The
philosopher Thomas Reid drew us to the “natural language” that
underlies all language and makes translation possible. Without the
benefit of words, we can tell the difference between a look of friendly
approval and a menacing look, portending danger. In the same way, we
have a natural sense that informs our recognition of things in the arts,
in paintings and architecture. Even peasants, untutored, can tell the
difference between a hovel and a palace. We count on that natural sense
of things as we seek to cultivate a certain awareness of things that are
higher and lower as we recognize the difference between a cathedral and
a hamburger stand.
The
Church has made its rich life marked with those signs, whether in the
dignity of the Mass, the burning of incense, and yes, the sacraments of
bread and wine. Pope Francis has clearly understood the importance of
those signs as he has made a visible gesture of taking a bus and
standing in line, rather than calling forth the trappings of office. It
appears that his point was readily – and widely – understood. What was
equally clear was his own awareness that, with these simplest of
gestures, he was teaching at every moment.
What
came as quite astonishing then in that recent, bizarre interview, was
that a man so fully aware of himself as a teacher could have been so
casual, so heedless of how his words would be misunderstood. At first I
thought that he had fallen into the mistake of speaking off the cuff
again in his folksy way. But then it turned out that he had added
material to the interview, and that the transcript had been reviewed
carefully as it was translated and prepared for publication. This was no
inadvertent sally.
It
was all the more curious then that when he turned to the most central
and burning moral issues of abortion and the taking of life, or
sexuality and marriage, he would not say anything that marked the place
of these issues in the fuller sweep of the concerns and teaching of the
Church. He would say merely that “we cannot insist only on issues
related to abortion, gay marriage, and the use of contraceptive methods”
– as if the Church had ever insisted only on them.
John
Paul II had taught the centrality of that question of “the human
person”: just who counts as a human being, whose hurts and injuries
matter? We seem to be engulfed these days by a relentless wave of denial
that human lives are destroyed in abortion, and an insistence that not
all human lives really “count” or claim our respect. There is not a day
in our politics, or in our ordinary lives, in which we don’t encounter
the blithe willingness to put that question of “the human person” safely
out of mind.
It
is a lesson, it seems, we need to teach every day, “coming in and going
out.” And if that issue were to be placed, as the Holy Father says, in
the proper “balance” of things, what other issues would be given an
offsetting, higher weight?
It
is evident that the weighting for this good man is the weighting given
by the priest, living close to his flock. The need there is “to heal the
wounds and warm the hearts of the faithful. . .[and] walk through the
dark night with them.” The center of it all is “the saving love of God,”
and that, he says, “comes before moral and religious imperatives.” One
friend, in a commentary, took the pope to be saying that we must come to
an understanding of Jesus before we can absorb the teaching of the
Church on those moral questions.
But
if that is the line conveyed here, it surely does cut against the most
strenuous efforts of the faithful to teach against the currents of the
culture for the past forty years. The teaching on abortion has been a
teaching of natural law, a weave of embryology and moral reasoning. One
doesn’t have to be Catholic to understand the teaching of the Church.
But now the pope will be taken to confirm the facile argument of the
Kennedys and Bidens, that the position of the Church is grounded in
religious doctrine and we may not rightly impose our “religious beliefs”
on others.
In
a speech just last Friday, to medical professionals, the pope affirmed
the teaching on abortion, grounded in science and moral reasoning. But
I’m afraid that the refined corrections and restatements may no longer
matter. For a deeper “sign” has been given, and many people are now
confident, with a telling wink, that they know what the pope “really
means.” That sense of things promises to run deeper than the
“clarifications” bound to come.
The
City Council in Topeka last week was considering a law rather like one
that worked recently to punish photographers who refuse to take photos
at same-sex weddings. One councilman, pushing this measure, announced
that he was Catholic and gay – and that the pope was on his side. And
when NARAL takes out an ad in the New York Times thanking the pope, that is another sign.
The
faithful have been disheartened; people hostile to the teaching of the
Church have become buoyant. And as Pope Francis himself notes, spiritual
“discernment” will require in part “reading the signs of the times.”
