One Interview to Confuse them All

Image from America Magazine. 

If you have somehow been too busy to notice, the last couple of days have once again been a bit crazy for the Catholic world because Pope Francis has been up to his usual Shepherding of the people and the world has been up to its usual complete and utter misinterpretation of everything he said and did. First and foremost, take a moment and read the Pope's words: A Big Heart Open to God, words which come from America Magazine in a long interview which the pope recently gave. Seriously, read his words, they're worth it. Don't just read commentaries like this, read what he actually said. 

When I first read his words, I was uplifted and encouraged. The Pope challenged me to present the Gospel, the basic Gospel, first and foremost, without letting anything get in the way. From Francis, we see here a direct call back to St. Paul and the early Church, when St. Paul would preach that he had "resolved to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 1:22). 

From the outset, this seems to be exactly what the Pope wants us to see: "I am a sinner who the Lord has looked upon," he says. Is this not the basic Gospel message? We are sinners; and yet while we are sinners, the Lord chose to come down and to rescue us from our sin, bringing us back to Him through His sacrifice on the cross (see Romans 5:8 and following). This is exactly the point that George Weigel makes in what I think is the best article since the interview: the Pope is Christ-centered, and that's making us uncomfortable--Christ-Centered Pope. 

What I think is the best part about this whole interview is Pope Francis' explanation of the Church as a field hospital. Read this excerpt from that article I linked to above: 

“I see clearly,” the pope continues, “that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.... And you have to start from the ground up.

“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." 

The Church, the Pope reminds, is first and foremost a place of healing for sinners. In another place of the article, Pope Francis says that "We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity." I think this is what he is getting at with the field hospital line: we spend too much time focusing on the things that others want to talk about, and too little time focusing on the Gospel, which people don't want to hear.

For me, at least, this seems to be the most important part of the Pope's words. The Church is a field hospital meant to bring the message of Christ, the message which proclaims liberty to captives and freedom for the oppressed. It is vital that we don't lose the moral and theological teachings, but those teachings must flow out of a genuine love of Christ and a love of neighbor, not simply out of a way to hide my own mediocrity by coming up with the best way of presenting one specific moral teaching. 

Too often, I think, the Gospel message itself is too hard for me. I want to have things which I can wrap my mind around, but how could I possibly wrap my mind around the beauty of the fact that the God of Universe descended to become man simply because He wanted to rescue me? I can't, and that's what the Pope wants me to realize. I must continue to come back to that, both in my life and in times when I am called upon to teach the Gospel, so that I never lose the heart of the teaching of Christ Himself. 

If you follow me on twitter, you are probably aware already that as time went on I didn't love some of the Pope's word choices as much as I did at first. This wasn't because I disagreed-it really wasn't-but rather because I felt a better word-choice might have stopped some of the freak out which caused us to lose some of the beauty of his message. The truth, though, is that his message is beautiful, because his message is the Gospel, and I hope that we can all see that message in this pope.   

"A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives." 

All Quotes are from America Magazine, and are not my own-content all belongs to America Magazine, and you can again find the full text of the article here http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview