The Jesuit Pope

When I was exploring the idea of becoming a priest, there were really two groups that immediately resonated with me--the Dominicans and the Jesuits.  I chose the Dominicans, and in hindsight I think that was a mistake.  I am not saying that I would still a priest now if I chose the Jesuits, because ultimately I do not believe I could live celibacy in a healthy way.  But, I think I would have lasted much longer as a Jesuit than I did as a Dominican.  This intuition was confirmed when I spent three years at a Jesuit parish in Philadelphia.  It was, without question, the best parish experience I've had, and I came to respect and love the Jesuits very much.

All of this is a longish way of saying that, while obviously I've never met Pope Francis, I have some sense of his fellow members of the Jesuit order.  If Pope Francis is anything like his brothers, and there is no reason to believe he is not, I think we can conclude a few things about the man.

One constant in all of the Jesuits I've met is that they are both very sincere in what they are doing and very conscious of the optics of what they are doing and how it is being interpreted.  Thus, it is usually wrong to ask a question about a Jesuit along the lines of "does he really believe this, or is he doing it as part of a calculated move to make a point or promote some agenda?"  The answer is such a question is almost always "both."


Take for example, Pope Francis's new car.  In case you haven't heard the story, some Italian priest gave the Pope his old car, a 1984 Renault.  Pope Francis took the car to tool around Vatican City, mostly so he wouldn't have to be chauffeured everywhere in a big motorcade.  This isn't the first car-oriented story of Francis's pontificate--he ditched the armored Mercedes for a utilitarian Volkswagen Passat, and has made it clear that he disapproves of priests driving fancy new cars.

So, did the Pope do this because (a) he felt like he needed a car and this was available; (b) he wanted to make a point to his priests about what kind of car he thought they should drive; (c) so he could distance himself from the at times ostentatious (and unpopular) pontificate of Benedict XVI; or (d) to make a point to Catholics around the world about how they should live a more humble life?  The smart money is on (e) all of the above.

Here's another observation about Jesuits--all of the ones I've met are really smart and careful people.  Prior to being ordained a priest, a Jesuit completes a minimum of six years of graduate studies, and most do more than that--Pope Francis has a Masters in Chemistry, on top of all of the standard philosophical and theological education.  All of this education, combined with the savvy about perceptions discussed above, leads to a very careful way of speaking.

Which makes the response to Pope Francis from the traditionalist wing of Catholicism all the more hilarious.  The meme they are running with (well, the ones that are not in full freak-out mode) is that Francis's more "controversial" statements are the result of his unfortunate habit of making "off the cuff" comments that he really doesn't mean.  Nothing to see here when Francis says he will not judge gays, these folks tell us.  He doesn't really know what he is saying.

Clearly, these folks have never met any Jesuits.  Jesuits don't make "off the cuff" statements--in my experience they make statements that (intentionally) seem to be off the cuff, but are actually carefully thought out.  What Pope Francis is doing is very similar to the way Jesuits operated Old St. Joseph's in Philadelphia--they would "casually" stick things into the parish bulletin to "encourage discussion" on controversial topics.  The m.o. seems to be to lob intellectual grenades into the mix and see what happens after they go off.  Rather than telling people what to do or think, they prompt people to come to those conclusions on their own.  That seems to be the simplest and best explanation for Francis's "off the cuff" comments.

*************
As I have said in previously, I've been seriously considering my place in the Catholic Church.  I've found an Episcopal parish I really like, with wonderful people.  I have thought really seriously about whether I should leave and become and Episcopalian.  But, right now, it is Pope Francis that is keeping me in Catholicism.

Pope Francis is my Pope.  My Pope is practicing what he is preaching.  My Pope is not afraid of intellectual inquiry and views that have previously seen as beyond the pale (as seen by his sit down with the founding father of great buggabo of both John Paul II and Benedict, Liberation Theology).  My Pope is making the Catholic Taliban very nervous.  My Pope is calling all of us, and especially me, to cut out the rhetoric and actually live the way Jesus wants us to live.

Most importantly, my Pope is not afraid take a selfie with some teenagers.

That's my Pope.






Update:  I began the new version of this blog with a discussion of the obsessive focus on things like pre-marital co-habitation.  Its seems that Pope Francis agrees with me.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another Theology of the Body, Part VI--A Theological Exploration of the Clitoris

I was introduced to The Body's Grace by Frank from Letters to the Catholic Right in this post , where he quotes Williams saying: It puts the question which is also raised for some kinds of moralist by the existence of the clitoris in women; something whose function is joy. If the creator were quite so instrumentalist in ‘his’ attitude to sexuality, these hints of prodigality and redundancy in the way the whole thing works might cause us to worry about whether he was, after all, in full rational control of it. But if God made us for joy…? I want to talk about the first part of that quote here, regarding the clitoris.  I am not aware of any theology that has been done on the clitoris, but there should be.  As Williams alludes to, the existence and nature of the clitoris is a theological "problem," especially if you want to hold on to traditional Christian sexual morality.  It is especially problematic if you want to hold that sexuality needs to be understood through the...
Read more

On a Pelagian Politics, and Why It Would Be Good

I have two very hot takes.  The first is that Joe Biden is the best United States President in my lifetime, and probably the best since Franklin Roosevelt, and his many critics on both the right and the left are wrong.  The second is that the Irish monk Pelagius and his (mostly Celtic) disciples were basically right, and more specifically Pelagius's great opponent Augustine (and by extension the rest of the Western Church ever since) was wrong.  But the hottest take, the Hegelian synthesis of this Hotness, is that these two takes are ultimately the same take.  I believe that Biden is a great President because I am a Pelagian with a Pelagian world view, whereas American politics is fundamentally Calvinist, which is just Augustinianism taken to its logical conclusion. Let me try to justify this ball of hot takes. 1. Most of what we know of Pelagius comes from his opponents, especially Augustine and Jerome, who attempted (more or less successfully) to have him cast out ...
Read more

A Reflection on the Past, and Also on Art

Exactly twenty-two years ago, in February of 2002, I was living in River Forest, Illinois, finishing up my undergraduate degree.  I was living in an enormous old priory, hoping that I would be able to join the Dominicans when I was done with school in the summer (which, in fact, happened).  The priory was built in the 50s, when the Dominicans would have classes of a fifty or sixty students a year.  Those days were long gone, and so I was the only person living on the hall, on the far other side of the building from the actual Dominicans.  Other than meals, I was basically living entirely by myself. In my evenings, after getting done with my homework, I had a ritual on weekdays.  I would turn on the radio to the Chicago rock radio station Q101 and listen to the syndicated show Loveline .  Loveline  was a call-in show, focused on giving sex and relationship advice to teenagers and twenty-somethings.  The hosts of the show were comedian Adam Corolla ...
Read more