On using the Church and her popes

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 09, 2025

Popes typically meet with all kinds of people during the course of their routine duties, and the differences among how persons and organizations attempt to make use of these meetings can be quite striking. For example, when Fr. James Martin, SJ met with Pope Leo last week, Fr. Martin made a point of announcing Pope Leo’s desire to “welcome all people, including LGBTQ people”. But the Vatican itself has not said anything about the meeting and, not long afterwards, there was a highly disrespectful LGBTQ pilgrimage to the Vatican basilica.

There is an interesting contrast between the aftermath of the Martin audience and what followed from Pope Leo’s separate audiences with the presidents of the Catholic Leadership Institute and of Legatus on September 8th. These two solidly Catholic organizations apparently felt no need to “spin” their reception by the Pope. In these cases, not only was the Vatican silent as usual, but so were those who were received in audience. After all, what is the point of making public whatever encouragement or cautions one might have heard from the Pope in a private audience? To use the occasion as positive publicity for one’s own cause ought not to be what good Catholics do.

When in Rome

When I was working on my doctoral dissertation in graduate school, my subject (the Dominican reform and the defense of the papacy in the period before the Protestant Revolt) required me to do research in several Italian libraries, including most importantly the Vatican library. I decided to use the Summer immediately following my marriage for this purpose, which meant that my wife and I could go to Rome together. While in Rome, we attended a papal audience with Paul VI, sitting in the section reserved for sposi novelli (newly-weds). We had arranged this by going to a special office where, as newly-weds, each of us was also given a small gift. Somewhat humorously, the wives were given a spiritual object—a religious medal or a rosary, the exact nature of which I can no longer recall after 53 years—but the husbands were given…wait for it…chains to hold their car keys! (Ah, the good old days....)

But I digress. What is more important was that during this one and only papal audience I have ever attended, I heard Pope St. Paul VI lament that he had not been able to serve the good of the Church as he would have hoped; rather, all he had been able to do for the Church was to suffer. I have prayed for the Holy Father daily since that time…and I have also been convinced since that time that prayer is a more appropriate response to a papal audience, whether public or private, than is any self-serving post-audience “spin”.

I don’t believe I can emphasize this point enough, for it has many surprising repercussions. In a certain sense, at least, we Catholics most often get the sort of Pope we deserve, though I do not mean this primarily in terms of holiness, for the desire for holiness can strike any one of us at any time. But a spiritually flabby Church will most often be characterized by spiritually flabby bishops, the result of which will be spiritually flabby cardinals, the result of which will be either a spiritually flabby pope, or perhaps a spiritually strong pope whose pontificate will be seriously weakened and often hampered.

Even the very great Pope St. John Paul II lamented late in his pontificate that he had not exercised greater discipline. Clearly he led more through inspiration than punishment. That inspiration was formidable, but you may be surprised to learn that his far quieter successor, Benedict XVI, removed more poor bishops from office than did JPII, and in a shorter pontificate.

Mysteries at work

It might be said that Pope St. John Paul II had one sort of impact on the Church while Pope Benedict XVI had quite another, though both were extraordinarily positive. Looking back in time just a little, one may wonder whether Pope St. John XXIII would have had any significant impact on the Church if he had not called the Second Vatican Council, the influence of which has been tremendous but not always well-guided or controlled. One may also wonder whether Pope St. Paul VI would have had any historically discernible impact on the Church in his own right had he not issued the infinitely challenging encyclical Humanae vitae—and even that impact has been effected only inch by grudging inch, as the newsy antics of those within the Church who identify as LGBTQ have so often demonstrated. Indeed, we ought never to forget that the problem of homosexuality was inevitably foreseen in that encyclical:

But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. [13]

It is, in fact, precisely our culture’s embrace of contraceptive sex that has made it so difficult to oppose homosexuality and even homosexual “marriage”. Our culture retains some inkling of the “unitive” end of marriage, but almost none at all of its “procreative” end—and it takes very little more than this to turn marriage into selfishness. In turn, that makes the entire basis of society irreparably selfish. The result is the disintegration of both society and the family life on which a healthy society must inescapably depend.

At some point, then, we have to stop wondering how we can manipulate ecclesiastical events and audiences and messages to serve our own special interests. Instead, we must begin wondering what could happen if only we would become converts to the Church. And by converting I mean desiring nothing for ourselves and for our families more than union with Jesus Christ.