Punditry

Remember when Pope Francis said “Thank you. It is true that I do not give interviews, but why, I do not know, I can’t, it’s just like that.”? Good times.

I never got around to really posting about the interview Pope Francis gave to La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal. Besides that interview I have read a good amount of thoughtful commentary regarding it both pro and con and ranges in between. When I saw yesterday that another interview was going to be released I certainly had mixed feelings. This time he was interviewed by La Repubblica’s founder, Eugenio Scalfari. This was the atheist he had previously dialogued with.

First off it seems Pope Francis is keeping Jimmy Akin very busy. It seems every time he says something in the public forum outside of the normal speech, homily General Audience, etc – it seems Jimmy Akin has to do another article explaining what we need to know concerning it. For example todays Did Pope Francis just say that evangelization is “nonsense”? 8 things to know and share. In addition regarding the newer interview translation problems are being reported such as by Sr. Anne Flanagan and Fr. John Zuhlsdorf.

So far the commentary by Thomas L. McDonald at God and the Machine on the latest interview expresses some of my own thoughts.

• I think he has a particular style and we need to get used to the rapid change in tone. It shouldn’t come as much surprise that a Argentinian Jesuit is not a Polish Thomist Philosopher or a German Augustinian Theologian.
• He’s not a scholar, he’s a pastor. I’m more comfortable with scholars, less so with the pastoral thing. I’m happy with my books and my Germans. Pastoral work has to do with getting down on the street with people in all their messy fallibility and failings, but also with the potential for beauty and faith and love.
• I think that’s wonderful, but there are inherent dangers in it as well. Sometimes you need to be out there on the knife-edge taking risks in order to lure new souls to the kingdom.

Adding to this the interview format is certainly not an ideal vehicle for a balanced expression of what the Church teaches. Especially considering that two of the interviews were to some extent hostile. In one you have reporters asking typical questions in pursuit of a headline and not real understanding. The latest interview with Eugenio Scalfari is also partially combative.

I especially liked Thomas L. McDonald’s closing paragraph:

• The world is not our little Catholic bubble. I like my bubble. I stay in it most of the time. The classroom and the computer and the page allow to me to leave it from time to time, but the preaching and teaching required in the bubble is of a different quality to that required in the world.
• Francis makes me nervous, because his words can be spun by those enemies we have within the Church and without. On the other hand, we shouldn’t get twitchy and skittish about a genuine attempt to engage non-believers and non-Catholics with unguarded language. No teachings are changed. The faith is as it always has been. The messiness of debate and dialog doesn’t alter the truth.
• Those of us in the Church–we who have made the commitment to teaching and preaching the word and following Her in all things–are the 99 sheep, safe at home with our Mother. That’s not to say our salvation is assured, but merely that the shepherd doesn’t have to worry about us quite as much, for the moment.
• Are we then to begrudge the shepherd when he leaves the safety and comfort of the stable to retrieve our lost brother?

Anytime you speak about evangelization and emphasize certain aspects of it, it can seem that you are downplaying others. The both/and so often gets lost in communication and on the receiver’s side the same exists. We all have our hobby-horses and can see everything through them. If the Pope doesn’t sooth us by repeatedly mentioning our hobby-horses we can get suspicious. When you make a broad outline of strategies for evangelization from a top level it can be like a flu vacine where a forecast is made as to what strains should be concentrated on. This does not include all the various strategies at all the levels of the Church down to the Gospel call that we all receive and are to act on. The reality is their is no homogenous culture where one pastoral emphasis will be effective for everyone. The barriers to conversion are many and while there are generalities in conversion stories there is no one-size-fits-all evangelical response. As Pope Francis says in this interview we have to get to know people and to listen to them.

When Thomas L. MacDonald writes “I’m more comfortable with scholars,” I can heartily agree. Frankly Pope Francis’ writings leave me rather cold. When I was reading Ratzinger/Benedict the path was filled with empty highlighter pens. Pope Francis not so much. Maybe it is my vanity and the fact that Pope Francis emphasizes a lot of the basics and is a bit repetitive in his homilies and speeches as he emphasizes a certain point. I probably need lots of work on the basics and it is annoying to hear them mentioned.

Overall I can read the various interviews he as given and to some extent see what he is trying to say in context along with limitation of the interview format. Still if he didn’t give any more interviews I would not see that as a bad thing. The Pope is of course going to get misinterpret by the culture. This does not mean he has to help them along with phrasings that can be so easily misinterpreted.

When it comes to critiques of the Pope’s last interview there is one I would recommend. Long time Catholic blogger Dale Price is a hyperbolic word-smith extraordinaire and while I don’t fully agree with his critique I was often nodding my head in agreement with the thrust of what he was saying.

There are all sorts of small rhetorical problems with the interview, easily sound-bitten parts that are being used by the Left–and occasionally the knife-happy non-left that hates pro-lifers–with glee: “obsessed,” “small-minded rules,” etc. Can you find any soundbites to fling back at the retrograde, unChristian behavior of progressives? Let me know.

Hint: there aren’t any.

Now culling anything for sound bites is a losing proposition. We have reduced the political sphere to this. Yet there is a reality that these are what propagates and is unfortunately the only doctrinal content that many receive. This is why many faithful Catholics might feel they are on the receiving end of stones while revisionist Catholics and those not friendly with the Church are glowing in excitement of “best Pope ever.”

To suggest that they have all misread it and/or are delusional is itself delusional. When was the last time they were this energized? Never. Not in my Catholic lifetime.

Anybody on the left feeling betrayed, cast aside, discounted, demoralized, even a sense of disquiet? Nope. That’s a telling datum, don’t you think? To which I hear NO, FROWNY FACE, IT IS NOT. GET WITH THE PROGRAM.

I for one do think that it is highly probable that most of the new people on the papal bandwagon have misread him, are delusional, or both. While I think the lack of precision in what he says at times is a problem, I don’t doubt at all as he has also repeated in two of the interviews that he is a “Son of the Church” and totally orthodox.

I find it an easy temptation to dismiss those who now like the Pope. Especially as I suspect if they really understood that Pope Francis is not changing any doctrinal content they would be less enthused. I keep waiting for the media honeymoon to be over. Yet it is easy to forget that there will be some that will be drawn into the Church even under an initial misapprehension.

I especially liked Matt Archbold column regarding an atheist co-worker Pope Francis Did What I Didn’t.

Other commentary I liked:

• Fr. Dwight Longenecker on the last interview
• John Zmirak on What Is Pope Francis Saying to the Right?
• Archbishop Chaput on the Jesuit magazine interview

Via the Anchoress:

The Little Sisters of the Poor are heroic social servants: they serve the indigent poor and go begging on their behalf. They are tremendous women offering companionship, love and hospitality to people who often have no one else in their lives willing to see and affirm their dignity and worth, and they don’t ask “are you a Catholic” before they make that offer: it is for all.

Likewise, in their many facilities across the nation, the Little Sisters employ nurses, and aides and helpers, and they do not ask, “are you a Catholic” before they hire them.

And because the Sisters do not discriminate in their service or their hiring, they, and their ministry, and the aged population they serve, are all begin imperiled by the United States Government, specifically by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Obama Administration.

How can that be? How can these religious Sisters, living in a country where the first amendment to its constitution insists upon a free expression of religion and the exercise thereof be in peril? Because the HHS and the Obama Administration say that if the Sisters do not deny their own consciences and offer insurance policies to their employees that include free coverage for sterilization procedures, artificial contraceptives and abortifacients, these vowed-to-poverty women will have to pay approximately a million dollars in IRS fines, effectively making their work near-to-impossible.

Yes, they’ll be punished and perhaps driven from serving the poor in America — the poor of every race and creed — for the sin of not prostrating themselves before a secularist culture that has made an idol of preventing the conception and growth of human life — a strange god endowed with so much power that the government believes it can and must stomp on fundamental human freedoms of conscience in order to serve it.

She has additional information on the lawsuit on their behalf by the The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty that the Little Sisters did not want to have to pursue.

Really, what is the Obama Administration thinking? What is the HHS thinking? Do they really want these optics: the government forcing dedicated sisters to abandon their work with the elderly and the poor?

This could be a real head-scratcher if you don’t consider just how ideologically bound the Obama administration is. It would have been so easy for them to make the standard exemptions, but that doesn’t advance the agenda as much as they wanted. You will be assimilated by this borg-like administration and dissenters will be punished. Elitists do our thinking for us, conscience-exemptions be damned.

On the other hand partly I am glad they went this route since this at leaves gives a chance for secular businesses to also have a chance to also have a religious exemption. If the Obama administration had gone the normal path with exemptions than likely businesses like Hobby Lobby and others would have had a much tougher battle. It is no surprised that what is happening Little Sisters of the Poor is making headlines all the way up to the Drudge Report. It is so ridiculous on every level they don’t qualify under a religious conscience clause.

Under the Obama administration getting a religious exemption the way is narrow and I am just surprised that the qualification for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle was not part of the HHS regulation.

When the media covers what the Pope says they are expected to get it totally wrong. They have a specific narrative more informed by a political ideology than a concern to get coverage of the Catholic Church right. So no surprise here in this regard.

Maybe this is not all that surprising, but it seems to me more and more Catholics are doing the same thing and while their narrative is different, it still comes to a jumping to conclusions. There is a hermeneutic of suspicion when to comes to the words of Pope Francis and a look for evidence that in some way he is departing from Catholic teaching.

The latest example is the letter Pope Francis wrote to Dr Eugenio Scalfari, Italian journalist of La Repubblica. The Vatican just released the English translation of this “Letter to Non-Believers.”

A typical headline was something like “Pope Francis assures atheists: You don’t have to believe in God …” or "“Pope Francis assures atheists: You don’t have to believe in God to go to heaven.”

The media’s dumb reaction was echoed in some Catholic sites and blogs which made much more out of what the Pope wrote than he actually did.

Jimmy Akin once again does a fine analysis in Did Pope Francis say atheists don’t need to believe in God to be saved? (9 things to know).

I now wish to address the three questions from your article of 7 August. I believe that in the first two questions, what interests you is to understand the attitude of the Church towards those who do not share faith in Jesus. Above all, you ask if the God of Christians forgives those who do not believe and who do not seek faith. Given the premise, and this is fundamental, that the mercy of God is limitless for those who turn to him with a sincere and contrite heart, the issue for the unbeliever lies in obeying his or her conscience. There is sin, even for those who have no faith, when conscience is not followed. Listening to and obeying conscience means deciding in the face of what is understood to be good or evil. It is on the basis of this choice that the goodness or evil of our actions is determined.

The Pope here is not speaking specifically about salvation or equating following your conscience as the only condition for salvation.

While the Catechism classes Atheism and Agnosticism as sins against religion it also says is the following section:

IV. ERRONEOUS JUDGMENT

1790 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.

1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.”59 In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

1793 If – on the contrary – the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.

1794 A good and pure conscience is enlightened by true faith, for charity proceeds at the same time “from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith.”

So I in no way think the Pope was speaking at all contrary to the faith. Still I think there is a little bit of a problem at times. I have had no problem with what the Pope has had to say, more often it is what he doesn’t say that can add to confusion in understanding him. I believe he is making certain pastoral emphasis fully in accord with Church teaching, but that these emphasis can leave out a more fully articulated view of Church teaching. This in part causes a confusion among Catholics when only a pierce of doctrine is illuminated. This pastoral language sometimes lacks the theological precision that might be desired. No doubt this is always a difficult balance especially within the context of how some of these pastoral messages are presented.

The caveat being that I might be fully off-base here. It just seems to me that there seems to have been more effort to try to explain what the Pope said regarding the faithful. We expect a continuous apologetic effort with the media, but when we have to do the same with Catholics something might be wrong here in how this is being presented.

Although there are other things that enter into this problem. For example the delay between the publishing of the text in what the Pope said and the translation into English and other languages. The story can be generating headlines for a week before we see an official translation.

Some 20,000 tribal people in Jharkhand state in eastern India have marched on a village church, accusing local Christians of trying to convert them by dressing up a Virgin Mary statue in tribal clothing.

Members of the animist Sarna faith have been complaining since the statue was inaugurated in the Singpur village church in May.

But the standoff escalated on Sunday when the marchers took a normal statue of Mary to the church, aiming to replace the offending item, which depicts the Virgin Mary wearing a sari with traditional red borders, holding the infant Jesus.

Police blocked the protesters 25 meters from the church. Local head of police Jagannath Oraon said that they were seeking to avoid a confrontation and peace was quickly restored.

Bandham Tigga, head priest of the Sarna tribals, said the sari-clad statue marks the latest effort to deliberately confuse and convert tribal people in the area.

This story was reported back on August 27, 2013.

Strangely what it reminded me was of the so-called new atheists. There seems to be an odd parallel in thinking. If you can consider that a statue dressed in a sari is a forcible attempt at conversion you just might need something to thicken your skin.

The new atheists seems to have the same thinness of skin in that just seeing religious symbols especially on government land is outrageous and must be stamped out. That a nativity scene is akin to proselytizing in the most negative sense of the term. Good thing lawsuits are a tool of reason.

Via Frank Weathers.

Although my opposing war in Syria surely means I must be racist.

I just don’t get why the media and some Catholics are calling this a “selfie.”

Oxford Dictionaries Online’s quarterly update defined selfie as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.”

This is more of a “groupie.”

It is bad enough that we have terms like this and then don’t even use them correctly.

The media though always like pictures that they think are somewhat ironic when it comes to the Pope, bishops, priests, and those in religious life. Show them doing something “normal” and somehow it is news.

Still I like the picture itself which no doubt is much better than the one taken on that cell phone at arms length.

A couple of years ago Steven D. Greydanus wrote an excellent essay A House Divided: Broken Homes, Flying Houses, Divorce, and Death in Family Fantasy Films. I thought that what he had to say was dead on. Some of the movies he discussed were based on children’s books.

During the summer the site Sync offers YA literature in audiobook formats. Each week during this time they usually have a fairly recent YA fiction audiobook and one of more classic literature. What I have noticed of the YA fiction are some similarities to what Mr. Greydanus wrote. In the last couple of years I can’t think of one book I read or listened to in this genre that actually had an intact family. If the children were not orphans than it was usually the case that they only had a mother or rarer only a father.

Such a contrast between classics such as the ones written by Madeleine L’Engle. I had been reading through the Kairos first-generation books and looking at the other YA books I have read in the last couple of years there is quite a contrast. Now many Fantasy novels have had the trope of the orphan who becomes the hero partly out of revenge. Now though it just seems that there must be a broken family regardless of the setting of the novel.

The other thing I have noticed is just how much deception and lying is part of these plots. Children lie and deceive either their one parent, whoever is taking care of them, or some authority figure. There is almost never a lesson learned in this and some resulting character development. The children/young adults “know better” and just have to do this for some apparent good. Moral relativism is the status quo even for the heroic figure. While I enjoyed the Harry Potter novels, the amount of lying that Harry does throughout and with no apparent consequences is an aspect that annoyed me.

Another common thread in many of these YA novels is just how dark they are or how often it involves the death of young adults. The situations contrived call for this to happen and becomes a major part of the plot as for example “The Hunger Games” trilogy. Dystopian futures seem to dominate.

Now I can understand various plot tensions and how conflict is a necessary part of a story. Yet this was done before without a dominance of broken families and gloomy futures. Maybe I am just getting older and instead of saying “Get off my lawn” I am saying “get off my bookshelf.”

While I am unable to eloquently write about these trends I see, I do wonder if others have noticed the same?