‘It’s official: Pope has not abolished sin, says Vatican.”
Well thank you, Reuters.
The wire-service scoop on sin comes on the heels of other news flashes about Pope Francis. For example, when Time named the pope a contender for “Person of the Year,” it said it did so because of his “rejection of church dogma.”
In a similar manner The Daily Mail, under an AP byline, hailed Pope Francis’ pro-life plea to Catholic doctors as a “bizarre U-turn” in his position on abortion.
And The New York Times summed up an interview of Pope Francis with the headline, “Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ with Gays, Abortion, and Birth Control.”
Oops. The pope did say that last one. Or at least something close.
Here’s how he put it: “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods,” warned the pope — before adding that “the church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.”
Let’s stipulate it’s a rare day when the press reports a story on religion without distortion. As a priest friend of mine who worked at the Vatican once put it, if our sports pages were filled by reporters who had as little knowledge of baseball and football as the reporters it assigns to write about the church have about religion, we’d have riots.
Certainly that’s how many Catholics are taking these stories. Especially because almost every Pope Francis statement or interview is quickly followed by a raft of defensive articles saying “what the pope meant to say was. . .”
Fewer are willing to admit (at least publicly) how debilitating it is when the faithful have to explain away a pope’s words by saying he didn’t mean them, that he meant to say something more or less the opposite of what he did say, or in that in the original Spanish, it’s not quite as awful as it is in English.
Does this mean Pope Francis is secretly a Nancy Pelosi Catholic? Of course not. Most of what he has said has been said by one of his predecessors in a different form. Even on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, those who saw a fundamental shift in teaching are now learning he’s pretty much like any other pope here.
Still, you can’t pin it all on the press. The pope has invited much of the confusion himself, with both the words he has used and the emphases he has given.
For example, a pope can’t one day say we talk too much about abortion and then wonder why the press declines to report a pro-life speech. Nor can a pope say he is a “loyal son of the church” as though it were a footnote and think it takes care of everything.
Even the Times cannot really be blamed, for it would not have had the headline it did had Pope Francis not used the word “obsessed” the way he did. The same goes for the notion that in Spanish it’s clear he wasn’t attacking “trickle-down” economics. Does anyone who has read the pope’s entire sad passage on economics really think “trickle-down” is an unreasonable paraphrase for how this pope regards free markets?
It’s possible, of course, that all these controversies will fade as the larger popularity of this pope leads those who would otherwise dismiss the church out of hand to take a second look. That is the hope, and it is not unreasonable. Whatever believers may believe about the matchless worth and dignity of every human soul — gays and nonbelievers not excepted — it’s difficult for many people to pierce the secular caricature to get to this message.
Against the hope that comes from Pope Francis’ popularity, however, must be weighed the danger that comes from the notion he has abandoned doctrine for love. Plainly, the pope has done no such thing: In Catholic teaching, love and doctrine (or truth) are one. But it is equally plain that many who celebrate this pope do so precisely because they take the message that doctrine no longer matters.
In his original interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civilta Cattolica, the pope said that when the church talks about its teachings, “we have to talk about them in a context.” By that, he means we cannot simply spout orthodoxies to an uncomprehending world.
Pope Francis is right. But it would help if the pope could remember he is not always master of the narrative. His conversations take place within a context that is often out of his control and shaped by those hostile to his message.
So while it may be nice to hear the Vatican confirm this week the pope has not in fact abolished sin, what does it say that we needed the clarification?