CONSERVATIVES ARE RIGHT ABOUT POPE FRANCIS

It’s no secret.  Conservative-minded Catholics haven’t much use for Pope Francis.

Conservative voices have grown even more shrill as they criticize the Holy Father’s methods and approach to Church teaching and practice.

Conservative wisdom holds that Pope Francis is threatening the future of the Church’s traditional, concise and very clear doctrine regarding the Sacraments, the Liturgy, moral theology, even the very structure of the Church underpinned as they see it upon the universally obligatory decisions and decrees of the Bishop of Rome.

Conservative thinkers worry that a Church which governs its faithful locally either by decisions of the diocesan Bishop alone or by consensus within a country’s Episcopal Conference undermines the both the universality of the Faith and the authority of the Successor of Peter.

Conservative leaders and their followers fear that, under the Pontificate of Pope Francis, the Church will undergo unalterable changes and become so entrenched in modernity that the ancient truths themselves will no longer hold the grip on man's will they once had.

Conservatives likewise fear Pope Francis’ wider vision of what the Church itself should and must be.  

In his own role as Pope, the Holy Father sees himself as Pastor first and theologian second.  His priority is not the purity of tradition but rather the solace of mercy.  Thus, the Pope draws a distinction between what the Church teaches and what the Church practices, balancing the simplicity of truth against the purifying power of pardon.

And so, conservatives react and denounce Pope Francis for trying to have it both ways — conceding the formal teachings of the Church while being generous in a compassion and openness to forgiveness that appears to undermine them.

Lord knows I have listened to these voices of concern, of fear, of gloom and doom.  I have read the manifestos of the self-appointed defenders of the faith whose agendas are more self-serving and judgmental than the Lord Jesus every could have intended or anticipated.

And I have come to a simple conclusion:  these conservative reactionaries are right.  

Pope Francis is going to change the Church unalterably.

But not in the way conservatives think.

What Pope Francis has unalterably changed is the tenor and the timbre of the Church’s voice from the clamor of denunciation to the whispers of unfaltering friendship.

Conservatives are right.  

From now on, the Catholic faithful will expect the Church to be there WITH them and FOR them, no matter what.  

To be with and for ALL of them, no matter who.

The Church will still teach that burdens come with faith, but will be sympathetic when weak and frail human beings fail.

Conservatives understand that the days of harangues from pulpits, condemnations and excommunication from the Body of Christ are over.

Conservatives are right.

But in their resistance to Pope Francis, let these same reactionaries remember the wisdom of Gamaliel, that erudite scholar of the Sanhedrin, who cautioned that, if what the Apostles were teaching was the Will of God, no power on earth could suppress it.  If not, that teaching would fail and end in the trash bin of forgotten history.

And so, let us all pray: 

Come, Holy Spirit.  Fill the hearts and minds of your faithful.  Kindle in all of all the Fire of Your Love!