Finding Francis

Pope Francis has made headlines once again, this time for remarks made during an extensive and conversational interview conducted by his fellow Jesuit Antonio Spadaro in the Pope’s sparse papal apartments at the Vatican.

As the American press is wont to do, the Pope’s remarks were twisted out of context, to say the least: I knew as much as soon as I opened a link a friend had sent me and was greeted by the New York Times headline, “Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control”—the corresponding URL of which includes, “pope-bluntly-faults-churchs-focus-on-gays-and-abortion.”

Is it any surprise that those most delighted by what they perceive to be the Pope’s endorsement of their own views, are the same people who clearly lack the only hermeneutic—the deep, personal encounter with Christ and the Tradition of his Church—that could sufficiently interpret and make intelligible the Pope’s statements on the need for a deeper theology of woman, compassionate pastoral (not moral or doctrinal, mind you) responses to homosexuality, and a more intentional ecclesial communication of the profound mercy of God?

The sensationalism to which many media outlets have resorted in analyzing the Pope’s remarks—well, about 30 of his words out of over 12,000—is pathetic. His message is being made submissive to the ideological leanings of his global audience, and that’s a shame. In using the Pope’s words as ammunition for their own ideological prejudices, these folks have missed the forest of his remarks for quest of a self-fulfilling tree.

Read the interview for yourself. Read all of it. Francis’ words are not “old hat” by anyone’s standards, as I point out in my fuller reflection on his interview at Ethika Politika today, but neither do they indicate any departure from any teachings that many of Francis’ new biggest fans are hoping to see go.

Perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from the fallout of the Pope’s remarks is that we need to continually cultivate a “literacy of the heart and mind” in order to not be led astray by false prophets and their false interpretations.