Pope Francis

 What to make of Pope Francis eleven years into his pontificate? 

We need to understand the pope and figure out how to read and react to his words. We are a sound bite culture that is quick to react and overreact.

The key to “getting” Pope Francis is his first Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.

Evangelii Gaudium prefigures much of what has been witnessed over these past eleven years in terms of the themes Pope Francis has chosen to prioritise. It is a pastoral document, written around the theme of Christian joy in order that the Church may rediscover the original source of evangelisation in the contemporary world.

"EvangeliiGaudium" is a long document – 50.000 words! 

Pope Francis opens it with:

“The Joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew. In this Exhortation I wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of evangelization marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths for the Church’s journey in years to come.”(#1)

What is this new chapter and new path for the Church? The quote below sums up the document well:

“I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.”(#27)

As a Church, Pope Francis believes we have been in self-preservation mode. We have hidden ourselves in bunkers to survive. Pope Francis is calling for the Church to thrive by choosing the missionary option in everything that we do.

The rest of the document is all about how we do this.

The main message around which all of Francis’ teaching revolves is found in the image of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The Church is a tender Mother whose spouse, the loving Father of all, incessantly seeks out and waits for His children, bidding them to come home. Together, this spousal couple, God and his Church, longs to unite all human persons, making each of us their own son or daughter forever. (see #46 and #144)

For Pope Francis, evangelisation begins by sharing the basic message of the Gospel:

“In catechesis too, we have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the centre of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal… On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.” (#164)

He notes the importance of the kerygma throughout the life of a Christian:

“It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment.” (#164)

“I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord.” (#3)

Pope Francis then describes the sources of this evangelisation.

First, we can evangelise only because of God first loved us.

An evangelizing community knows that the Lord has taken the initiative, he has loved us first (cf. 1 Jn 4:19), and therefore we can move forward, boldly take the initiative, go out to others, seek those who have fallen away, stand at the crossroads and welcome the outcast.

Second, our evangelisation depends on our ability to accept the Gospel into our lives.

“Here we find the source and inspiration of all our efforts at evangelization. For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?” (#9)

The term “missionary disciple” is used throughout the document. The two terms are used to hold in tension the need both for a relationship with our Lord and the need to go to the outskirts to preach the Gospel. One thing is very clear. Every baptised member of the Catholic faith is called to evangelise and is called to be a missionary disciple.

“In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization.” (#120) 

“What I would like to propose is something much more in the line of an evangelical discernment. It is the approach of a missionary disciple, an approach ‘nourished by the light and strength of the Holy Spirit.’” (#51)

“The Church is herself a missionary disciple.” (#40)

Pope Francis spends a considerable amount of time on the parish as he looks to see how a missionary impulse would change parish life:

“In all its activities the parish encourages and trains its members to be evangelizers. It is a community of communities, a sanctuary where the thirsty come to drink in the midst of their journey, and a centre of constant missionary outreach. We must admit, though, that the call to review and renew our parishes has not yet sufficed to bring them nearer to people, to make them environments of living communion and participation, and to make them completely mission-oriented.” (#28)

In some people we see an ostentatious preoccupation for the liturgy, for doctrine and for the Church’s prestige, but without any concern that the Gospel have a real impact on God’s faithful people and the concrete needs of the present time.” (#95)

Then in regards to sharing the message of the Gospel:

“Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed…the message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary. The message is simplified, while losing none of its depth and truth, and thus becomes all the more forceful and convincing.”

It is clear in the document that Francis sees the centralisation of the Church as harming evangelisation.

“Countless issues involving evangelization today might be discussed here, but I have chosen not to explore these many questions which call for further reflection and study. Nor do I believe that the papal magisterium should be expected to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world. It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization.’” (#16)

One of the pope’s clearest aims in the document is for the Church to be “permanently in a state of mission” and for her to be liberated from “self-absorption” through a renewed encounter with God’s love. He warns against “being comfortable” in the faith and instead to “become excited by the mission of communicating life to others.”

He states that if the Church’s moral teaching and virtues do not “radiate forcefully and attractively,” then the “edifice of the Church’s moral teaching risks becoming a house of cards.” It would mean the Church’s doctrinal or moral points are “based on specific ideological options,” which “run the risk of losing its freshness and will cease to have ‘the fragrance of the Gospel.’”

The Pope’s insistence on inclusivity is frequently stated in the document, from his exhortation that “the joy of the Gospel is for all people: No one can be excluded” to his call for the Church’s doors to be “always wide open” and that the “doors of the sacraments” should not be closed “for simply any reason.” The Eucharist, he adds, “although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”

In #32 Francis lays out his vision for a potentially controversial goal: a decentralised Church. The papacy and the “central structures of the universal Church” also need to hear “the call to pastoral conversion,” he writes. He stresses that the Second Vatican Council called for a “concrete realization of the collegial spirit” but regrets that this desire “has not been fully realized, since a juridical status of episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority, has not yet been sufficiently elaborated”. He adds that “excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach.”

Later Pope Francis again communicates his attitude toward doctrine, saying “pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed.” He later adds that an “imbalance” results when “we speak more about law than about grace, more about the Church than about Christ, more about the Pope than about God’s word.”

In a passage with relevance to subsequent controversies, the Pope writes that “differing currents of thought in philosophy, theology and pastoral practice, if open to being reconciled by the Spirit in respect and love, can enable the Church to grow, since all of them help to express more clearly the immense riches of God’s word.”

He goes on to say that for “those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance, this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion. But in fact such variety serves to bring out and develop different facets of the inexhaustible riches of the Gospel.”

His willingness to question long-held customs can be found in #43, where he says that some “may be beautiful, but they no longer serve as means of communicating the Gospel. We should not be afraid to re-examine them.”

The Pope’s frequent criticisms during the course of his papacy of the tendency of some within the Church toward “rigidity” can be traced back to #45, where he writes that a missionary heart “never opts for rigidity and defensiveness” and that the Church has to “go forth to everyone without exception.”

He warns against “fear of going astray” and “remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: ‘Give them something to eat.’”

He chastises those who “ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past.”

Francis adds that they have a “supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline,” which leads to a “narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby, instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.”

The Pope links spiritual worldliness to those with an “ostentatious preoccupation for the liturgy, for doctrine and for the Church’s prestige, but without concern that the Gospel have a real impact on God’s faithful people.”

Such worldliness, he says, can lead to “enmity, division, calumny, defamation, vendetta, jealousy and the desire to impose certain ideas at all costs, even to persecutions which appear as veritable witch hunts. Whom are we going to evangelize if this is the way we act?”

He exhorts the faithful “not to think the Gospel message must always be communicated by fixed formulations learned by heart or by specific words which express an absolutely invariable content,” but, rather, advocates a theology “in dialogue with other sciences and human experiences,” saying it is “most important for our discernment on how best to bring the Gospel message to different cultural contexts and groups.”

Finally, Pope Francis urges accompaniment of those whose “situation before God and their life in grace are mysteries which no one can fully know from without.” He adds that the Gospel “tells us to correct others … without making judgments about their responsibility and culpability.”

Bearing in mind all the above, the controversies building during Pope Francis' pontificate all become more understandable.