How do we react when the Pope fails to express our top concerns?

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 15, 2015

Pope Francis’ in-flight interview on January 15th touched on a number of issues that have profound social implications: Freedom of religion, reconciliation among different religious groups, freedom of speech, the exploitation of children, and the misuse of nature, including climate change.

Because handling each of these issues properly is dependent not only on right principles but also on human knowledge and prudential judgment, a relatively broad range of opinion is possible. And certainly, no matter which aspect of a given issue the Pope chooses to emphasize, even many Catholics will take at least partial exception to it. But prudent Catholics can recognize the difference between the Holy Father committing an error and the Holy Father failing to state what is uppermost in their own minds.

For those whose faith is easily upset, it is perfectly acceptable to ignore all non-Magisterial statements without fear of missing something essential to the Faith. Even for Magisterial statements, the reader must learn to distinguish matters of faith and morals from opinions which depend on human knowledge and prudence, for by their very nature the latter cannot bind us. But especially in non-Magisterial statements, where far less care is taken to treat an issue comprehensively, readers need to learn to make distinctions.

Here is one kind of distinction: It is very important to avoid claiming that some statement is erroneous when its only fault is not having made the point we consider most important.

Example 1: Interreligious Relations

Two examples out of many in the most recent interview will make this distinction clearer. First, in speaking on greater mutual respect among the different religions (for the Pope had altered his schedule to take advantage of an invitation to visit a Buddhist temple), Francis lamented the distrust of other religious groups characteristic of his own upbringing. Then he said:

The Church’s respect for other religions has grown a great deal; the Second Vatican Council spoke about respect for their values. There have been dark times in the history of the Church; we must not be ashamed to say so because we are also on a journey. This interreligiosity is a gift.

Some will be seriously unhappy with this emphasis. There are many good Catholics who judge that the interreligious pendulum has swung too far, and that every opportunity should be taken to warn against the serious threat of religious indifferentism. They may also think that a papal side-trip to visit a Buddhist shrine does not pass the Catholic time and energy test. But preferring a timely expression of concern about religious indifferentism to an expression of interest in mutual respect is not at all the same thing as believing mutual respect among religious groups is an immoral goal, or that interest in it is a theological error.

Nor does this preference require the belief that no other religion has any legitimate values, or that Catholics should not respect legitimate values even when they encounter them in other religions. We usually see these things quite clearly when thinking of our own personal relationships with non-Catholics—especially with friends and family members who do not share our faith—but we tend to lose sight of them when we undertake a kind of cosmic parsing of the Pope’s statements.

Translation: If Pope Francis said X when I think Y is so important, he must be wrong, untrustworthy, deficient in faith, or immoral.

Example 2: Climate Change and Ecology

To consider another example, when asked about his new encyclical, Pope Francis made several interesting comments on the process of its drafting and the sources of some of his insights (Note: Popes seldom write their encyclicals by themselves; but they do guide the process and assume a very definite ownership of the final text.) Francis also mentioned the impact he hoped the forthcoming encyclical would have on the next climate meeting in Paris, since he regarded the last one in Argentina as lacking in courage.

At the beginning of his response, he also said something that could be considered a fairly loose point:

I don’t know if humans who mistreat nature are fully responsible for climate change but they are largely responsible for it. We have taken hold of nature, of mother Earth, to some extent. An elderly farmer once said to me: God forgives always; sometimes he forgives humans but he never forgives nature. We have exploited nature too much.

This is obviously an imprecise, off-the-cuff remark, but it suggests two important things. First, there is a good deal we do not know about climate change, its causes, and how much human mistreatment nature can absorb without massive danger. Second, it does not take irreversible climate change for Christians to know that their “dominion” over nature must be exercised as a stewardship for God. As such, it involves moral and prudent decisions which respect God’s creation. These decisions are a participation in God’s creative power; they must avoid destroying nature through selfish use.

Francis mentioned deforestation of the Amazon and soil depletion as two examples. And why not? After all, wilderness preservation, crop rotation, and reforesting are already known to be workable approaches. The neglect of these and many other things is a failure of stewardship. The Soviet Union ultimately failed (for better or worse) because it raped its land and depleted its resources in the thirst for power and control, essentially bankrupting an already corrupt system. But there are always powerful groups that approach creation in just this way; it is a repeated tragedy in human affairs.

So there is much to consider. But here, once more, we may argue that climate change is a poor choice of emphasis for a pope, especially when environmental issues are so frequently championed by the very “pagans” who are all but blind to the truly human ecology which Catholicism demands. Why help them seize the moral high ground?

Conclusion

We should, of course, also recall that Pope Benedict tied life issues and environmental issues very closely together, and that Pope Francis has already indicated that the tragic waste of the unborn is a prime indicator of what is wrong with our view of nature as a mere instrument for our own desires. But because we may not connect all the dots, we always need to remember the very point I have been trying to make with these examples.

That is, we need to recognize our unfortunate tendency to become deeply annoyed whenever the Pope says something other than what we think he should have said on the occasion in question. It is frighteningly easy to complain as if what the Pope has said is false, or as if it shows his stupidity, or as if it reveals his true colors. Too often this is really the Not Invented Here Syndrome at work. The Pope has not taken up our cause, so we tune him out.

Within broad limits, we may cherish our own priorities. Obviously we must remain open to God’s call in our own particular sphere. But we must also reject such an impoverished way of reading the Pope. We must let our chief pastor stretch our understanding whenever possible. Above all, we must resist the tendency to assume the Pope is fiddling while Rome burns—just because he has not voiced our own favorite fears.