After 5 years, Pope Francis attracts love and disdain: 2-24/25-18
February 24, 2018
It soon will be five years since the Catholic Church's College of Cardinals shocked the world by electing Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (pictured here) of Buenos Aires to be the next pope. Bergoglio then signaled the kind of pontiff he might be by choosing the name Francis in honor of of St. Francis of Assisi.
At the beginning, the world seemed to fall in love with Francis. Even many non-Catholics were attracted to him, a phenomenon that my pastor, Paul Rock, and I examined in our 2015 book, Jesus, Pope Francis and a Protestant Walk into a Bar: Lessons for the Christian Church.
But increasingly this pope is facing a divided church and criticism from both left and right, as this Guardian piece makes clear.
". . .in the Vatican itself," the piece reports, "all is not well. Ever since his election in 2013, Francis’s efforts at reform have made him deeply unpopular with conservative Catholics, some in positions of influence within the Vatican itself. They have balked at his efforts to change the way the Vatican is run, including its bank, and to rethink the manner in which the church deals with failed marriages, including welcoming remarried divorcees to receive holy communion. Now the rumblings of discontent have spread to liberals who support Francis but are deeply upset by recent remarks he has made on child abuse."
In some ways, Pope Francis has upset many of the very Catholics who felt that Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were right to slow down -- and even occasionally block -- some of the reforms that came out of Vatican II. That's because it became pretty clearly early in his papacy that Francis had a primary goal of revivifying those reforms, adapting them for what the church and the world look like now 50-plus years later.
Francis also has upset traditionalist Catholics by his strong advocacy of environmentalism, his focus on the worldwide plight of immigrants, his suggestions that maybe it would be OK to give Communion to divorced Catholics, his notion that he should be really careful about judging LGBTQ people and other matters.
From my outside perspective as a Protestant who wants better relations between Catholics and other Christians, this pope has been mostly a wonderfully welcome change. And even when he has stumbled -- as he did in recent remarks about how he has dealt with the scandal about sexual abuse by priests and coverups by bishops -- he usually finds his footing again and says or does the right thing.
In any case, the Guardian piece is well worth a read as we approach the fifth anniversary of this pope's election. It's my hope that he has several more years in office.
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SOME PROOF OF ISAIAH
Archaeologists think they've discovered the first physical evidence showing that the Prophet Isaiah really existed. Whether he existed or not, Jews and Christians certainly know he had a lot to say.
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P.S.: My latest Flatland column now is online here. It's about musicians of one religious tradition who perform music for a different tradition's worship.
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