O celibato do Papa Francisco - por Nuno Serras Pereira

03. 06. 2014

1. Eu confesso que não estava habituado (culpa minha, ou dos outros Papas que conheci?) a declarações e gestos papais improvisados que se prestam invariavelmente grandes ambiguidades.

Um dos mais recentes foi o da concelebração e do beija-mão de Francisco a um sacerdote activista marxista e promotor de depravações sexuais de homens com homens e de mulheres com mulheres. O que me provocou maior perplexidade não foi, nem por sombras, o facto do Papa beijar a mão a um sacerdote, coisa, de resto, que S. Francisco de Assis fazia, por reverência à Santíssima Eucaristia, a qualquer Padre, por maior pecador que fosse. Nestes gestos de enorme devoção ao Santíssimo Sacramento, que naquele tempo só podia ser tocado por mãos sacerdotais, S. Francisco afirmava contra os hereges cátaros e albigenses a validade da Eucaristia, com a consequente presença real de Jesus Cristo em Corpo, Alma e Divindade, na aparência do pão e do vinho, independentemente da virtude e santidade do sacerdote que a celebrava. Deus que se quis e quer dar a nós não podia, não queria, ficar dependente das disposições do ministro do Sacramento para o fazer – tanto mais que assim o fiel nunca saberia se tinha participado ou não do Sacrifício único do Redentor, que se torna presente na celebração da Missa, se tinha ou não comungado com o Senhor (isto não significa, de modo nenhum, que o sacerdote que celebre em pecado mortal o deva fazer; pelo contrário, comete um gravíssimo sacrilégio se assim procede). Era, pois, muito clara a razão pela qual S. Francisco de Assis procedia desse modo. Hoje, porém, as circunstâncias são muitíssimo diferentes. O activismo da ideologia “gay”, congénere da do “género” é poderosíssima, dominando e manipulando a política, as finanças, a cultura, a comunicação social, a educação, a jurisprudência e uma parte significativa de membros da hierarquia da Igreja. De modo que inclinar-se e beijar a mão (ou a pata? Se a “mão” promove coisas próprias de brutos irracionais, deverá adquirir a designação própria desses) de um padre que tem dedicado o seu ministério à promoção dessas ideologias, sem uma palavra que esclareça o sentido ou o propósito desse acto, certamente se prestará às interpretações mais desvairadas e até à propaganda fotográfica/internética para o avanço da tirania e do totalitarismo “gay”. Isto, independentemente da vontade de quem o fez, cujas intenções podiam ser as melhores, ou cuja ignorância, sobre o sujeito, objecto das mimosices, podia ser supina – o que é de estranhar grandemente. Como não há esclarecimentos mas tão só um silêncio enigmático podemos supor que o Santo Padre quisesse desse modo prestar a sua homenagem a quem tanto tem feitos pelos enfermos de sida/aids e outras maleitas, frutos do estilo sodomita e afins que essas gentes têm. No entanto, não se pode deixar de reparar que o tal padre com uma mão (ou pata) promove isso mesmo que principalmente provoca as tais doenças enquanto com a outra se mostra “caridoso” com os que as contraíram. É, de facto, extraordinário; imaginem-me de cacete na mão (ou pata, neste caso) rachando cabeças a torto e a direito enquanto que com a outra construía um hospital para tratar de crânios traumatizados... Não creio, posso evidentemente estar enganado, como em tudo o mais, que Francisco me beijasse a pata por uma atitude tão reles e hipócrita.

Mas o mais inquietante, para mim, não é, como já referi, o beija-mão, ou o beija-pé, ou o que mais quiserem. O que não acabo de entender é como é possível que há tantos anos um sacerdote que contradiz a Revelação transmitida pela Sagrada Escritura e pela Tradição, constantemente e unanimemente ensinada pelo Magistério da Igreja, desde há dois milénios, tem licença do seu Bispo para exercer o seu ministério, não é alvo de nenhuma sanção canónica e é admitido pelo Papa a uma concelebração eucarística, dando-lhe ainda por cima a ler o Evangelho. Não há dúvida de que o mistério da iniquidade é mesmo um grande Mistério. Claro que eu parto do princípio de que o Santo Padre de nada sabia e foi, digamos assim, armadilhado. Não entendo todavia porque é que agora, seguramente já ciente da situação, não determina um esclarecimento que a todos sossegue. Mas importa muito advertir que a minha incapacidade de compreensão não é evidentemente a medida das decisões de Francisco.

2. Há poucos dias, no regresso da sua viagem à terra santa, o Papa Francisco deu uma conferencia de imprensa a bordo do avião. Segundo as agências o Santo Padre terá dito que o celibato sacerdotal não é um dogma e que por isso, apesar de ser um dom para a Igreja, uma regra de vida, que ele muito estima, há uma abertura para uma possível mudança.

A propósito destas declarações (não se trata de um comentário às mesmas, mas tão só de um apontamento que a ocasião proporciona) aproveito o ensejo para dizer o seguinte, uma vez que uma ingente multidão o ignora.

a) Na Igreja existem muitas verdades irreformáveis, infalíveis, que não foram até agora definidas dogmaticamente. Por outras palavras, não é suficiente afirmar que uma coisa não é dogma de Fé para poder concluir que pode ser mudada.

b) Não é verdade que os Padres ortodoxos podem casar. O cristianismo ortodoxo, no século VIII, rejeitou a Tradição ao admitir que os varões casados, Ordenados Sacerdotes, podiam manter relações conjugais com as suas esposas. Uma coisa é Ordenar Sacramentalmente um varão casado, outra, que nunca foi admitida quer nas Igrejas ortodoxas quer na Católica, muito diferente é admitir um varão, já Ordenado Sacerdote, ao Sacramento do Matrimónio (só o admitem desde que o Padre seja “reduzido ao estado laical”; isto é, que nunca mais possa execercer o sacerdócio a não ser na assistência a um moribundo.). Pelo que é erróneo falar de se vir a admitir o casamento dos Padres.

c) Muito antes da Igreja decidir conferir a Ordenação Sacerdotal somente aos varões celibatários, desde o início exigiu que todo aquele que fosse casado renunciasse à comunhão de casa, ou não sendo possível à comunhão de leito, com a esposa e a passasse a tratar como irmã. Com o passar das épocas, para combater abusos, fruto da fragilidade humana ou até da pura ignorância invencível, se começou a permitir tão somente a convivência com a mãe ou com uma filha que se tivesse Consagrado na Ordem das Virgens. S. Pedro e outros apóstolos que eram casados deixaram profissão, propriedades, mulher e filhos por causa do Reino, isto é de Jesus. Mais tarde, muitos outros como, por exemplo, S. Paulino de Nola ou S. Gregório de Niza, fizeram o mesmo. E assim ininterruptamente até que a Igreja teve por bem escolher e admitir somente varões celibatários.

d) É preciso dizê-lo com toda a clareza e frontalidade: a Igreja Católica, a Igreja de Cristo, desde sempre reconheceu - esta é a minha convicção baseada nos estudos que tenho feito (confesso que quando era jovem sacerdote estive baralhado sobre o assunto em virtude do que me foi erroneamente ensinado) -, como Tradição Apostólica, principiada no próprio Jesus Cristo, a castidade na forma de continência absoluta como essencial para o ministério sacerdotal. Aliás, o mesmo era exigido aos diáconos e, evidentemente aos Bispos. A questão não tinha tanto a ver com o precedente da pureza ritual exigida ao Sumo Sacerdote aquando do sacrifício anual e com a entrada no Santo dos Santos, mas sim com o Sacrifício da Eucaristia e com o exemplo de Jesus Cristo. O Sacramento da Ordem, de facto, configura o Padre com Jesus Cristo Sumo Sacerdote, Cabeça da Igreja e Esposo da mesma para agir na Pessoa do próprio Cristo, na celebração dos Sacramentos, e para ser uma Sua presença sacramental junto a todos.

Se de facto se trata como julgo de Tradição dos Apóstolos, então não vejo como será possível modificar esse depósito da Fé que nos foi transmitido. Há coisas sobre as quais a Igreja não tem poder porque assim dispostas e determinadas pelo Seu fundador.

e) Há relativamente pouco tempo, tendo em conta os dois milénios de da sua existência, a Igreja tem não só Ordenado Diáconos casados, sem lhes exigir qualquer mudança de comportamento em relação às suas esposas, como tem conferido o Sacerdócio a Pastores protestantes casados, convertidos ao Catolicismo, sem lhes pedir qualquer alteração na relação sexual com as esposas. Se a memória não me atraiçoa o argumento para assim proceder será o de que a questão do celibato Sacerdotal é de lei eclesiástica e não Divina. E, de facto, se assim é a Igreja tem obviamente a faculdade de conceder essas dispensas. Não saberei garantir se esta é uma questão disputada ou se está bem enraizada na Tradição. Na longa história da Igreja houve tempos em que a hierarquia tomou decisões, durante períodos mais ou menos longos, hoje reconhecidas como inválidas porque não concordantes com o Santo Evangelho de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo.

f) Para quem quiser aprofundar este tema sem ter que ler uma grande quantidade de textos, já aproveitará muito lendo este livro: Celibacy in the Early Church: The Beginnings of Obligatory Continence for Clerics in East and West .

Giovanni Paolo II, un ponte tra Cristo e il nostro cuore - di Arcivescovo Luigi Negri

In NBQ

E’ con profonda commozione e con grande gratitudine a Dio che riviviamo la grande testimonianza cristiana di magistero, di affezione agli uomini e al loro destino che si sintetizza nell’immagine dei 27 anni di pontificato del beato Giovanni Paolo II.

Si è presentato sulla scena del mondo con un amore incondizionato a Cristo presente nella Chiesa, un mistero di umiliazione che è diventato l’unica e reale possibilità di recupero dell’uomo e della sua dignità. Ma allo stesso tempo ha avuto una acutissima compassione dell’esperienza dell’umanità in quel triste passaggio dal secondo al terzo millennio che per la sua presenza e per il suo insegnamento sono stati un kairòs: una situazione eccezionale offerta da Dio alla fede dei cristiani, e offerta agli uomini nella temperie di una crisi della modernità che si era andata compiendo in modo inesorabile.

Giovanni Paolo II si è trovato di fronte al compito di dare una formulazione dell’incontro tra Cristo e il cuore dell’uomo. Questa fu la sua intuizione: la presenza della fede nel mondo non ha ragioni esclusivamente teologiche, ha ragioni profondamente antropologiche. L’affermazione della presenza di Dio in Cristo è la strada lungo la quale l'uomo Cristo rivela profondamente la sua verità e insieme insegna la verità di ogni uomo che vive in questo mondo.

A riaprire il dialogo fra Cristo e il cuore dell’uomo è il cuore annichilito ma non distrutto dalle grandi tragedie del totalitarismo moderno contemporaneo. Giovanni Paolo II ebbe la capacità di scoprire questo livello profondo della vita umana nella storia, quella tensione inesorabile dell’uomo verso il compimento della sua esperienza umana. Egli condivideva con Pascal la certezza che l’uomo supera infinitamente l’uomo.

A quest’uomo cominciò a parlare. E cominciò a parlare nella concretezza della sua esistenzialità quotidiana, andando oltre ogni formulazione ideologica, ogni tentazione umanistica, ogni tentazione di ridurre la vita umana a un problema di giustizia sociale, economica e politica. Ha parlato all’uomo scendendo con lui nelle profondità di quel cuore umano su cui l’insegnamento conciliare ha scritto pagine di straordinaria profondità che hanno trovato il loro radicale compimento teorico e pratico nelle grandi pagine della Redemptor Hominis, il grande manifesto programmatico del cristianesimo del Terzo millennio.

In Cristo l’uomo ritorna ad essere di Dio e per Dio. E mentre torna ad essere di Dio e per Dio si rivela in maniera adeguata quell’impegno antropologico che fa grande l’esperienza umana sulla terra. Solo nel mistero di Cristo e della Chiesa l’uomo è introdotto a comprendere e sperimentare quella antropologia adeguata che si è definitivamente compiuta nella Passione, nella Morte e nella Resurrezione di Gesù di Nazaret.

Quest’uomo, le cui radici sono nel mistero di Cristo, realizza la propria vocazione umana sulla Terra, nella concretezza, addirittura nella lacerazione, di una esperienza umana che senza Cristo rimane incomprensibile a se stessa. Come afferma il numero 10 della Redemptor Hominis: «L'uomo non può vivere senza amore. Egli rimane per se stesso un essere incomprensibile, la sua vita è priva di senso, se non gli viene rivelato l'amore, se non s'incontra con l'amore, se non lo sperimenta e non lo fa proprio, se non vi partecipa vivamente». 

Da qui la preoccupazione di rilanciare in maniera adeguata il mistero del matrimonio e il suo compimento nel matrimonio cristiano. La preoccupazione di insegnare agli uomini e ai cristiani una corretta grammatica dell’affezione, della sessualità, una corretta grammatica di quella paternità e maternità consapevoli e responsabili nella quale l’uomo esercita sulla terra il compito di reale e fondamentale collaborazione al mistero di Dio che genera ogni giorno figli all’umanità e alla Chiesa.

Il magistero di Giovanni Paolo II era sull’uomo, sul matrimonio, sulla sacralità della vita, sulla responsabilità della paternità e della maternità, sulla vocazione a realizzare nel mondo quel matrimonio cristiano che - come ricordava don Luigi Giussani in una delle sue ultime interviste - è la cosa più alta cui l’uomo possa accedere sulla terra, reale immagine ed esperienza della Trinità nel cuore dell’uomo e nei rapporti che caratterizzano la sua vita, personale e sociale.

La Chiesa riscoprì la grandezza dell’essere famiglia, famiglia di Dio per l’uomo, e la famiglia riscoprì la grandezza di essere Chiesa, di essere esperienza viva di quella comunione con Cristo e fra i fratelli che costituisce la novità della vita cristiana, cioè della vita umana redenta.

L’insegnamento sull’uomo, sulla sua vocazione matrimoniale si è articolato poi nella grande lezione della dottrina sociale, in cui l’identità dell’uomo e la sua dignità vennero insegnati nel concreto esercizio di quei fondamentali diritti umani che solo la fede cristiana rivela adeguatamente e solo l’educazione ecclesiale rende esperienza di vita nuova nel mondo.

La Veritatis Splendor, l’Evangelium Vitae, la Fides et Ratio, la Laborem Exercens, la Centesimus Annus, tutto il corpo delle encicliche sociali del Papa Giovanni Paolo II hanno ampiamente insegnato la responsabilità del cristiano e della Chiesa a calarsi dentro la storia e a costruire dentro la storia la novità umana e cristiana che il papa definì «la Civiltà della verità e dell’amore».

Rispondendo alle mie condoglianze il giorno della morte del beato Giovanni Paolo II, l’allora segretario del Papa e oggi cardinale Stanislao Dziwisz mi disse: «Giovanni Paolo II ha insegnato ai cristiani ad essere autenticamente cristiani, agli uomini ad essere uomini di buona volontà, aperti al Mistero che non escludono più dall’ambito della loro vita ma verso il quale anche misteriosamente muovono i passi in attesa dell’incontro gratificante e pacificante con il mistero di Dio che in Cristo si è fatto presenza umana, storica».

I 27 anni del pontificato di Giovanni Paolo II hanno chiuso in maniera irreversibile ogni tentazione di dualismo, estrema conseguenza del grande sbandamento del modernismo all’inizio del secolo XX. La fede genera nel cuore dell’uomo una cultura adeguata, consente la conoscenza profonda del mistero di Dio, del mistero dell’uomo nella realtà della storia, del loro reciproco connettersi ed articolarsi. Il cristiano di Giovanni Paolo II è un cristiano che è consapevole della grazia che gli è stata fatta, e che vive la fede non solo per se stesso ma per il mondo. Ecco la grande intuizione per cui la missione costituisce – come ebbe a definirla nei primi anni ’80 – l’identità e il movimento della Chiesa. La Chiesa non fa la missione come una delle possibili azioni, la Chiesa è missione, la Chiesa si autorealizza nella missione, perché nella missione la Chiesa diventa sempre più se stessa, «la fede si irrobustisce donandola», scrisse nella Redemptoris Missio.

La canonizzazione di Giovanni Paolo II è l’acquisizione definitiva nella Chiesa, di fronte a Dio e di fronte all’umanità, di un cammino cristiano e umano del quale tutto ciò che era stato operato contro Dio è stato inesorabilmente giudicato. Tutto ciò che era tensione al mistero di Dio è stato valorizzato, ma soprattutto è stata testimoniata la pienezza della fede, le condizioni della pienezza di libertà e di umanità per cui la redenzione è l’unica autentica possibilità di una antropologia adeguata, di una storia compiutamente vissuta, di una attesa piena di sacrificio e di letizia per l’instaurarsi di quel regno di Dio che nel mistero della Chiesa viene continuamente riproposto e autenticamente iniziato, portato di generazione in generazione verso il suo compimento. «Quel regno celesto – come diceva Iacopone da Todi – che compie omne festo che il cuore ha  bramato».

I cristiani che hanno seguito il Magistero e la testimonianza del Papa, hanno recuperato il senso del proprio essere uomini nuovi nel mondo, destinati proprio da questa novità a praticarla autenticamente e a comunicarla irresistibilmente, perché ogni uomo che incontra la testimonianza della Chiesa di Cristo, la testimonianza che ogni cristiano è chiamato a dare, possa se vuole accettare di inserire anche lui la sua vita e la sua libertà nel grande mistero della Chiesa in cui Cristo è continuamente presente, incontra l’uomo, riempie la sua vita di una proposta irresistibile. Soprattutto lo accompagna in quella azione educativa per cui le parole, le grandi parole della Chiesa, diventano carne e sangue, diventano esperienza reale, diventano una irresistibile fede in Dio e passione per ogni uomo che viene a questo mondo.

Interview: A Tale of Two Saints - by George Weigel

In EPPC 
National Review Online | Published on April 24, 2014

On Divine Mercy Sunday this weekend in Rome — one week after Easter — Pope Francis will celebrate the canonizations of two recent predecessors in the Chair of Peter, Popes John Paul II and John XXIII. John Paul II’s biographer, George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, discusses the significance of the event with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why are John Paul II and John XXIII being canonized? Is it a big deal that this is a “doubleheader”?

GEORGE WEIGEL: It’s probably useful to get one thing straight at the outset: The Church doesn’t “make saints,” and neither does the pope. God makes saints, and the Church (through the pope and his collaborators) recognizes the saints God has made. In the first millennium of Christian history, the Church “recognized” saints through popular acclamation. From the mid 17th century on, the Church used a rather complex (and frankly adversarial) legal process to test whether popular reputations for heroic virtue — the definition of “sanctity” the Church uses in assessing these things — were warranted. That process was reformed by John Paul II in 1983, so that the current process more closely resembles a doctoral seminar in history than a trial.

Multiple canonizations are not all that rare. What gives the “doubleheader” of John XXIII and John Paul II its particular resonance is that both men were beloved, both were controversial, and both were deeply involved with the Second Vatican Council. A lot of the contemporary history of the Catholic Church is summed up in these two lives.

I think Pope Francis’s decision to waive the normal requirement for a second, post-beatification miracle for John XXIII and to celebrate his canonization together with that of John Paul II (after a post-beatification miracle due to his intercession had been confirmed) was inspired and bold. What Pope Francis may be saying is that here are the two bookends of the Second Vatican Council: the pope who had the courage and wisdom to summon the most important Catholic event in 500 years, and the pope who had the courage and wisdom to give that council an authoritative interpretation. I’d also suggest that John Paul II completed the work of John XXIII, by giving post-conciliar Catholicism a new vision of its evangelical, missionary potential — which happens to be the reason John XXIII called Vatican II, as we learn from rereading his magnificent opening address to the Council on October 11, 1962.

LOPEZ: What makes each of them saints?

WEIGEL: As always, it’s a case of “heroic virtue.” Both men had a widespread reputation for sanctity during their lives; indeed, in both cases, there were calls immediately after their deaths for them to be proclaimed saints. The dignity with which both of them bore their final suffering was a great priestly example, as was the calm courage with which both conducted the Office of Peter. And they could “pope” as well as they did because they were both men who had displayed, in their pre-papal lives and ministries, a radical conversion to Christ.

LOPEZ: What is canonization anyway? Does the Vatican have a window into who is in Heaven and who is in Hell? Could this be presumptuous on the part of the Catholic Church?

WEIGEL: “The Vatican” is, depending on the context, a micro-state or a set of buildings, and in either instance, “the Vatican” doesn’t have any privileged insight into human souls. What the Catholic Church does have is the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ that, by the Holy Spirit, she will be preserved in the truth Christ left her as a patrimony. And part of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing preservation of the Church in the truth is the Holy Spirit’s lifting up saintly men and women throughout the ages — and enabling the Church to recognize the sanctity of its sons and daughters, even when that sanctity comes in surprising or unexpected ways. The formal process of “canonization” is intended to weigh claims that X or Y lived the virtues in an exceptional way, a claim that is also weighed against the expectation that God will provide his own signal in the case of X or Y, through the medically inexplicable cures that are attributed to the intercession of candidates for beatification and canonization.

​John Paul II was convinced that God is profligate in “making saints,” and that the divine delight in doing so had not slackened over the centuries. Thus his many beatifications and canonizations were an effort to get the Church of the third millennium to recognize the many saints who surround us, that “great cloud of witnesses” of which the Letter to the Hebrews speaks so eloquently.

As for Hell, the Catholic Church has never declared that X, Y, or Z is certainly in Hell, although the Church continues to believe that Hell exists. The question of Hell’s population is for God to determine. The greatest of poets, Dante, was, of course, less restrained in his census of Hell than the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.

​​LOPEZ: “Vatican Under John Paul II Knew About Sex Abuse In Legion Of Christ For Decades, Documents Reveal,” one headline this week reads. Did Pope John Paul not want to know the truth about Marcial Maciel? Did he know and not care?

WEIGEL: I discussed the Maciel case in The End and the Beginning, the second volume of my biography of John Paul II, and my conclusion today remains the same as it was when that book was published in 2010: John Paul II was deceived by MarcialMaciel, a master-deceiver who deceived many, many people. That, I think, is clear. But that John Paul II knew about Maciel’s perfidies and “didn’t care” is inconceivable.

​LOPEZ: An AP story Monday was headlined “John Paul’s legacy stained by sex abuse scandal.” As his biographer, would you agree? What is his legacy on this front?

WEIGEL: This is another matter I discussed at length in both The End and the Beginning and in my 2002 book on the abuse scandal, The Courage To Be Catholic. There are a number of things to be said, things that don’t fit neatly into wire-service sound bites.

First, John Paul II was a great reformer of the priesthood. The Catholic priesthood in 1978 was in arguably its worst shape since the Reformation: thousands of men had abandoned the ministry, and we now know that others — a small minority, but one was one too many — were behaving horribly in betraying the trust of the young. The crisis of the priesthood was addressed by John Paul II comprehensively, by his teaching, his example, his reform of seminaries, and his reform of the world episcopate. The first thing to be said in fairness about John Paul II and the priesthood is that he is one of the great papal reformers of the priesthood.

Second, it’s clear that the Holy See and the pope were not living the abuse crisis in “real time” with the Church in the United States in 2002, an information lag that led to a misimpression of inattention or refusal to face facts.

Third, when John Paul II was fully informed of what had been revealed in the first four months of 2002, he acted decisively, summoning the American cardinals to the Vatican and initiating a process that led to a major and further reform of U.S. seminaries.

Fourth, the rigorous way the Catholic Church has dealt with what is a societal plague — the sexual abuse of the young — should be taken as a model for other institutions. The plague is real, but a one-eyed obsession with the plague’s impact on the Catholic Church makes it more difficult to address the far more widespread crisis of sexual abuse: within families (where the majority of the abuse of the young takes place) or in government-run schools. One does no good service to the young, and to the protection of the young, by using this horrible problem and these wicked acts to attack the credibility of the Church’s moral teaching on matters that cut against the grain of contemporary lifestyle libertinism.

LOPEZ: Shouldn’t both John Paul II and John XXIII be held responsible for what happened on their watch? Which certainly doesn’t scream “heroic virtue”?

WEIGEL: Local bishops and religious superiors are the ones to be held “primarily responsible” for failures to address, rigorously and decisively, the sin and crime of the sexual abuse of the young.

LOPEZ: Some have accused Pope Francis of being all talk on the topic of sex abuse. Would you agree? Or is there a story being missed?

WEIGEL: I really don’t understand what this accusation means. Is someone seriously proposing that Pope Francis does not care about the victims of abuse? That he is giving a wink-and-nod to these issues, where they remain? He’s just established a commission to oversee the Church’s response to the societal abuse crisis, and it includes both laity and an abuse victim.

The pope’s brief criticism of a U.N. report on the Church and the sexual abuse of the young rightly reminded the world that this is a global crisis, not some uniquely Catholic crisis. If Pope Francis were a less charitable man, he would also have remarked on the U.N.’s dismal record in addressing the rampant sexual abuse committed by U.N. “peacekeeping forces.”

​LOPEZ: The Holy See is about to go in front of a U.N. torture committee. Is there really cause for celebration in the Church about anything this weekend? At some point does Pope Francis have to not just reform but change tradition and teachings from another time?

WEIGEL: The pope is the servant of an authoritative tradition, not its master. One of his tasks is to preserve the integrity of that tradition in its fullness; note that, in his opening address, that’s what John XXIII said was the primary purpose of Vatican II!

​The millions of people who will flood Rome this weekend to celebrate two great modern Catholic leaders and their lives of heroic virtue know that there’s a lot to celebrate in the Catholic Church — including its steady refusal to cave in to what the New York Times editorial board and certain Times op-ed columnists think it should be. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, presumably neither deluded nor insane, were baptized or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church at Easter. The Catholic Church is the world’s premier institutional defender of religious freedom for all. Amidst the confusions of post-modernism, the Catholic Church is the world’s most important institutional defender of the prerogatives of reason to get at the truth of things — including the moral truth of things. The Catholic Church is the largest educator of women and the largest provider of health care to women and children in the Third World. The Church’s best seminaries in the United States are fuller than they have been in 40 years. Young Catholics are giving years of their lives as FOCUS missionaries on college and university campuses across the United States. The Church offers empowerment to the poor through its extensive social-service networks and compassionate support to women in crisis pregnancies.

So, yes, there’s a lot to celebrate, and a lot for which to be grateful.

LOPEZ: There’s a synod on the family coming up in the fall, convened by Pope Francis. What do you expect come of it? Again, Church teaching seems to be from another reality on marriage and family and women.

WEIGEL: Pope Francis understands that there is a crisis of marriage culture throughout the world. And he wants the Church to address that crisis more effectively. That will happen, I think, by lifting up the beauty of Christian marriage as an alternative to the anorexic notion of marriage as a legal contract for mutual convenience; Christian marriage is a covenant of love and self-giving, and the world needs to hear about that. And the Western world needs to come to grips with the fact that a contraceptive culture is leading to demographic oblivion.

We’ve got a lot of resources to address these issues today, resources that weren’t available in the cultural maelstrom of the Sixties and the furor over Paul VI’s encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning, Humanae Vitae. We have John Paul II’s magnificent 1981 apostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio. We have John Paul’s Theology of the Body. We have brilliant books like Mary Eberstadt’s Adam and Eve After the Pill. Those resources should all be in play in the special meeting of the Synod of Bishops in October, and in the ordinary meeting of the Synod in 2015, which will also address the crisis of family life throughout the world.

Above all, we have the example of couples and families who are the living answer to the global crisis of marriage culture. The Synod fathers should hear from them, early and often, as these discussions unfold over the next year and a half.

LOPEZ: What will you most appreciate or enjoy about the canonizations this weekend?

WEIGEL: I’m looking forward to another global gathering of the great Catholic family from all over the world. It’s likely to be a bit chaotic, but then so, I expect, was the first Christian Pentecost.

LOPEZ: Is there anything about John Paul II you wish people realized?

WEIGEL: I suppose I wish that people would recognize his extraordinary courage in facing down a crippling illness and reminding us that there are no disposable human beings. More importantly, I wish that people would realize that he could do that, and be that, because of his embrace of the Cross as the truth of life.

LOPEZ: Is there anything about John XXIII you wish people realized?

WEIGEL: I wish we could get beyond the stereotypes here. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was steeped in quite conventional Catholic piety, as is clear from his spiritual diary, Journal of a Soul. What made him the bold leader he eventually became as Pope John XXIII were his lifelong study of history — which taught him that the Church must adapt its presentation of perennial truths to the demands of a given cultural moment, so that the truth can be heard and engaged — and his life outside what I would call the “Catholic bubble.” He spent decades as a Vatican diplomatic representative in Orthodox and Islamic countries. He was a Holocaust rescuer. He understood that Catholicism had to rediscover its originating evangelical dynamism if it was going to be the force it should be for the healing of the world.

LOPEZ: Is it right to say one is a right-wing and one is a left-wing pope?

WEIGEL: No, it’s quite ridiculous to say that. Which doesn’t mean it won’t be said, alas.

LOPEZ: Is this some sort of reset in the life of the Church?

WEIGEL: If by “this” you mean the canonization doubleheader, it’s the best kind of reset: a reminder that the Church is, at the bottom of the bottom line, in the business of facilitating holiness, which comes through friendship with Jesus Christ.

LOPEZ: Is there an approach to foreign policy and human freedom and flourishing that is consistent and important about the two?

WEIGEL: Both men understood that, at the root of the sorrows of the 20th century, there was a profound anthropological crisis — a crisis in the very idea of the human person. Roncalli understood this experientially and historically, and responded to it in a deeply personal way that exuded pastoral charity. Wojtyla got it experientially, analyzed it philosophically, and put the Christian view of the inalienable dignity of the human person at the center of his teaching and witness.

LOPEZ: What’s Divine Mercy Sunday and what’s significant about it as the doubleheader date? What does it say about Francis?

WEIGEL: “Easter,” as Catholics understand it liturgically, lasts eight days: every day of Easter week is Easter, and so is the Octave of Easter, the Second Sunday of Easter, which John Paul II designated as Divine Mercy Sunday — the day the Church celebrates the capacity of the divine compassion to heal the most broken of lives. That is what the Resurrection of Jesus confirms. And it’s entirely appropriate that two popes through whom the world “saw” divine compassion and pastoral charity in an exceptional way should be canonized on that day. Pope Francis understands this, and that’s why the doubleheader is what it is and when it is.

LOPEZ: With Elizabeth Lev and your son, Stephen, you recently wrote a book called Roman Pilgrimage on the station churches of Rome. Are there any spots you will not miss when in Rome?

WEIGEL: I’ve got to get back to Sts. Cosmas and Damian and St. Praxedes.

LOPEZ: Christians are still celebrating Easter. How is Easter relevant in the world today with all its challenges and possibilities?

WEIGEL: Easter tells Christians that the end of the world’s story has been made manifest in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and his being constituted as Lord and Savior. That changes everything. So, despite the awfulness that we too often see around us, Christians know through Easter that God’s creative and redeeming purposes are going to be vindicated at the end of the drama of history and creation. So we can get about witnessing to the divine mercy we have experienced in our own lives, through friendship with the Risen Christ, in ways that offer the possibility of that friendship to others. And we can do that knowing that, in the end, it’s all a divine comedy, not a cosmic tragedy.

A Soul for All Seasons - by George Weigel

In EPPC

In a March 1996 conversation, Pope John Paul II told me, almost wistfully, “They try to understand me from the outside, but I can only be understood from inside.” His tone that evening was less critical than it was bemused, even resigned. But whether his regrets involved biographers who treated him as a globe-trotting politician or journalists who parsed his every word and deed in conventional left-right categories, the view from outside, he knew, was not going to get anyone close to the essence of Karol Wojtyła.

I agreed with him then; and now, nine years after his death, in the days before his April 27 canonization, I agree with him even more. John Paul II, who embodied the human drama of the second half of the 20th century in a singular way, and whose witness to the truth of humanity’s noblest aspirations bent the curve of history toward freedom, can only be understood from inside out. Or, if you prefer, soul first.

His was a many-textured soul. Some of its multiple facets help explain his extraordinary accomplishments in the Catholic Church and on the world stage.

He had a Polish soul, formed by a distinctive experience of history. Vivisected in the Third Polish Partition of 1795, his country was not restored to the map of Europe until 1918. But during those 123 years of political humiliation, the Polish nation survived the demise of the Polish state through its language, its literature and its faith, with the Catholic Church acting as the safe-deposit box of national identity.

Learning about that hard experience as a boy, Karol Wojtyła was permanently inoculated against the twin heresies that had beset the West for centuries: the Jacobin heresy that the political quest for power runs history, and the Marxist heresy that history is simply the exhaust fumes of economic processes. Knowing in his Polish soul that culture, not politics or economics, drives history over the long haul, John Paul II could ignite a revolution of conscience during his first papal visit to Poland in 1979. He summoned his people to live the truth about themselves, to reject the communist culture of the lie, and to find in that restored national identity irresistible tools of resistance to oppression.

This son of Poland was, at the same time, a man of global vision with a deeply humanistic soul, forged by what he regarded as the crisis of modernity: a crisis in the very idea of the human person. That crisis, he believed, was not confined to communism’s materialist reduction of the human condition, which he tenaciously fought as a university chaplain, a professor of ethics, a charismatic priest and a dynamic bishop. The crisis could also be found in those Western systems that were tempted to measure men and women by their commercial utility rather than by the innate and inalienable dignity that was their birthright.

John Paul II’s conviction, biblically rooted and philosophically refined, was that every human life is of infinite value, at every stage and in every condition. This was the basis of his priestly ministry for almost six decades; it was the conviction that forged his unique moral analysis of world politics; and it was the ground from which he could inspire men and women from a staggering variety of cultures.

He could also touch those lives because of his dramatic soul. As a young man, he confessed in a memoir later in life, he was “obsessed” with the theater. And while he took some useful skills from those experiences on stage— John Gielgud once commented on John Paul II’s “perfect” sense of timing, as Alec Guinness marveled at the resonance of his voice—he also developed a dramatic view of the human condition. We all live, he believed, in a quotidian, yet deeply consequential, moral drama. Every day of our lives is lived in the dramatic tension between who we are and who we should be.

John Paul II intuited this on stage; he refined that intuition as a philosopher. And it was deepened by his Christian conviction that the drama of every human life is playing within a cosmic drama in which the God of the Bible is producer, director, scriptwriter and protagonist. That Christian conviction, in turn, was what allowed him to say, a year after he was shot in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, “In the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences.”

A man whose soul is formed by the conviction that “coincidence” is merely a facet of providence that he has not yet grasped is a man impervious to the tyranny of the possible. And here, too, the soul of John Paul II helps explain his accomplishment.

When he was elected pope in 1978, some observers, fixated on what they imagined to be possible, saw in the Catholic Church only contention and possible ruin. He saw seeds of reform and renewal, leading to what he would call a “New Evangelization,” a new missionary dynamic in Catholicism that would offer the divine mercy to a broken and wounded humanity. Others, fixated on what seemed settled in world affairs, believed that the Yalta division of Europe after World War II was permanent. But after June 1979 and the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, he saw possibilities for dramatic cultural, social and eventually political change in Eastern Europe—and then helped effect them.

If John Paul II seemed able to discern possibilities where others saw only barriers; if he saw (as he put it at the United Nations in 1995), a “springtime of the human spirit” after a winter of murderous discontent embodied in two world wars, the gulag and Auschwitz—well, one could look to his keen mind for an explanation. But the deeper explanation lies in his soul, and in the human character formed by that soul.

It was John Paul’s soul in which hundreds of millions of human beings found an exemplar of decency and an icon of hope. It was the character formed by that soul that made him a champion of resistance against the tyranny of diminished expectations, personal and political.

The Joys and Sorrows of Francis's Magisterium - by Sandro Magister

The innovation in method of "Evangelii Gaudium" explained by an Australian theologian. But the pope is not always interpreted correctly. Not even by the director of "La Civiltà Cattolica." The emblematic case of the baptism in Córdoba 

In Chiesaespresso

ROME, April 15, 2014 – From the dicastery heads of the Roman curia called to report at the beginning of this month of April, Pope Francis wanted to hear just one thing, summarized as follows in the official statement: "the reflections and reactions raised in the different dicasteries by the apostolic exhortation 'Evangelii Gaudium' and the perspectives opened for its implementation."

The fact that "Evangelii Gaudium" is essentially the action plan of the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is now beyond all doubt.

But it is precisely for this reason that understanding it is so important. And at the same time so difficult. Because the form in which "Evangelii Gaudium" is written is not at all in keeping with the classical canons of the ecclesiastical magisterium, just like the everyday public discourse of Pope Francis.

In the analysis published as an exclusive below, Paul-Anthony McGavin maintains that Francis shuns abstractions, prohibits what he calls "cold syllogisms," and instead loves thinking and action that are "holistic," or all-encompassing. And he shows how precisely this is the novelty of method in "Evangelii Gaudium."

McGavin is a 70-year-old Australian priest of the diocese of Canberra and Goulburn and an ecclesiastical assistant at the University of Canberra. In 2010 he published in "L'Osservatore Romano" an equally extensive and in-depth commentary on the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" of Benedict XVI.

In Pope Francis - McGavin writes - "we encounter a mind that is grounded in a pastoral empiricism . . . that integrates concrete circumstances within a structured and fundamental understanding of the Gospel."

But McGavin himself acknowledges that this "unfragmented" mentality exposes the pope to substantial risks of misunderstanding. Especially when some of his statements are taken by the media as self-contained aphorisms and turned into comprehensive keys of interpretation for the current pontificate. 

Two recent examples are proof of this misunderstanding.

*

Over the span of 36 hours, between Thursday the 10th and Friday the 11th of April, Pope Francis lashed out - and not for the first time - against the "dictatorship of uniform thought" that suppresses "the freedom of nations, the freedom of the people, freedom of conscience."

He then forcefully defended "the right of children to grow up in a family with a dad and a mom, in relation to the masculinity and femininity of a father and a mother, thus preparing affective maturity."

He furthermore expressed the toughest of views on "the horrors of educational manipulation" that "with the pretense of modernity pushes children and young people to walk the dictatorial path of the single form of thought." And he added the testimony of a "great educator" who had told him a few days earlier, referring to concrete projects of education: "At times one cannot tell with these projects if one is sending a child to school or to a reeducation camp."

And finally he reiterated his opposition to the killing of all "unborn life in the mother's womb," citing the summary judgment of Vatican Council II: "Abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes."

The references to events, to laws, to judicial decisions, to opinion campaigns attributable to "gender" ideology, in the news recently in Italy, France, and other countries, were transparent in the words of Pope Francis.

But in the media in general his warnings had practically no impact. As if they were a pure abstraction, with no influence on reality and foreign to any judgment. Because the key to explaining everything - in the media's narration of Pope Francis - is by now the "who am I to judge?" spoken by the pope for the first time during the press conference on the return flight from Rio de Janeiro and a second time in the interview with "La Civiltà Cattolica," in reference to the homosexual who "is of good will and is in search of God."

*

The second example shows how a distorted and extensive use of the "who am I to judge?" has also made a breach in the Church, and even in some who should have been reliable interpreters of Pope Francis's thinking.

On April 1, at a crowded public conference in Rome, the director of "La Civiltà Cattolica" and the pope's interviewer, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, said:

"If it had not been for Pope Francis it would not have been easy to baptize a baby girl born to a lesbian couple."

The Jesuit was referring to the baptism announced with great fanfare and then administered on April 5 in Argentina, in the cathedral of Córdoba, of the little daughter of a woman united in a civil "marriage" with another woman, both present at the rite as "mothers" and assisted by President Cristina Kirchner as "godmother."

But if this, according to Fr. Spadaro, was the happy news fostered by Pope Francis, it must be said that there is nothing new but rather something very old and traditional in the baptism of a newborn girl, however she may have come into the world. Only a few progressive and anti-Constantinian Catholic currents are against the age-old practice of infant baptism.

The news, for the Church, was instead in all the rest of the highly touted ceremony in Córdoba. Where everything - from the unnatural "family," to the two "mothers," to the "godmother" Kirchner who was an active proponent of the law that allowed the two to be united in "marriage," to the concealed biological father of the newborn girl - spoke of complete submission to that "single form of thought" so staunchly opposed by Pope Francis.

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WHAT’S NEW IN "EVANGELII GAUDIUM"?

by Paul-Anthony McGavin


Pope Francis has attracted wide media attention with his one-line remarks and magazine style interviews. The popular press has largely lauded his remarks, hearing what they want to hear, propagating what they want to hear, and not hearing his refrain: “I am a son of the Church.” 

"Evangelii gaudium" is the first extended and considered literary statement that encompasses much of what the Holy Father has been saying in oral formats. What I intend to show is that what is new in "Evangelii gaudium" is what I call method, the manner of thinking and reasoning.

Pope Francis does not present himself as a scholar, and his simple conversational one-line remarks are often made with unvarnished language. What becomes evident in "Evangelii gaudium" is that he nevertheless has refined intellectuality. The manner in which he thinks is sophisticated and has a distinct method or methodology that may be seen in "Evangelii gaudium". This method is not new. What is new is the simplicity and clarity of its statement.

The irony, however, is that his method is at once simple and complex.

It is simple because it is straightforward. It is simple because there is constant reference to concrete situations, rather than to abstractions that cover all or various situations.

It is complex because it is situated in a cluster of understandings. The Pope’s oft-quoted single-line remarks in fact situate in a mind that sees a cluster of understandings, and not just single-line perspectives that call upon the mentality that we find in syllogistic logic. Pope Francis is a system thinker.

To say “a system thinker” seems abstruse, when Pope Francis is not an abstruse man. To use a different idiom, Pope Francis tends to think “holistically”. He tends to locate the questions with which he deals in view of a whole understanding of the work of God in Christ (the Gospel, "Evangelium"), and that whole understanding in the varieties of situations that are evoked. That is, in the concrete circumstances where he is considering the reception and living out of what God has done and is doing in the Church. His thought is always situated pastorally, rather than abstractly. Yet, however, he sees and thinks through the issues that engage his focus in a whole-view way that is complex.

Let’s look at an example of this from "Evangelii gaudium":

"There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply “are”, whereas ideas are “worked out”. There has to be a continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone… So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of wisdom" (n. 231).

One could get hung-up on the rather wide-sweeping list of examples that closes this excerpt, a diverse list that includes things that are likely to provoke an “Ouch!” in most readers. Rather, our attention should focus on the distinction between ideas and realities.

The Pope proposes that ideas are constructed or “worked out”, whereas realities simply “are”. In strict terms, his dichotomization may be questioned, because the subject must perceptually focus on “realities”, must engage an epistemology in order to comprehend the “reality” – just as the subject must engage an epistemology in order to give mental form to something that is noetic, to “ideas”. But introducing such strict philosophical and psychological issues would deflect from the central point that the Pope is making.

His focus is that there is a tension between the conceptual world and the practical world, and that this tension calls us to dialogue. This is an example of what I have named as at once simple and complex. People can readily grasp that there is often a disjunction between the world of ideas and the world of realities. It is a simple proposition. But once this perspective is engaged, it leads to complexity. This could be the complexity of conflict, or of pathways toward a resolution. The Pope proposes the latter, he proposes dialogue that typically is complex and culturally situated.

Just think how complex it is to moderate the position of someone who has constructed an asceticism that is non-incarnational (“angelicism”); or to moderate the position of someone who sees the whole moral order as self-defined (the “dictatorships of relativism”); or to moderate the position of someone whose position stands outside historical understandings of God’s providence in the world (an “a-historical version of Christianity”), to mention just three of the Pope’s examples. 

The Pope comes down on the side of “realities”, saying that “realities are greater than ideas”. This would seem at odds with his emphasis on tension and on dialogue. But it is not really a departure from the points of tension and dialogue. It is an approach that proceeds from the Gospel as first rooted in “realities”, rather than in “ideas”.

The Gospel first involves the “realities” – the facts – of Our Lord’s incarnation, his earthly life, his passion, his resurrection, and his ascension. That is, the Gospel first involves the facts of God’s action in Christ. "He is Risen!" is not first the proclamation of an idea, but of a fact, an experienced fact (n. 7, quoting "Deus Caritas est," 217). The Gospel is predicated upon "witness: That which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life" (1 John 1:1). The astonishing power of the Christian idea is that it articulates the realities of historical acts as encountered by witnesses.

It is this “reality” that precedes “ideas” in the Christian scheme of things. For the Christian – and using just three of the Pope’s examples – sin is a reality; salvation in Christ is a reality; injustices are a reality (of course, many mistakenly think injustices as perceptual rather than objective, but I do not speak to that); unkindnesses are a reality (although of course misguided sensibilities may wrongly attribute unkindness). In each of these three examples, one can see dangers in detaching from empirical matter-of-factness the notions of sin, injustice, or unkindness: “It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone…” (n. 231).

These reduced-form remarks of the Pope are situated in a comprehensive perspective, in a holistic perspective that is undergirded by a fundamental experience of and appreciation of the Gospel. It is a perspective that is at once simple and complex. It is a perspective that engages dialogue. It is a perspective that unmasks conceits of one kind or another (whether conceits of an artifice of religiosity or of a humanist relativism). The “rejecting the various means of masking reality” (n. 231) may seem a harsh turn of phrase, and here I would turn to the non-textual image of the body language of Pope Francis (n. 140): he can hardly keep a closed body posture; it constantly is open; the typical gesture is toward a meeting, toward a conversation, dialogue. Again taking up the text portion, it is a dialogue of truthfulness, and truthfulness that encounters matter-of-factness.

One sees in this example that the direction of the Holy Father’s manner of thinking and acting is not what I call single-line. He is not grabbed by single-line propositions (“cold syllogisms”, n. 142). His tendency is to thought and action that is holistic – toward a whole understanding of the Gospel, and to the grounding of that whole understanding in matter-of-fact circumstances that avoid abstractions. He is not drawn to a “desk-bound theology” (n. 133). His instinct is toward a pastoral theology.

The pastoral theology focus of Pope Francis may be illustrated with two other key quotations:

"Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed" (n. 35). "It needs first to be said that in preaching the Gospel a fitting sense of proportion has to be maintained" (n. 38).

Again in these small quotes we see an implicit holistic grasp of the Gospel; again we see that the significances of aspects of the proclamation or of corollaries of the proclamation are situated in a whole that gives them proportion. What the Pope presents derives from systemic understanding. This is not intellectualist systematizing, but systemic understanding that is grounded in pastoral experience. 

The Pope will be misunderstood if his various utterances (particularly those that grab the media as “sound bites”) are taken as one-line dictums, for the Pope’s mind is not a fragmented one. In Pope Francis we encounter a mind that is grounded in a pastoral empiricism, but an empiricism that is in whole-system dialogue with the foundations of Catholic faith that integrates concrete circumstances within a structured and fundamental understanding of the Gospel.

This is not to say that in each and every respect this integration is perfect. An Apostolic Exhortation forms part of magisterial teaching, but it is not unreformable. Pope Francis retains an Argentine passport, and his larger cultural situation is Latin America. And Latin America and Central America are without exception comprised of nations that are marked with poverty and political instability. His own perspective on this (his own “take”) is rather “culturally formed” – it is formed experientially, rather than conceptually. In brief, Pope Francis is not a social scientist, and does not bring a social science understanding of the poverty and political instability of his cultural background. One could hear him say, understanding has to begin “with realities”, not “with ideas”. Yet the “facts” are that about a century ago, Argentine and Australia had similar configurations of economy and society, but now Australia is materially more advanced, and is more equalitarian and with relatively little poverty. I regard the reasons for this divergence between Australia and Argentine (my home and the Pope’s home) as mainly “cultural” – and cultural divergences that reflect rather different conceptualizations (“ideas”) of economy and civil society. 

I am not about to launch into an excursus on economy and society. I make these remarks to underscore that everything said in "Evangelii gaudium" is not said with equal robustness. There are points where as both a social scientist and a theologian I have heavily annotated "Evangelii gaudium" in a qualifying ways (particularly nn. 48-50 and 144-147, and 152f). But even within sections so annotated, one still finds restatement of the central thesis of Pope Francis. For example:

"Why complicate something so simple [as in biblical calls to almsgiving]? Conceptual tools [such as economic theories] exist to heighten contact with the realities they seek to explain, not to distance us from them [and to dampen direct action to alleviate poverty]" (n. 194).

One can see in this compressed exclamation, the urgency of the Pope’s call to grounded theorizing that is consistent with the generalizations that I earlier made. But in its textual context one can see a perspective that is not well informed in social science terms (nor perhaps in biblical terms if the perspective in Lukan parables is taken a paradigm). 

This suggests that in reading "Evangelii gaudium" we should engage in “conversation”, in dialogue (nn. 31, 133, 137, 142, 165). That is, we should not engage the text as “the last word”, but try to enter the tensions in the text in a conversational manner that moderates positions.

Much in the Exhortation reflects personal positions of the Pope (his “personality”) and his Latin American culture (and a principle of cultural groundedness is crucial to his paradigm: see nn. 115, 123, 132f). His readers will have differing personalities and differing cultural perspectives. The strong contribution of "Evangelii gaudium" is the way it demonstrates a holistic method that has diverse applications for living and communicating the joy of the Gospel. Whether concerning issues of economy and society and social science understanding; or with issues of liturgical inheritance and contemporary expression; or with tangled issues of moral discernment; or with tangled issues of giving a good account in particular situations of the faith of the Church – we need to find both simplicity and complexity that involve tension and that call to sympathetic dialogue.

This is a call to charity, and "charity covers a multitude of sins" (James 5:20). The Exhortation of Pope Francis is, indeed, a call to charity and to joy – joy in the Gospel, "Evangelii gaudium".

__________


The agenda-setting apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis's pontificate:

> Evangelii gaudium

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The April 10 homily of Pope Francis against the "dictatorship of uniform thought":

> "Anche oggi…"

The April 11 speech at the International Catholic Child Bureau:

> "Vi ringrazio…"

The speech on the same day to the Italian Movement for life: 

> "Quando sono entrato…"

__________


In the homily on April 10, in denouncing the "idolatry of uniform thought," Bergoglio specified that often "when some governments ask for financial help, we hear the response: ‘if you want this help you have to think this way and you have to enact this law and that, and that other.'"

This denunciation made by the pope can be set alongside what was written in the latest issue of "Il Regno," in an article on "Churches and gay rights" in Africa:

"The idea that the decriminalization of homosexuality is above all a priority of the West has taken on new vigor partly because of the hypothesis of cuts in development aid for Uganda floated by the United States, France, Holland, and Sweden, while the World Bank has frozen an award of 90 million dollars. But already at the end of 2011, after the statements of British prime minister David Cameron and former United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton on the possible suspension of aid for countries without guarantees of 'homosexual rights,' the spokesman of the episcopal conference of Zambia, Fr. Paul Samasumo, had asked that aid not be tied 'to the promotion of immorality.' On that occasion, various other Christian Churches had taken the same stance."

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English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.