Dignity Canada Dignité
Excerpts
from Interview with Pope Francis
Published Sept. 30, 2013 by the Jesuit Magazine
America
… when I took
possession of the papal apartment, inside myself I distinctly heard a ‘no.’ The
papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace is not luxurious. It is old, tastefully
decorated and large, but not luxurious. But in the end it is like an inverted
funnel. It is big and spacious, but the entrance is really tight. People can
come only in dribs and drabs, and I cannot live without people. I need to live
my life with others. (a)
The image of the
church I like is that of the holy, faithful people of God. This is the
definition I often use, and then there is that image from the Second Vatican
Council’s ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church’ (No. 12). Belonging to a people
has a strong theological value. In the history of salvation, God has saved a
people. There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved
alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web
of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this
dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships. (b)
This church with which
we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only
a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal
church to a nest protecting our mediocrity… (c)
“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…(d)
… In Buenos Aires I used to receive
letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me
that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does
not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if
a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to
judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to
express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us
free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.
“A person once asked me, in a
provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another
question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the
existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must
always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being.
In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from
their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that
happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing. (e)
“We cannot insist only on issues
related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is
not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded
for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a
context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of
the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. (f)
… Women are asking deep questions that
must be addressed. The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role.
The woman is essential for the church. Mary, a woman, is more important than the
bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity.
We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have
to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. Only by making this
step will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church.
The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The
challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in
those places where the authority of the church is exercised for various areas of
the church. (g)
… in this quest to seek and find God in
all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person
says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of
uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has
the answers to all the questions – that is the proof that God is not with him.
It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great
leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You
must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.
Uncertainty is in every true discernment that is open to finding confirmation in
spiritual consolation….
“If the Christian is a restorationist, a
legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing.
Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new
areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those
who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to
recover a past that no longer exists – they have a static and inward-directed
view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies. I
have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s
life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed
by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can, you
must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a
land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed
can grow. You have to trust God.” (h)
… There is always the lurking danger of
living in a laboratory. Ours is not a ‘lab faith,’ but a ‘journey faith,’ a
historical faith. God has revealed himself as history, not as a compendium of
abstract truths. I am afraid of laboratories because in the laboratory you take
the problems and then you bring them home to tame them, to paint them, out of
their context. You cannot bring home the frontier, but you have to live on the
border and be audacious. (i)
The pope comments: “St. Vincent of
Lerins makes a comparison between the biological development of man and the
transmission from one era to another of the deposit of faith, which grows and is
strengthened with time. Here, human self-understanding changes with time and so
also human consciousness deepens. Let us think of when slavery was accepted or
the death penalty was allowed without any problem. So we grow in the
understanding of the truth. Exegetes and theologians help the church to mature
in her own judgment. Even the other sciences and their development help the
church in its growth in understanding. There are ecclesiastical rules and
precepts that were once effective, but now they have lost value or meaning. The
view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or
different understandings is wrong. (j)
Excerpts from Pope Francis’ Apostolic
Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: The Joy of the Gospel . November
2013
The Church is herself a
missionary disciple; she needs to grow in her interpretation of the revealed
word and in her understanding of truth. It is the task of exegetes and
theologians to help “the judgment of the Church to mature”.
The other sciences also help to
accomplish this, each in its own way. With reference to the social sciences,
for
example, John Paul II said that the Church values their research, which helps
her “to derive concrete indications helpful for her magisterial mission”.
Within the Church countless
issues are being studied and reflected upon with great freedom. Differing
currents of thought in philosophy, theology and pastoral practice, if open to
being reconciled by the Spirit in respect and love, can enable the Church to
grow, since all of them help to express more clearly the immense riches of God’s
word. For those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and
leaving no room for nuance, this might appear as undesirable and leading to
confusion. But in fact such variety serves to bring out and develop different
facets of the inexhaustible riches of the Gospel. [40]
The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors
always wide open… This is especially true of the sacrament which is itself “the
door”: baptism. The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life,
is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the
weak. These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to
consider with prudence and boldness. Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace
rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is
the house of the Father,
where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems. [47]
If the whole Church
takes up this missionary impulse, she has to go forth to everyone without
exception. But to whom should she go first? When we read the Gospel we find a
clear indication: not so much our friends and wealthy neighbours, but above all
the poor and the sick, those who are usually despised and overlooked, “those who
cannot repay you” (Lk 14:14). There can be no room for doubt or for
explanations which weaken so clear a message. Today and always, “the poor are
the privileged recipients of the Gospel”, and the fact that it is freely
preached to them is a sign of the kingdom that Jesus came to establish. We have
to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our
faith and the poor. May we never abandon them. [48]
Demands that the legitimate rights of women be respected, based
on the firm conviction that men and women are equal in dignity, present the
Church with profound and challenging questions which cannot be lightly evaded.
The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who
gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion, but it
can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified
with power in general. It must be remembered that when we speak of sacramental
power “we are in the realm of function, not that of dignity or holiness”. The
ministerial priesthood is one means employed by Jesus for the service of his
people, yet our great dignity derives from baptism, which is accessible to all.
The configuration of the priest to Christ the head – namely, as the principal
source of grace – does not imply an exaltation which would set him above
others. In the Church, functions “do not favour the superiority of some
vis-à-vis the others”. Indeed,
a woman, Mary, is more important than the bishops. Even when the function of
ministerial priesthood is considered “hierarchical”, it must be remembered that
“it is totally ordered to the holiness of Christ’s members”.
Its key and axis is not power
understood as domination, but the power to administer the sacrament of the
Eucharist; this is the origin of its authority, which is always a service to
God’s people. This presents a great challenge for pastors and theologians, who
are in a position to recognize more fully what this entails with regard to the
possible role of women in decision-making in different areas of the Church’s
life. [104]
... it means working to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and to
promote the integral development of the poor, as well as small daily acts of
solidarity in meeting the real needs which we encounter. The word “solidarity”
is a little worn and at times poorly understood, but it refers to something more
than a few sporadic acts of generosity. It presumes the creation of a new
mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all
over the appropriation of goods by a few…. [188]
… [the poor]
have much to teach us. Not only do they
share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the
suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new
evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge
the saving
power at work in their lives and to put them at the centre of the Church’s
pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their
causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and
to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through
them. [198]
The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be
delayed, not only for the pragmatic reason of its urgency for the good order of
society, but because society needs to be cured of a sickness which is weakening
and frustrating it, and which can only lead to new crises. Welfare projects,
which meet certain urgent needs, should be considered merely
temporary responses. As long as the
problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute
autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural
causes of inequality,
no solution will be found for the
world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root
of social ills.
[202]
We can no longer
trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market. Growth in
justice requires more than economic growth, while presupposing such growth: it
requires decisions, programmes, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to
a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an
integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality. I
am far from proposing an irresponsible populism, but the economy can no longer
turn to remedies that are a new poison, such as attempting to increase profits
by reducing the work force and thereby adding to the ranks of the excluded.
[204]
I ask God to give us more politicians capable of sincere and
effective dialogue aimed at healing the deepest roots – and not simply the
appearances – of the evils in our world! Politics, though often denigrated,
remains a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as
it seeks the common good. We need to be convinced that charity “is the
principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends,
with family members or within
small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political
ones)”.
I beg the Lord to grant us
more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the
people, the lives of the poor! It is vital that government leaders and financial
leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all
citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare… [205]
The Church has no
wish to hold back the marvellous progress of science. On the contrary, she
rejoices and even delights in acknowledging the enormous potential that God has
given to the human mind. Whenever the sciences – rigorously focused on their
specific field of inquiry – arrive at a conclusion which reason cannot refute,
faith does not contradict it…. [243]
Excerpts from
Instrumentum Laboris published
June 26, 2014 by the Vatican
Some episcopal
conferences argue that the reason for much resistance to the Church’s teaching
on moral issues related to the family is a want of an authentic Christian
experience, namely, an encounter with Christ on a personal and communal level,
for which no doctrinal presentation, no matter how accurate, can substitute. In
this regard, some responses point to the insufficiency of pastoral activity
which is concerned only with dispensing the sacraments without a truly engaging
Christian experience. Moreover, a vast majority of responses highlight the
growing conflict between the values on marriage and the family as proposed by
the Church and the globally diversified social and cultural situations. The
responses are also in agreement on the underlying reasons for the difficulty in
accepting Church teaching, namely, the pervasive and invasive new technologies;
the influence of the mass media; the hedonistic culture; relativism;
materialism; individualism; the growing secularism; the prevalence of ideas that
lead to an excessive, selfish liberalization of morals; the fragility of
interpersonal relationships; a culture which rejects making permanent choices,
because it is conditioned by uncertainty and transiency, a veritable “liquid
society” and one with a “throw away” mentality and one seeking “immediate
gratification”; and, finally, values reinforced by the so-called “culture of
waste” and a “culture of the moment,” as frequently noted by Pope Francis. (#
15)
Generally
speaking, the notion of “human rights” is also seen as highly subjective and a
call for a person to self-determination, a process which is no longer grounded
in the idea of the natural law. In this regard, many respondents relate that the
legal systems in many countries are having to make laws on situations which are
contrary to the traditional dictates of the natural law (for example, in
vitro fertilization, homosexual unions, the manipulation of human embryos,
abortion, etc.). Situated in this context is Every bishops’ conference voiced
opposition to “redefining” marriage between a man and a woman through the
introduction of legislation permitting a union between two people of the same
sex. The episcopal conferences amply demonstrate that they are trying to find a
balance between the Church's teaching on the family and a respectful,
non-judgmental attitude towards people living in such unions. On the whole, the
extreme reactions to these unions, whether compromising or uncompromising, do
not seem to have facilitated the development of an effective pastoral programme
which is consistent with the Magisterium and compassionate towards the persons
concerned. (# 23)
The responses and
observations widely and insistently refer to the economic hardships endured by
families as well as the lack of material resources, poverty and the struggle for
subsistence. This widespread phenomenon is not limited to developing countries
only, but is also mentioned in responses and observations from Europe and North
America. In such cases of extreme and increasing poverty, the family has to
struggle for subsistence, a struggle to which the family has to devote most of
its energy. Some observations call for the Church to raise a strong prophetic
voice concerning poverty which puts a strain on family life. A Church which is
“poor and for the poor” must not fail to make her voice heard in this area. (#
73)
On unions of
persons of the same sex, the responses of the bishops' conferences refer to
Church teaching. “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual
unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for
marriage and family. [...] Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the Church,
men and women with homosexual tendencies ‘must be accepted with respect,
compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard
should be avoided’” (CDF, Considerations
regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual
Persons, 4). The
responses indicate that the recognition in civil law of unions between persons
of the same sex largely depends on the socio-cultural, religious and political
context. In this regard, the episcopal conferences describe three instances ….
(# 110)
Every bishops’
conference voiced opposition to “redefining” marriage between a man and a woman
through the introduction of legislation permitting a union between two people of
the same sex. The episcopal conferences amply demonstrate that they are trying
to find a balance between the Church's teaching on the family and a respectful,
non-judgmental attitude towards people living in such unions. On the whole, the
extreme reactions to these unions, whether compromising or uncompromising, do
not seem to have facilitated the development of an effective pastoral programme
which is consistent with the Magisterium and compassionate towards the persons
concerned. (# 113)
A factor which
clearly has an impact on the Church's pastoral care and one which complicates
the search for a balanced attitude in this situation is the promotion of a
gender ideology. In some places, this ideology tends to exert its influence even
at the elementary level, spreading a mentality which, intending to eliminate
homophobia, proposes, in fact, to undermine sexual identity. (# 114)
Episcopal
conferences supply a variety of information on unions between persons of the
same sex. In countries where legislation exists on civil unions, many of the
faithful express themselves in favour of a respectful and non-judgmental
attitude towards these people and a ministry which seeks to accept them. This
does not mean, however, that the faithful give equal status to heterosexual
marriage and civil unions between persons of the same sex. Some responses and
observations voice a concern that the Church’s acceptance of people in such
unions could be construed as recognition of their union. (# 115)
When considering
the possibility of a ministry to these people, a distinction must be made
between those who have made a personal, and often painful, choice and live that
choice discreetly so as not to give scandal to others, and those whose behaviour
promotes and actively — often aggressively — calls attention to it. Many
conferences emphasize that, due to the fact that these unions are a relatively
recent phenomenon, no pastoral programs exist in their regard. Others admit a
certain unease at the challenge of accepting these people with a merciful spirit
and, at the same time, holding to the moral teaching of the Church, all the
while attempting to provide appropriate pastoral care which takes every aspect
of the person into consideration. Some responses recommend not using phrases
such as “gay,” “lesbian” or “homosexual” to define a person’s identity. (# 116)
Many responses and
observations call for theological study in dialogue with the human sciences to
develop a multi-faceted look at the phenomenon of homosexuality. Others
recommend collaborating with specific entities, e.g., the Pontifical Academy of
the Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy for Life, in thoroughly examining
the anthropological and theological aspects of human sexuality and the sexual
difference between man and woman in order to address the issue of gender ideology.
(# 117)
The great
challenge will be to develop a ministry which can maintain the proper balance
between accepting persons in a spirit of compassion and gradually guiding them
to authentic human and Christian maturity. In this regard, some conferences
refer to certain organizations as successful models for such a ministry. (# 118)
Some responses see
a relation between the commonly-held contraception mentality and a pervasive gender ideology
which tends to change some basic aspects of anthropology, including the meaning
of the body and the difference between the sexes which is replaced with the idea
of gender orientation to the point of subverting sexual identity. In this
regard, many responses see a need to go beyond simply condemning this
ever-pervasive ideology and to respond with persuasive argumentation against
this position, now widely spreading in many western societies. In this way, the
Church’s position on the subject of fatherhood and motherhood will be a strong
voice in the anthropological change which some very influential persons are
promoting. The response, therefore, cannot be only on the issue of contraception
or natural methods, but should be placed at the level of the decisive human
experience of love, discovering the intrinsic value of the difference that marks
human life and its fruitfulness. (# 127)
Dignity Canada Dignité is
Canada's organization of Roman Catholics who are concerned about our
church's sexual theology, particularly as it pertains to gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgender persons. We work in collaboration with
other Catholic organizations seeking reform in our church's leadership
and teachings.