Last week America and its sister
Jesuit publications around the world published excerpts from an interview with
Pope Francis. (It can be read at http://americamagazine.org/
When I was young, in my 20’s, I spent
a lot of time reading the Gospels with fresh eyes. I was encouraged to do so by
a Jesuit named Howard Gray, a man many knew as a gifted spiritual director.
Although I never joined the Jesuits and have had unfavorable experiences with
them, the genius of Ignatian
spirituality was present with Howard and again apparent in Pope Francis’
remarks. Ignatius taught that we follow God by following our inner peace and
fulfillment, while studying the world to respond to what its people need. Do
all things for the glory of God. Pope Francis offers wisdom in how to follow
God, in this elevated, courageous tradition.
And in reading the Gospel with fresh
eyes, I made a discovery that shaped me the rest of my life, and which never
left me: that Jesus did not promulgate a system, a theory, or a program. His
only preaching was this: The Kingdom of God is at hand! To prove that, he
simply responded, with immense creativity and compassion, solidarity and
bravery, to the people he encountered. That response was the demonstration of
the Kingdom of God. He invited everyone to do the same. In so doing, He
revealed a God who is unconcerned with theory, with philosophy, and instead is
vividly engaged with individual people, critiques the structures that bind
them, and then acts to free them. Freedom! That vivid freshness made me love
Jesus and the Gospel in a new way. It made me seek to be like that, to try to
follow and imitate Jesus in my original, creative, compassionate response to
others, to heal, to set free, to be in solidarity with everyone, not to judge.
Because each person is different, Jesus had different responses to each person
he met. To one he said, “dine with me.” To another he said “Return home.” To
one he said “Give away half of what you have and steward the rest.” To another:
“Give away everything.” To some he said “Go and tell what you see.” To others
he said “Tell no one what you have seen.” To one, “woe” to another “joy.” He
did not insist on blind belief, but on direct experience. “Come and see,” was
his unforgettable, upsetting, irresistible invitation to those who asked him
what he was about.
Jesus often challenged religious
authorities who were preoccupied with rules and laws, chewed them out, warned
them, urged them to be better than that. When his disciples were hungry, he let
them pick grain on the Sabbath so they could eat. When challenged by the
religious authorities for this apparent lapse in orthodoxy, he vigorously
defended the disciples: “man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for
man.” He did not overturn the law: rather he relocated it, from primary to
secondary; from end, to means. When the woman is caught in adultery, he stops
the execution. “Has no one condemned you?” “No sir.” “Then neither do I condemn
you. Go—but from now on, avoid this sin.” Thus she is forgiven but also exhorted.
Thus, the Person is more important than the “rule”. The human beings are more
important than the rules and laws designed to help and govern them. Notice that
moral rules and guidelines are not abandoned, but they are put in their proper
place—to be used to help people, not to condemn them. How fundamental this is,
how often we forget.
What is freedom? Jesus was interested
in freedom. So were the saints. Saint Benedict said, “This rule is not meant to
be a burden to you. It should help you experience and discover how great is the
freedom to which you are called.” This puts the person, the relationship with
God, primary, and the Law, the Rule, secondary, as an instrument of
transformation not a tool for condemnation. How backwards we have gotten it,
and how backwards the Catholic church sometimes seems to have gotten it, and
how backwards the Pharisees, and how clearly Jesus challenged this, and Pope
Francis echoes all this and brings us to right. Saint Augustine said, “Love, and
do as you will.” To continue, “whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold
thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct,
through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the
root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.” I
think he meant that if you can be like Christ, and be pure love, you can do
whatever you want because when you act in love you will act as God—that law and
morality are ultimately relativized by love. But we who aren’t such clean
vessels likely need a few rules and moral principles to help us along, or else
we deceive ourselves into thinking we are acting in love when in actuality we
are not acting in love at all but in selfishness and folly.
But it can help to see that the "rules"
are just that—guides to help, not a reason to condemn others. Jesus also said, “Do
not think I have come to abolish the law—no, for I have come to fulfill it!” This
again means that the laws and teachings of religion exist to set us free, as He
as free, not to bind us. So we should follow them in that spirit, not in a
spirit of condemning those we don’t think are following them. What a
fundamental important difference.
Pope Francis seems to express all of
this, and so seems to know the same Jesus I know! Pope Francis: "God has revealed himself as history, not as a
compendium of abstract truths." Yes, he seems to have noticed. He said, “I do not see a homosexual, I see a person. Never forget the
person.” This Pope seems
to have embodied this same Gospel. In so speaking (and living in a way that
embodies this same view), his words and way of life haunt me with a familiarity
that I cannot place. They return me home, return me to myself. The Pope
articulates the best of Catholic genius, a genius that prioritizes Life and
especially the human person, as an image of the person of God, and that seeks
to build communion and unity and human dignity on earth. It brings me to
myself. This is core Catholic philosophy and has no equal on that front. (It
has its failings—including failure to prioritize the earth, which is where
Teilhard helps us forward—but the classic teaching preserves human dignity and
this, which is fundamental, is lost in fundamentalisms of all
kinds).
I find myself resonating, like
a guitar string resonating to the same note in another guitar, to his words and
vision. It is a vision about context, person, specifics, experience, not about
dogma, theory, or “belief in certain statements”.
But
that is not all. Then in a lightning bolt, he goes further. He quotes from
the Commonitorium Primum of St. Vincent of Lerins: “Even the dogma of
the Christian religion must follow these laws, consolidating over the years,
developing over time, deepening with age.”
Here he has now joined in line with Teilhard. And here
echoed my own experience and my own conviction: If the Holy Spirit is dead, then
revelation is done and there is no more. We just keep quoting the Bible and
call it good enough. But if the Holy Spirit is alive, then revelation is
ongoing, and more about God is to be discovered. Then the world reveals God to
us everywhere, not only in the evolving Creation but also in the evolving human
society and culture. I choose the second as my faith: The Spirit is alive, and
the community of faith learns more about God all the time. Thus new theology---and,
in a leap: thus new knowledge, thus new science, thus new art and even, in
truth, new dogma. New liturgy, new music, new symbols.
Teilhard taught that God is revealed ever more in
science, in art, in the ever unfolding of human culture. He too was silenced
and censored at the time. But in fact he was imbued with genius. The universe
has ten billion more years of revelation to go, and here we are, at the
beginning. Of course God is still being revealed! And so of course, the
religion that is alive must evolve, change, grow, learn. How obviously true! This
does not mean we will overturn our prior revelation, but that it will continue
to expand, for as Teilhard added, the heart of Christ is an infinite mystery
that can be explored for all time. But this message can seem threatening, to
any of us who want to hold on to what is, who do not want change. How unmoored
we may feel. On what ground will we stand? On the ground of God alone, Christ
alone, rather than on dogma. Pope Francis proposes no specific changes, in fact
affirms all church teaching, yet embodies a fundamental change in tone and
spirit, and seems thus unafraid of any other changes that may come. This is not
merely a “charm offensive” as the politicians like to engage in. It is genuine,
it is authentic, it is in fact a change. It is changing the tone and therefore
changing the experience. Words do matter. Love does matter.
In considering our wish to cling to what is, our
fear of new truth, the modern “tension” between science and faith, an additional
thought may be of use. Science is not equal to wisdom in regard to spiritual truth.
Rather, as Aquinas taught, we are called to find the good and the true
everywhere that we can. To again quote Augustine: “One does not read in the
Gospel that the Lord said: "I will send you the Paracele who will teach
you about the course of the sun and moon." For He willed to make them Christians, not
mathematicians.”
Thus, we do not use science to dismiss our
spirituality, but we use our faith to see God revealed in the wonders of
science, and in the wonders of the creation that science observes. We believe
with St Thomas that truth is one and that we have nothing to fear from science.
For this reason Catholicism is the most pro-science of the great religions, and
the Jesuits the most pro-science of the Catholics. This is long tradition. Even
while a church tribunal reprimanded Galileo on legalistic nuance (despite
Galileo’s appeal to Augustine’s quote above),[1]
Jesuits and other astronomers in Rome, funded and supported by the Church, were
verifying his observations. And now we have a Jesuit as Pope.
And these fundamentals—the dignity of the person,
the primacy of compassion over law and religious dogma, the ongoing living
reality of Revelation, the vivid freshness of Jesus and his Spirit today—are all
core to me, to my experience, to my reading of the Gospel, to my experience
over a lifetime as a person of faith. Yet it is startling, to hear it from the
Pope! And so where I least expected it, when I had almost stopped listening, I
hear a familiar voice, a familiar song, I realize I am closer to home than I
knew: a voice from within my own heart, speaking to me from his words.
Haunted, challenged, inspired, awed, I listen, and
resolve to follow Christ ever more fervently. By his humility, his gentleness,
his large heart and his true words that speak to what is true in me, this Pope
has already made me better as a Christian. I wonder how many others out there
are having the same experience.
[1] According
to Wikipedia (on 9/28/2013), Pope Urban VIII and the Jesuits supported Galileo,
although official scientific belief held against heliocentrism and Catholic
teaching on scriptures was fairly literalistic, making Galileo appear to be
challenging the church. The initial judgment by the Roman Inquisition against
him in 1615 merely asserted that heliocentrism should be taught as a
possibility not as a fact, which was consistent with scientific consensus at
the time. But Galileo stayed away from the topic for many years. Years later, the controversy resturned. After Galileo
published “Dialogue” which was interpreted by a weakening Pope Urban as a personal
attack, intrigue and a much harsher inquisition, condemnation, and silencing followed in 1632.
Galileo lived out his life under house arrest but continued to write and
published some of his best work. In the
subsequent century and a half, the Catholic church gradually withdrew objection
to Galileo’s writings and the affair was often cited as a failure of the
Catholic ideal of support for scientific discovery.
