5 KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING
Pope Francis
5 KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING
Pope Francis What He Says and What He Does by Anne Joan Flanagan, FSP
BOOKS & MEDIA
Quotations from Pope Paul VI and Pope Francis copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana. All rights reserved. Cover design by Rosana Usselmann Cover photo L’Osservatore Romano photo service epub ISBN-10: 0-8198-2728-2 ISBN-13: 9780819827289 Mobi ISBN-10: 0-8198-2729-0 ISBN-13: 9780819827296 PDF ISBN-10: 0-8198-2730-4 ISBN-13: 9780819827302 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. “P” and PAULINE are registered trademarks of the Daughters of St. Paul. Copyright © 2014, Daughters of St. Paul Published by Pauline Books & Media, 50 Saint Pauls Avenue, Boston, MA 02130-3491 www.pauline.org Pauline Books & Media is the publishing house of the Daughters of St. Paul, an international congregation of women religious serving the Church with the communications media.
CONTENTS
Introduction The First Key: Mercy The Second Key: Encounter The Third Key: Go Out! The Fourth Key: Camino The Fifth Key: Authenticity Epilogue: Understanding the Papacy
INTRODUCTION
W
hen the Year of Faith began in 2012, no one in the Catholic world could have imagined the journey of faith the entire Church would be on, with the historic event of a papal resignation and the arrival of a pope from the Americas. We are all still getting acquainted with the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis. One thing is clear, though: there’s an unexpected freshness in the Catholic air. It’s all still so new: a pope who calls people from his own cell phone; who gives off-the-cuff interviews or remarks; and the mad scramble afterward to get to the heart of the message. For some, it has been a bit like moving from the contemplative heights of Mount Tabor (see Mt 17:1–9) to the raucous scene at the foot of the same mountain (see Mt 17:14–19), where a desperate father seeks healing for the son writhing at his feet in a seizure: people in confusion and need, voices cutting in from everywhere, dejected apostles whose ability to work miracles has inexplicably failed. Right now things feel a bit like that little pirogue I paddled off in one fine summer morning when I was home for a family visit. I pulled away from the shore to make my meditation in the gently rocking vessel. But by the time my meditation was complete, the lake was starting to roil, and I was not entirely confident that I could control the vessel I was in and get back to our campsite. That meditation time I enjoyed on the calm waters
1
corresponds to the gentle pontificate of Pope Benedict. With Francis, instead, we have someone who plunges into the water yelling, “Cannonball!” It’s good to bear in mind that the interview with Pope Francis that grabbed a lot of attention last October (published in Italy’s secular paper La Repubblica) wasn’t the first headline-generating papal interview (Pope Benedict pulled one of his own a few years back: remember the “condom” headlines?). It certainly won’t be the last: Francis promised the Italian journalist a follow-up conversation on women in the Church.
Things are stirring! We don’t know how long this moment will last, but right now Pope Francis has everyone’s attention. He has brought a new and unexpected hope to the Church and to the world. And so people who have never listened to a papal speech or read an encyclical, people who don’t even know how to pronounce “encyclical,” want to know what Pope Francis is saying and doing. This offers an incredible opportunity to share “the joy of the Gospel.” Still, the media, hungry for a story, will not make things easy. Headlines can take the pope’s most banal comment and make it seem like a radical departure from every tradition the Catholic Church has ever known. That means that each one of us is challenged to go behind the text, to find the basic Catholic teaching the Pope’s words presume, to deepen our own understanding of how those teachings are being applied to a new situation, and then to go forward, taking our Catholic faith places we did not know it could go. Those of us who don’t understand the Holy Father’s native Spanish or the Italian he is now using most of the time have to depend on translations, often done in a rush. And with the six or more hours’ time difference between America and Rome, most of what he says and does happens while we are asleep—or at least before our morning coffee has taken effect. By the time the news gets to us, it has already been through one or more cycles of interpretation. Even the headlines we see are
interpretations, telling us what we should consider most important of what the Pope said or did. How are we to interpret phrases that, in English translation, may not correspond with our North American experiences? What are we to make of a Pope who carries a cell phone—and uses it rather freely? Who handwrites letters, putting as the return address simply: “F., Casa Santa Marta, Vatican City”? Of a Pope with an active e-mail account? Following Pope Francis when he goes “off message” or puts aside his prepared notes reminds me a bit of getting into one of those “Moonwalk Bounce Houses” that people rent for kids’ parties. UP is still up and DOWN is still down, but they feel different. As a grown-up (and one with a back problem, at that!), I don’t find that fun at all. I find it kind of scary. The Pope may not always use the formulae I’m familiar with, and he may apply the key teachings of the Church in ways that I haven’t always thought of, but I’m catching on that what he is saying is more, not less, than what I’ve gotten used to hearing from Church figures. Actually, many of the Pope’s most striking words and gestures are simply the continuation, on a vaster scale, of the ministry he carried out as Archbishop of Buenos Aires. From the sermons and speeches he gave during those years, five key themes emerge. Since Francis is now the successor of Peter, the original “keeper of the keys” to the Kingdom, I’m going to consider each of those themes as a key that the Pope is holding out to us. I’ve also included a few doors for you to try: doors the Pope will probably go through; doors that may appear along your own path; and the door of prayer, to bring it all together. The waves are stirred; everyone takes notice. What are you going to do now? Smack the irrepressible pontiff upside the head with an oar so you can continue your quiet meditation, or accept the invitation to jump in with him? I know what I’m going to do. “CANNONBALL!”