#448: 10 Reasons Why Pope Francis Was Right about Trump

The controversy following the Pope’s remarks about Donald Trump included overblown reactions that missed the point.. 

 1. Context.  If you read the entire interview text, you see that the pope’s statement comes only in answer to a question about Trump calling the pope a pawn and an instrument of the Mexican government.  When Trump took offense at being called “not Christian,” he was the pot calling the kettle black.  

2. A Hypothetical Comment.  Francis qualified his answer by saying “If a person…” and then offered the benefit of the doubt.  It was as if he could not believe a Christian would say the things attributed to Trump, and thus presumed that Trump must be something else than Christian. 

3. Not a Personal Attack.  This was how the Vatican clarified later.  But note that Francis spoke of “A person who thinks only about building walls…and not building bridges.” He did not specifically apply this to Trump.  And the key word is “only.”

4. Off the Cuff. The pope was speaking spontaneously, and his point would have been clearer had he said such a person “Is not acting Christian.” In other words, that would have made it clear that his comment was not about Trump’s religious membership (clearly the pope has no idea of Trump’s personal life) but about the public behavior attributed to him. 

5. No Magic Potion.  The focus on behavior is relevant because even a baptized person does not automatically follow the gospel.  Baptism is not a magic potion, and neither is church attendance. One may be officially a member of the Christian church, but the clear test of following Jesus is following Jesus’ command to “Love your neighbor.”

6. A Wall Along The Road.  The parable of the Good Samaritan is Francis’ favorite image for loving our neighbor--no wonder, since Jesus offered it to answer the question “Who is my neighbor?” The answer, of course, is: “the person who needs me.”  Imagine if we revise the parable to include someone who builds a wall around the man on the road so no one will help him!  Would anyone call that a Christian act?

7. Immigration.  Thus immigration becomes a key test for authentic Christianity.  The Church teaches that migration is a human right, so walls designed to prevent immigration (not just regulate it) are denying migrants their rights.  Francis is quite right that “this is not in the gospel.”

8. The Pope’s Job.  Trump professed offense that the pope “question another’s faith.” But the pope’s job description, as “moral leader,” includes challenging us all to live up to our faith by reminding us of its true meaning and obligations.  If Trump wants to be a “proud Christian,” he will need to show that his positions fit the Christian message.  He cannot claim “proud membership” but avoid the ethical test that goes with it.

9. The Vatican’s Walls.  It is true the Vatican has high walls, although one may enter St. Peter’s Square openly at almost any time (you need only walk over a white line). It is also true that since Vatican II (1962-1965) popes had been breaching that wall to connect with the world--especially with the world’s poor.  Donald Trump has dated himself by pretending that popes still hide in the Vatican, protected behind walls, as he wants Americans to be.

10. The Real Drama.  The media constantly marvel at the “theatrical” power of Trumps candidacy. 

But the pope’s comment came hours after 200,000 Mexicans gathered with him at the U.S. border while Americans watched from 300 feet away, across the Rio Grande.

All prayed for those who had died at the border, and also prayed for more open borders. 

  

 Is there any real doubt  whose performance is more powerful—or better reflects the Christian faith?

   © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#429: 10 "Francis Effects"

It’s become commonplace to talk about “the Francis Effect.” Now, two years after Pope Francis’ election, we can see that does not mean one thing, but many things. Here are the key examples.

The First Papal Selfie

1. Rebranding the Roman Catholic Church. After 25 years of declines, 15 years of scandal and closings, and more than a decade of culture wars, the Catholic Church wore the brand of a tired, mismanaged, even corrupt institution ineffectively pursuing a stubborn holding action against modern life. Francis almost immediately injected fresh air into the Church’s wheezing body with his vitality,  humor, and easy manner—and sent the clear message that the Church would return to its core mission of serving the world with good news and love. This injection has been a booster shot for millions of discouraged Catholics, who once again have started feeling pride in their Church.

2. Reversing Catholicism’s Bad PR.  Anyone old enough to remember Vatican Council II (1962-1965) remembers clearly the euphoria that surrounded the Council and its activities.  This was partly, of course, a “John Effect” created by the popular personality of Pope John XXIII, but it was also due to the sense that the Catholic Church was finally responding to the challenges of modern life after centuries of defensive stasis.  The upshot was the most positive media and public attention the Catholic Church had received in more than a century, not only from Catholics but from other Christians, other religions, and even the secular world at large. 

It is safe to say that, after 1968, that favorable public image began to cool and weaken, reaching its lowest point in the last 10 years. This resulted from a combination of factors, including the gap between Benedict XVI’s brilliant ideas and his clumsy public communication skills.

Francis has reversed all that, as his own wildly popular public image has rubbed off on the institution as a whole.  We Catholics are enjoying the best PR of the last 50 years--at the very moment that we observe the 50^th anniversary of Vatican II!

3. Reviving the Ghost (spirit) of John XXIII.  One of the casualties of the long reign of John-Paul II was that an entire generation grew up in his shadow.  They were “John-Paul II

John  XXIII

Catholics,” and in too many cases his giant public presence overshadowed both the Council that had preceded and produced him and the pope that made it possible.  None of the papacies we have seen since 1965 could be imagined before that, and all of John’s successors depended on and benefited from his vision of the Church’s future.  Francis has made sure we do not forget John’s impact.  That is precisely why, when it came time to canonize John-Paul II, Francis ensured that John XXIII was canonized on the same day.

4. Retrieving the Legacy of Vatican II.  Not a few Catholic leaders and commentators in the last 20 years arrived at the conclusion that the legacy of Vatican II was either accomplished, or at least on a settled path that could not change.  But Francis has clearly expressed the view that much of the Council’s vision has been left unfulfilled, and has personally described himself as “humble enough and ambitious enough to try to do something about that.” In that sense, his agenda as pope leapfrogs back over his predecessors Benedict and John-Paul II to the papacies of Paul VI and John XXIII.   

These were the popes who initiated and completed Vatican II.  These were the popes who set the Church on the course-correction called “renewal”--a course correction of historic proportions.  Francis has staked his papacy on recovering the momentum of that time.

5. Dethroning Clericalism.  This is hardly a case of the emperor’s new clothes, since the Catholic Church has worn imperial trappings for more than 15 centuries.  And the corrupting impact of human nature on the Catholic hierarchy has been largely ignored and evaded for generations.  Now Francis, in a pioneering move, has identified the symptoms that corrupt the vocations of ordained man in too many places within the Church.

Francis has made it clear that, after centuries of treating laypeople as helpless children and the ordained as faultless parents, too many clerics pursue the wrong motives for personal benefit, acquire habits that impede their service, and set themselves apart from the rest of the body of Christ.  He has even called himself “anticlerical” in the face of clericalism. Images of the many glum faces among his Vatican staff during his highly critical Christmas message reflect the wider alarm felt by Bishops and priests in many lands, who now realize that their ambitions of churchly glory have been exposed.

6. Elevating Humility.  From his very first papal moment on the balcony at Saint Peter’s, Francis has consistently eschewed any place of honor, privilege, imperial trappings, rank, or luxury.  In the true Jesuit spirit of poverty, he has refused to place himself apart from or above others, and has thus ironically elevated humility to the rank of the highest leadership gift.  His very unwillingness to pretend superiority has already made him stand out, not only among much of the hierarchy, but even among some of his predecessors.  That humility now becomes a model, not just for the hierarchy, but for all of us in all of our roles as we serve others in family, in workplace, and in community.  Thus Francis becomes the epitome of leadership not by command but by example. In the process, his humility has made him arguably the world’s most loved, admired, and respected officeholder.

7. Restoring Mercy.  It was at the opening address of Vatican II that John XXIII rejected condemnations and harsh execution of laws and rules as the norm for pastoral leadership in the Church.  Instead, he said we must replace such things with the “medicine of mercy.” Somehow someplace along the line, this message got lost.  Francis has brought it roaring back to life, making it one of the hallmarks of his papacy.  He never ceases to speak of the mercy of God, and makes it clear that this enjoins the rest of us to practice mercy as well.  For Catholics who grew up before 1960, John’s focus was a welcome relief from the notion that Catholicism was merely a set of rules to be followed.  In this day and age, Francis’s insistence on mercy brings warmth back to an institution that, in recent years, too many had found cold-hearted.

8. Promoting the Poor.  It goes without saying that the Gospel message, and the mission of the Catholic Church, has always given a central place to the poor of the world.  But it also goes without saying that the Catholic Church, as the world’s largest organization, has not always kept that priority in focus.  We now live in a world of unprecedented wealth, but also of unprecedented inequality.  Francis has made it clear that the desires for peace, prosperity, and a sustainable world will all be impossible if the problem of inequality is not solved.

This focuses our attention on the Catholic social teaching which calls for the redistribution of wealth when inequality reaches harmful dimensions. Thus Francis implies a great challenge for us and the citizens of other wealthy nations: how can inequality be reduced?  How can we redistribute the wealth? 

For Americans, of course, imbedded in the world’s largest capitalist society, this is complicated by the fact that we face not only the inequality between the wealthy and poor nations, but also the inequality between the 1% and the 99% in our own land.  In this sense, Francis has become an especially prophetic leader for Americans.  This will make his pending address to the U.S. Congress in the fall 2015 that much more intriguing and challenging.

9. “Cooling” the Culture Wars.  Catholic leaders in America in the last 10 to 15 years have often been characterized by their preoccupation with issues now identified as the “culture wars”: abortion, contraception, artificial insemination, euthanasia, same sex marriage, gay rights, sex education, etc.  Francis has been quite blunt on this matter. He’s not criticizing or questioning traditional Catholic teachings on any of these issues, but he is convinced that the culture wars made two mistakes. First, their preoccupation on these issues distracts them and Catholics in general from our mission to evangelize with mercy and joy.  Second, they distort Catholic tradition:

The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

Francis has announced in no uncertain terms that he does not want culture warriors nominated to be future bishops, since he believes that the culture wars represent a distortion of our core priorities as Catholics.

10. The “Cooling” of the Papacy.  The first two years of the Francis papacy have been not only dynamic but remarkably congenial. Even when uttering controversial, off the cuff remarks, this pope tends to be lighthearted, quick to smile, easy to approach, comfortable in his own skin.  The image of Pope Francis beaming into the camera on the cover of

Rolling Stone magazine now overshadows the radiant, even regal image of “John Paul Superstar” on the cover of Time magazine. 

Francis lacks both the looks and the charisma of John-Paul II but, like John XXIII, he projects a down-to-earth, human appeal that people find nearly irresistible.  It was one thing to attract 3 million youth to the World Youth Day in Rio (his two predecessors had performed similar feats). 

Listening to a reporter's question on the plane from Rio

But the 90 minute interview on the plane back to Rome showed a man willing to walk back to the press seats and mingle with the media in a familiar, ingratiating way.  And his decision to wade into Rio’s worst slum on foot to greet poor residents showed a fearless love of people that is making him the most beloved pope in many people’s memories.

So the papacy itself has suddenly become cool! Two short years ago, few Catholics would have believed that this could happen, and none of us believed it could happen so fast. 

Francis himself speaks as though his papacy will probably be a short one.  But the accomplishments of his first two years are already enough to mark him as a historic figure--and a gift from God.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#413: Struggling to Evangelize? Meet the Beatles!

 Cultural historians have said that the Beatles “changed everything”--and that includes the US Catholic Church. 

As Catholic leaders try to cope with slipping numbers (of sacraments, worshipers, and revenue), they struggle to address cultural factors, often beyond their control, that altered the environment for Catholic life over the last several decades.  The Beatles are a significant case in point.

I have long considered the JFK assassination to be the event that closed the complacent social stability of the immediate post-war period in America (“the fifties”) and opened up a new era of turbulent cultural change (“the sixties”).  So it’s natural for me to see the Beatles’ US debut on the Ed Sullivan Show, just nine weeks after JFK was shot, as America’s first taste of the decade ahead.

With Ed Sullivan

  Hence CBS titled last week’s 50^th anniversary celebration of that event “The Night That Changed America.”

The 50th anniversary "Beatles Reunion"

To see how that change touched Catholic life, one must first recall the impact of the Beatles on pop music, in order to gauge their long-term cultural impact.

When hip-hop, dance, and “bubble gum” pop began to take over the music market in the mid-1990s, it finally ended rock & roll’s reign as America’s dominant pop music—a reign that lasted more than 40 years.  No type of popular music had ever dominated record sales, ticket sales, and the airways for such a long period.  In the past, popular music generally had shifted from one generation to another.  But Rock’s long reign meant that children born in 1990 grew up hearing the same music--often the same songs--their grandparents heard in the 1960s.  And the Beatles made this happen.

When the Beatles arrived on the scene, rock & roll was reeling from the loss of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, and had lost most of its popularity and power after only 10 years.  Record sales were bottoming out, and the airwaves were dominated by singers like Lesley Gore, Bobby Vinton, and the Four Seasons.  One heard few guitars, fewer pianos, and virtually no rock bands. Rock was on the verge of falling into minor cultural status, the same way that Swing, Big Bands, New Orleans Jazz, and Rag music had each fallen from popularity after brief periods of dominance during the 20^th century.

"The Night That Changed America"

But the Beatles changed all that, reintroducing the classic sounds of rock: guitars, drums, strong backbeat, and voices in harmony. Their runaway popularity opened a floodgate for the British Invasion, bringing The Rolling Stones and dozens of other rock bands in their wake.  This in turn reinvigorated the US rock scene, which generated hit-making bands for another 30 years.

In short, the Beatles saved rock music and, in doing so, laid a major pop-art foundation for the transformations of the sixties.  Once Bob Dylan followed their lead and went electric, rock was destined to become the defining music not just for baby boomers but also for their children.  Those children are now the very adults and parents who make up the largest group of “de-churched” Catholics in America.  In that sense, evangelizing means reaching out to a generation raised in the rock culture made possible by the Beatles.

But the Beatles change more than music, of course. They changed hair styles, language, and above all an attitude toward conventional ways and wisdom.

If John Lennon shocked Americans by suggesting that the Beatles had become “more popular than Jesus,” the shock was all the more acute for those who knew that he spoke the truth.

After their famous 1965 Shea Stadium concert, the Beatles retired from public performance.  So more than half of their career was spent recording music they never played in public.  For five years, this meant no tours, concerts, radio, or TV--no live performances of any Beatles songs written after Shea Stadium.  Such a move was without precedent, and remains unique today.  The Beatles became the first and only real “recording artists” in pop music.  We inherit the “standards” songs they created by the dozens not (as with traditional standards) as sheet music, but as actual, definitive performances by the authors themselves.

They abandoned the practice of marketing albums with one or two hit singles and ten unknown songs.  Instead, they produced albums full of songs that were radio hits in their own right, without ever being singles.

They also abandoned the common practice of singing music written by professionals songwriters, releasing albums written entirely by themselves, a practice that became the norm for rock bands everywhere ever since.  Thus it was no longer enough to sing or play, one also had to become a songwriter.

With the release of “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in 1967, they broke new barriers. They invented the “concept album,” where the album’s songs, rather than a random collection, were related to a single theme.  They also printed all the lyrics on the album.  These innovations also took hold across the industry.

All this while their music evolved in all directions at once, incorporating classical forms, British music hall, country music and blues, and even Indian music and electronic avant-garde.  By the end of their brief careers, “rock music” denoted a musical range that had not existed even six years before.

Finally, the Beatles began Apple records, and became their own publishers.  To this day, their music is released on the Apple label.

In short, the Beatles broke virtually every existing rule of the music business, and in fact re-wrote those rules.  As Dave Groh said at the Ed Sullivan TV special last week, “The Beatles knew no boundaries.”

All this raises two questions.  First, how did they get away with it--how did they break all the rules and survive?  Second, what effect of that have on American culture?

The first one is easy.  The Beatles got away with it because their brilliant music made them so popular they could flaunt all the commercial conventions, do everything their own way--stop touring and promoting and appearing live--and still dominate record sales with every album.  And they sustained that brilliance-driven-popularity until they broke up.

What effect did this all have?  Well first of all it meant that the Beatles exhibited palpable irreverence for the established conventions of both their industry and the culture at large.  Like true sixties icons, they questioned authorities at every turn and often decided to simply go their own way.  And they inspired many others to follow suit.

But notice that, for the Beatles, “going their own way” did not mean fighting the system, or simply transferring from one record label or manager to another.  It meant taking their fate into their own hands without institutional support.  They no longer depended on impresarios to produce shows, agents to promote them, company executives to tell them what to do, marketers to tell them what would sell, or accountants to tell them how much to spend on the next album.

In other words, the Beatles declared their independence from virtually all of the institutions that had previously controlled nearly everyone in their field.  They pursued their careers and lived their lives as if they were perfectly content to continue on without needing those institutions at all.  By breaking from those institutions, they modeled a kind of existential freedom to others-- and, given their iconic status, “others” meant tens of millions of baby boomers and their children.

The Beatles were not, of course, the only cultural force moving to such “existential freedom” in the 1960s.  The folk movement, the civil rights movement, the student protests, the antiwar movement, and the feminist revival all fueled the growing feeling that depending as little as possible on institutions and institutional authority, traveling light and living “free,” was the best way to live.  Thus life became not about following rules, but about making choices.

The Beatles’ example inspired Steve Jobs, who considered them to be the very model businessmen of a new age. He named his company after theirs and dedicated himself to building a computer business that broke all the rules upon which IBM’s monopoly depended.  Apple computers won, and IBM’s dominance declined.

All of which brings us finally back to evangelization.  Catholic leaders seeking to reach out and welcome disaffected baby boomers and their children (Americans between 15 and 65) face an obvious cultural barrier.  Such leaders represent a massive institution with a highly visible authority structure.  They lead a Church that too often presented Catholicism as a set of rules to be followed under the threat of punishment.  Yet their target population has embraced a culture that prizes personal freedom, distrusts authority, dislikes institutions, and prefers to break rules whenever possible.

If it seems too much of a stretch to credit the Beatles for this gap between institutions and the 15-65 group, recall that the original “generation gap” of the sixties began with a clash between parents and their sons over the length of their sons’ hair.  More than any other image of the counter-culture’s rejection of conventional authority and institutions, long hair was the iconic emblem of a rebellious generation.  And where did those kids get their idea to adopt long hair as the sign of their personal declaration of independence?  Why, that idea came, of course, from the Beatles!

That generation approaches retirement today, but they and their children still prefer to live without depending on institutional rules and conformity to conventional ways. 

So our efforts at evangelization would do well to pause and “meet the Beatles”--that is, consider how we can approach people who are perfectly content to live without the institutional Church.  We’re asking them to join a faith community, and “community” is certainly a congenial notion for anyone raised in the 1960s.  But to the extent that “faith community” becomes code for institutional structures or rules, we risk alienating the very people we want to reach.

Our culture’s loss of respect for institutions, in other words, affects the church as much as (perhaps more than) any other institution in our culture.  We must acknowledge this fact, recognize that it results from factors beyond our control, and then think how to lighten our own institutional baggage as we reach out to others for whom such baggage will never be an attraction. 

Perhaps we can start by listing to the Beatles “Speaking words of wisdom: Let it be.”

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014

#284: Cause--or Coincidence?

EXCERPT: The percentage of US Catholics who attend weekend Mass has been declining gradually for nearly 45 years. Since 1965, in fact (according to Gallup polls, the encyclopedic Religion and American Cultures, and the New York Times’ Peter Steinfels), Mass attendance by US Catholics has dropped from 65%-75% to 25%-35%—although those receiving communion has jumped from 10%-15% to 90%!

Some want to blame the 1970 liturgical renewal of Vatican II. For me, there is a logical problem: coincidence never proves cause-and-effect. But linking low attendance to liturgical renewal faces a tougher problem: there are TOO MANY coincidences. Forty-five year of declining attendance leaves a lot of time for multiple coincidences. For example (note: see the complete CrossCurrents #284 for explanations of these examples):

That decline in Mass attendance has coincided with the demographic shift of US Catholics from city to suburbs. It also coincided with a dramatic rise in Catholic educational, professional, and income levels. It coincided with the massive decline in Catholic school enrolments.

It coincided with the explosion of Sunday commercialism. It coincided with the explosion of organized weekend youth sports (especially girls’ sports). It coincided with the new “leisure famine.” It coincided with the multiplication of leisure-time distractions competing with mass-going. It coincided with the phenomenon of “cocooning.”

It coincided with the general decline in church attendance among ALL Christian churches with liturgical traditions. It coincided with a general secularization of US culture.

It coincided with the rise in divorce among Catholic families.
It coincided with widespread alienation over the birth control encyclical Humanae Vitae. It coincided with the 1983 Canon Law reform.

It coincided with the mass exodus of priests over the celibacy issue, and the subsequent graying of the priesthood in many US dioceses. It coincided with the rising shortage of priests. It coincided with the rise of the women’s movement, and the debate over women's roles in the Church, including women's ordination. It coincided with the rise in lay ministry. It coincided with the rise of women in parish leadership, now comprising 85% of parish professional staff. It coincided with the transformation of parish staffs, from the all-priest “drill-team" model to the mixed clergy/lay “ball club” model.

It coincided with the collapse of “Obligation Catholicism.” It coincided with the sex-abuse scandal which touched millions of Catholics even before exploding into public view. It coincided with the revelation of widespread chronic episcopal malfeasance.

Logically, none of these coincidences proves what caused our decline in Mass attendance. One reader believes ONE of these—liturgical reform—explains it all. Sociologist Andrew Greeley likewise believed ONE thing—Humanae Vitae—caused it all. Personally, I suspect many of the factors above had some impact one way or another, but I have no magic method for singling out ONE coincidence as the “poison pill” that caused it all. Having lived through all these changes, I am very skeptical of any easy, one-cause-fits-all answer.

Ironically, my own first experience of empty churches came as a student in 1960s Europe, before the 1970 renewed Mass rite that my reader blames for our losses. I saw churches peopled by a few old ladies and children—churches far emptier than US churches are even today. That Mass rite essentially dated from the Council of Trent. At the time, I blamed secularization. Should I have blamed Trent for those empty churches? For me, it’s another coincidence.

Coincidences CAN be causes, but proving that requires MORE than the coincidence itself.