a good person, but to protect and defend the Constitution.  In other words, the oath of office pertains to the president’s official duties rather than his or her private life.  And as Weigel notes, political policies are (for Catholics, at least) rooted in moral principles—or should be.

Thus we voters must hope not just for a moral president, but also for a moral presidency.

The standards for this are not rocket science.  Catholic Social Teaching, rooted in the Gospels and shaped by papal teaching since 1891, provides clear criteria for moral policymaking.  And since 2013, Pope Francis has shrewdly employed his popularity to make these criteria the stuff of headlines.  During his U.S. visit, for example, both his White House speech and his address to Congress offered us clear guidelines for a moral presidency.

Thus we can list major current issues and compare the positions of any candidate with Catholic Social Teaching.  Here are some examples. 

Climate Change.  The official Catholic position, forcefully articulated in Pope Francis’ June 2015 encyclical letter, is clear: climate change is real, is fueled by runaway consumption which breeds economic inequality, widespread resentment, and terror.  Reversing this threat to “our common home” is a moral imperative of the highest order.

We should look for candidates, then, who make this position a key plank of their platform.

Economic Inequality.  Pope Francis has called inequality “the root of all social ills,” and concluded that peace remains impossible until the problem of inequality is solved.

Since 1970 the U.S. has emerged, under both parties, as the most unequal of all major nations.  And the gap between rich nations and poor nations has also grown wider.

Which candidates call us to break with this history? 

Open Immigration.  Catholic Social Teaching acknowledges the right of governments to regulate immigration in the interest of public safety--but it also proclaims migration to be a human right, which governments cannot violate.  Which candidates stand by this human right? 

Nuclear Weapons.  Since Vatican II, Catholicism considers the production, installation, distribution, sale, threat, or use of nuclear weapons to be an unconditional evil.  A moral presidency would include aggressive efforts to remove nuclear weapons from the planet.

Weapons Sales.  The U.S. is the world’s largest arms dealer, and Catholicism teaches that arms sales not only promote war, but they also prevent the poor from escaping poverty.  Which candidates name the arms industry as a scourge on the common good?

Defense of Life.  Before the U.S. Congress, Francis called for defending life at every stage--which means opposing both abortion and the death penalty.  A moral presidency would defend this “seamless garment” of life.

Human Rights.  The Catholic definition of human rights includes the right to Health Care, to Housing, to Migration, to a Living Wage, to Education, etc.  None of these are privileges to be reserved, inherited, or rewarded. They are everyone’s birthright. A moral presidency would be committed to the government’s responsibility for securing such rights for all citizens

This list ignores both parties and personalities.  It focuses only on moral principles.

As Americans prepare to choose a president, it makes perfect sense to seek a moral person.  It makes even more sense to seek a moral presidency.

This sets extraordinarily high standards for voters to consider.  I doubt we have a single candidate who meets them all.  Our responsibility is to get beyond the personalities and parties to determine this: which candidate measures up to these standards better than any other?

Given what I have seen of this campaign, I can only think: God help us all! 

   © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#403: Pope Francis: My Kind of Traditionalist—Part 2

It is no mystery why Pope Francis’ interview sparked such rapid and widespread commentary.  For in one fell swoop, he took direct aim at all three flawed tendencies of the last generation of Catholic officialdom: Fetishism, Puritanism, and Proof-testing of Vatican II.  The result was a “triple play” against any distortion of Catholic tradition or the legacy of Vatican II.

Against Puritanism: Ecclesiastical fetishism not only reduced the faith to a small set of obsessions, it also justified attacks on Catholics who did not share those obsessions.

Francis openly disagrees with anyone who thinks that church reform means reducing the flock to a smaller, more faithful few.  Asked about his view of the Church, Francis begins with the image of the people:

The image of the church I like is that of the holy, faithful people of God. This is the definition I often use, and then there is that image from the Second Vatican Council’s ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church’ (No. 12). Belonging to a people has a strong theological value. In the history of salvation, God has saved a people. There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships….The people itself constitutes a subject. And the church is the people of God on the journey through history, with joys and sorrows.

Expanding on that, he makes a clear that this people constitutes an expansive, open community:

This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity. And the church is Mother; the church is fruitful. It must be. You see, when I perceive negative behavior in ministers of the church or in consecrated men or women, the first thing that comes to mind is: ‘Here’s an unfruitful bachelor’ or ‘Here’s a spinster.’ They are neither fathers nor mothers, in the sense that they have not been able to give spiritual life.

And this means we need church leaders who draw others in with a patience that ensures that “no one is left behind”:

“How are we treating the people of God? I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess. The church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the Good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbor. This is pure Gospel. God is greater than sin. The structural and organizational reforms are secondary—that is, they come afterward. The first reform must be the attitude.

It also means we need leaders ready and able to go after every “lost sheep”:

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials. The bishops, particularly, must be able to support the movements of God among their people with patience, so that no one is left behind. But they must also be able to accompany the flock that has a flair for finding new paths.

“Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.

This new pope seeks, not a purer, smaller, more dogmatically correct Church, but a bigger, more open, more merciful Church. 

Shades of John XXIII!

Against Proof-texting of Vatican II.  Asked about the legacy of Vatican II, Francis offers a “big picture” view of the Council as a historical event bigger than its texts:

Vatican II was a re-reading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture. Vatican II produced a renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation.

He acknowledges that, even 50 years after the council, people still argue about “hermeneutics” (that is, how to interpret its decisions)--but he insists that its “irreversible” impact is above such disputes:

Yes, there are hermeneutics of continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear: the dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualizing its message for today—which was typical of Vatican II—is absolutely irreversible.

He even doubts that such disputes can be perfectly settled, since certainty is beyond us:

In this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself.

He then takes aim at those who insist that our task now is to restore a perfect, secure form of Catholicism:

If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists­—they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies. I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else—God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.

Finally, Francis rejects the view that we promote the Council’s legacy (or the mission of the Church) by lamenting the state of the world around us:

There is a temptation to seek God in the past or in a possible future. God is certainly in the past because we can see the footprints. And God is also in the future as a promise. But the ‘concrete’ God, so to speak, is today. For this reason, complaining never helps us find God. The complaints of today about how ‘barbaric’ the world is—these complaints sometimes end up giving birth within the church to desires to establish order in the sense of pure conservation, as a defense. No: God is to be encountered in the world of today…God manifests himself in historical revelation, in history. Time initiates processes, and space crystallizes them. God is in history, in the processes.

Clearly, the new pope prefers the hopeful tone that Vatican II gave to Catholicism’s dialogue with contemporary world:

Christian hope is not a ghost and it does not deceive. It is a theological virtue and therefore, ultimately, a gift from God that cannot be reduced to optimism, which is only human. God does not mislead hope; God cannot deny himself. God is all promise.

This new pope is proving once again that Catholicism can advance in history even when its teachings do not change.  He is showing us that a new attitude, a new style, a new emphasis on the real priorities can renew the core of our tradition and free us from the traps of a fetish-faith, a puritanical Catholicism, and a literalist and legalist reading of Vatican II’s renewal of the Church..

Is Pope Francis resetting the Church’s course? Yes—he is setting us back to the future of Vatican II’s true legacy. If he succeeds, the wisdom of Catholic tradition will be more available—and more accessible—to the people of our world and our time.

   © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013

#402: Pope Francis: My Kind of Traditionalist--Part 1

Pope Francis provoked headlines and commentaries by the hundreds last week by his lengthy interview with an Italian Jesuit, subsequently published in English by America magazine.  One result is obvious: a fresh gust of positive PR for the Catholic Church, which has suffered almost constant bad press for the last 10 years or more.  The second result is a question: Is the Catholic Church about to change course?

For the first time in many years, I am beginning to feel optimistic about the future of Catholic leadership.

Fifty years ago tomorrow (September 29, 1963) the newly-elected Pope Paul VI opened the second session of Vatican Council II by repeating Pope John XXIII’s call for “a second Pentecost” and giving it four priorities: A better understanding of the Catholic Church; Church reforms; Advancing the unity of Christianity; and Dialogue with the world.

This brought a sigh of relief to millions who had held their breath after John died in June 1963, fearing that his vision for the Church’s future might have died with him.

In the last six months, Pope Francis has brought a similar sigh of relief to millions who have been fearing (in this case for many long years, not just months) that John’s vision was dying a slow death, dating back 45 years.

For it was only five years after Paul VI re-opened Vatican II that he issued “Humanae Vitae,” his encyclical reaffirming the most recent official teaching on contraception while rejecting any further revisions.  And five years after that, in January 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its infamous “Roe v Wade” decision.

No matter how we view these actions, their combined effect since 1973 has been gravely damaging for American Catholicism.  Taken together, they have divided Catholics and caused a generation of American bishops to encourage the public impression that the American hierarchy is composed chiefly of sex-obsessed celibate men, bent on the self-righteous insistence that only they understand human goodness.

During the 40 years since Roe v Wade, in fact, two more things made matters worse.  First, Catholics who took issue with the official positions on sex-related questions were increasingly labeled “not good Catholics” or “not real Catholics” or even “not Catholic at all.” Second, the outbreak of the sex-abuse scandal beginning in Boston in 2002 sharpened the image of a hierarchy simultaneously obsessed with sex and incompetent to deal with sex.  This undermined their moral authority on virtually all other issues and left them impotent to seed public affairs and policymaking with the wisdom from Catholic tradition.

When progressive Catholics lamented the lost focus on the core of Catholic tradition and invoked the legacy of Vatican II, conservatives derided them for falsifying the Council by citing its “spirit” rather than its “texts,” and claimed Popes John-Paul II and Benedict XVI as champions of a “definitive” or “authoritative” interpretation of Vatican II that promoted “continuity” rather than “rupture.”

The net result of all this polarization has been an official leadership dominated, in the U.S. at least, by three flawed tendencies.

First: Fetishism.  Any fetish obsesses over one small part of something rather than the whole (e.g., desiring someone’s big toe rather than their whole body).  Too often in recent years, U.S. Catholicism’s official leadership has been obsessed with sex-related “culture war” issues like contraception, gay marriage, sex in the media, and abortion, as if they represent the core of Catholic tradition.  Whether intentionally or unwittingly, they have revived the distorted Catholic identity of the pre-Conciliar era, in which Catholics saw their tradition mainly as a moral system, saw morality mainly as a set of rules, and saw rules on sex as the most important ones.  In the extreme, this made Catholicism a fetish-religion for the sex-obsessed.

Second: Puritanism.  As Catholic numbers declined across America, many conservative Catholics seemed satisfied rather than alarmed.  To them, the loss of “cafeteria Catholics” or secularized Catholics simply meant that the Church was purging itself of its impurities.  Once everyone contaminated by contemporary values (rather than “traditional” values) drifted away, the Church would be a smaller, purer, more authentic vessel of God’s will.

Third: Proof-texting.  There is a long practice of Catholic teachers quoting whatever Bible passages can be located to “prove” their point.  This means using Gospel texts out of context and without any historical or literary analysis to gauge the writer’s true message.  This clashes directly with modern Biblical scholarship, which has shown that isolating Biblical texts to prove a point often distorts their real meaning and thus violates the Word of God.

Some Catholic leaders have taken the same approach to the documents of Vatican II.  They will find passages supporting their view and rip them out of their literary and historical context.  Anyone who objects is accused of promoting a mythical, even fictional “spirit” of the Council.

What is lost by such proof-texting is (1) the appreciation of Vatican II as an historical event guided by the Holy Spirit, (2) the recognition that John XXIII proclaimed it to be a rebirth of the Church, (3) the acknowledgement that the Council’s driving themes, named by both John and Paul VI, were mercy and hopeful dialogue with the outside world, and (4) the recognition that the Council texts are imperfect, political documents, often worded to appeal to as broad a base of bishops as possible, and thus often containing contradictory statements.

In short, proof-testing pretends that it is the documents alone, rather than the Council itself, which was divinely inspired. The documents become self-defining, rather than being defined by the actual history of the Council.

Thus proof-texting the Council allows conservative leaders to portray the Council as they wish it had been: as an event that restated rather than transformed Catholic tradition.  Often this also allows them to portray John-Paul II and Benedict XVI as historical giants whose groundbreaking work rightly overshadows (or at least defines) the Council.

With all this in mind, it is no mystery why Pope Francis’ interview sparked such rapid and widespread commentary.  For in one fell swoop, he took direct aim at all three of these flawed tendencies.  The result was a “triple play” against any distortion of Catholic tradition or the legacy of Vatican II.

Let’s see how.

Against Fetishism.  Pope Francis clearly rejects the idea that the Church’s mission can be advanced by focusing narrowly on a small piece of Catholic tradition.  But he knows that this has happened:

The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all.

Specifically, he rejects a strategy that plunges the Church into the “culture wars” by ripping some “traditional values” out of their real traditional context:

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

 Francis makes it clear that a focus must remain on the core of Catholic tradition, which means keeping our priorities straight:

The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

The point here is that too much official leadership has conveyed an unbalanced view of Catholicism by stressing moral principles over the whole message of the gospel:

The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing…The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.

The new pope could not be clearer: the fetishism that reduces Catholicism must give way to a focus on “the heart” of our faith.

NEXT: Francis takes aim at Catholic Puritanism and Proof-texting of the Council.

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013

#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