Pope Francis made the internet explode—again. Last week, the Jesuit journal America published a series of interviews conducted between the pope and his fellow Jesuit Antonio Spadaro in August. From Buzzfeed to the New York Times, every form of media has had something to declare about the interview.
The following passage is the most-quoted and representative excerpt from the interview, and the center of the controversy.
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible.” Francis said to Spadaro in the interview. “I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”
Some observers present the pope’s words as revolutionary or new. But those people are wrong.
His words remove politics from faith, and focus on the heart of Christianity: the love of Christ. The pope’s latest interview brings up vital points and acts as a reminder to something forgotten rather than a call to alter Church doctrine.
Francis seeks to remind Catholics that issues like abortion, the family, and homosexuality are primarily are primarily internal concerns of the Church. Such subjects should not be the focus of the Church’s efforts to serve and minister to the world as a whole. Rather, the love of Christ needs to be the primary message proclaimed to those who neither know nor claim to know Him.
In the clearest statement by the pope in the interview to this effect, he said, “I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.”
This is something that the universal church, made of all living Christians – catholic in the literal sense – would do well to remember.
Christ calls us first to Himself, then to imitation of Him. If we as the church fail to proclaim Christ, but instead become wrapped up in those works that ought to be a response to Christ’s work and God’s grace, then we fail to evangelize effectively.
This is not to say that we should not hold strong lines on the sanctity of life, promote the centrality of the family, or call acting on homosexuality a sin. Rather, this is to say that these are calls to “be ye perfect as Christ is perfect.”
The goodness of these works cannot be known until the goodness and character of Christ is known.
We must proclaim that goodness first, and then, when men come to Christ, we may tell them to live as Christ would have men live.