REASONS WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE SO NEGATIVE TOWARD POPE FRANCIS

Tom Hoopes, writer in residence at Benedictine College, Kansas, recently published a book of reflections on the message of Pope Francis, What Pope Francis Really Said: Words of Comfort and Challenge.

 MercatorNet asked him about the controversy surrounding the Pope.

The interviewer posed this question:  

In some circles, there is an air of suspicion over everything the Pope does -- his appointments, his documents, his interviews, his guests at the Vatican... Why are some people so relentlessly negative?

Mr. Hoopes answered: 

I’ll give three reasons that are his fault and three reasons that are our fault.

Three ways Pope Francis makes us not like him: First, he provokes us. He uses “fundamentalist,” “Manichean,” “rigorist” and other words that seem designed to condemn rather than correct. 

Second, Pope Francis is imprecise and that gets him into trouble and makes life difficult for Catholics who have to address misunderstandings. 

Third, because he seems clearly to be following a strategy that balances “doctrine-focused” appointments with “social justice-focused” appointments. That frightens many Catholics who have seen poisonous dissent in the Church all our lives.

Three fails on our part:

First, we are too thin-skinned to take Francis’s advice seriously. OK, some of what he says sounds like name-calling. But anyone who reads Catholic com-boxes knows that harsh, fundamentalist, “rigorist” Catholics absolutely exist. I remember the vitriol we received continually at the National Catholic Register. The harshness of Catholics startled a nice Catholic woman who came to work for us. She had never seen anything like it in the secular world, where she went back to work.

Second, his critique of American conservativism is true, and that bothers us. It’s true that economic opportunity has come at a gigantic moral cost that we decry but don’t correct – pornography streamed to our children, abortion exported worldwide, the destruction of Third-World families (and lakes and streams), and an entertainment-centred technocratic generation.

Our personal-comfort-focused consumerist lifestyle would destroy the world if it were adopted worldwide, Francis points out. He’s right. It would. And he’s right. That hasn’t made us correct course.

Third, there’s just something about him that sets our radar off. As I said before, our radar is hypersensitive but absolutely understandable.

While I do not totally agree with Mr. Hoopes, I must say that his observations are among the most insightful I have read about the Holy Father.

I am sure there are a host of other reasons which are agenda-driven and which account for either the opposition the Pope encounters or, even more disconcerting, the uncomfortable silence from so many in the hierarchy.

No doubt about it, this Pope surely has hit a nerve among Catholics, be they conservative, liberal, progressive or whatever label one wishes  conveniently to attribute to them.

For my part, I pray that the Holy Spirit is inspiring the Holy Father with the Counsel he requires to speak prophetically to the pressing issues of the moment and with the Fortitude to persevere in his Papal ministry.  

Come, Holy Spirit.  Fill the hearts of Your faithful and kindle in us the fire of Your love!