Pope Francis I

When I was a nine-year-old, my anti-television mother twice made sure that we turned on the news. We watched the white smoke and the bells that signaled the elections of first John Paul I and then John Paul II as pope. As with the first time men walked on the moon—when I was all of two months old—she knew that this was something I might want to be able to tell my own children that I was watching. She was about as far from Roman Catholic as Americans operating in the Protestant tradition get—raised as a Unitarian Universalist—but she recognized the historical significance and potentially far reaching consequences of papal elections.

So when my first daughter Jane was almost a year old, I too made sure that the television was on when the emeritus Pope Benedict was introduced. The circumstances were a little different from what they were when I was a child, as I had acquired a Catholic husband and had made a promise to him that we would raise our children in both our faith traditions. This past week, as Pope Francis made his debut on the balcony of St. Peter’s, my household consisted of me (a Unitarian Universalist since my childhood), my Catholic husband Tom, and our children, Jane and Thea, who are learning to be both Catholic and UU at the same time.

Perhaps because of my mother’s insistence that we watch the papal introductions in 1978, or perhaps because having Catholic children gives me an investment in the future of the Roman church, I found myself intensely interested in this month’s election of the new pope. I had not paid all that much attention to Pope Benedict XVI, although if pressed I probably could have told you that he wasn’t doing much to improve the church’s reputation, and that perhaps the scandals associated with his papacy had significantly worsened the institution. I don’t have high hopes for the Catholic church. Not only do I disagree with its stance on the holy trinity of 21^st century American gender liberalism—the ordination of women, gay marriage, and reproductive rights—little in Catholic worship works for me. The rituals of the mass do not speak to me; my theology is far from Trinitarian theism; and, most disappointingly, American priests seem not to have been adequately trained in delivery of moving sermons, so the one potentially interesting part of the mass usually leaves me cold.

Yet on Wednesday, when I tuned in the car radio and heard that Vatican City was resounding with bells and white smoke, I rushed into the house as fast as I could and opened up CNN’s Pope Cam to watch the proceedings. Along with crowds in St. Peter’s Square, I heard the Latin introducing Pope Francis and found myself astonishingly moved, for a Catholic skeptic, at his introductory remarks. It was not his request for a prayer for him that struck me (this hit me as a bit more self-aggrandizing than it probably should have). I can not even properly explain why I was moved to tears. But I was.

To my surprise, I find myself more interested in this new pope than anyone else in this Catholic-dominated household. The children, naturally, are not really positioned to appreciate the rarity or significance of a new pope. When Tom came home later and I greeted him with “habes papam,” he didn’t realize what I meant (perhaps I shouldn’t have pulled out my rusty Latin). When we sorted out our miscommunication, I had trouble figuring out what was the most important thing to tell him about Francis: that he is the first pope from the Americas; that he is the first Francis; that he is a Jesuit (I think that last won out for both of us). I have continued to read avidly about Francis I, and I like much of what I  have read. 

To my surprise, Francis I is giving me hope for the future of my children in the Catholic church. I still don’t expect the church to become a church that I could join, but I have been able to pin down what it is about Francis’s demeanor and early papal practice that makes me think that the church has something important to offer my Catholic daughters. Americans tend to act as though that religion=belief. But I see religion differently. Religion is belief, yes, but it is also practice and community. I have long assumed that what being raised in the Catholic tradition would provide my children is a sense of the importance of ritual. Since I take them to my UU church every week, I know that they are getting community from my congregation. And although Jane especially has a very strong sense of theism at the moment, I have also assumed that continuous exposure to UUism would help her to develop a theology more complex and flexible than a doctrinal religion like Catholicism cultivates. But the Catholic church is so strong on practices like liturgical ritual and prayer, I have hoped that they would internalize these skills, which UUs have tended to be weaker on.

Theologian Marcus Borg* distinguishes between religions focused on purity and religions focused on love. No denomination is all one or the other, but each person’s version of their religion tends toward the one or the other—focused on protecting the purity of the faith or on spreading God’s love. As a UU, a denomination with no fixed theology to debate, I definitely find myself leaning toward love (and the current UU PR/social justice campaign Standing on the Side of Love, resonates deeply with me). The Catholic church that I have (mostly casually) observed emanating from Rome in my lifetime has clearly been one of purity. Purity of theology, at least. The terrible effects of some priests’ sexual abuse of children demonstrate that the emphasis was not on love, which would have left children unharmed.

Everything that I have read about Francis’ early papacy suggests that his Catholicism is the Catholicism of love. Love of his brother cardinals, love of his parishioners, love of the poor. The ministry that we have seen so far illustrates his deep pastoral gifts. He keeps himself on the same level as the cardinals who tried to elevate him, disdains sartorial frills, tries to keep the doors open to the public when he goes to a chapel to pray (the Swiss Guard would not permit this), ducked out of the Vatican to greet passers-by in the streets (evading his guard this time), and even committed the faux pas of petting a reporter’s service dog out of a sense of connection and affection. He even had the audacity to take the name of a saint so revered for his devotion to animals and the poor that no other pope has dared to try it. It is possible that Francis’s theology, which I understand to be the traditional conservative European Catholicism that kept him averse to the influence of liberation theology, will be about purity.

But as Francis also embodies the religion of love, I can see that he has something to offer my daughters—something more than I ever expected from a Catholic pope. If he can push his style of ministry out to the parishes, they will learn social justice and compassion from the church—not just ritual and theology.

*I haven’t read Borg, only heard these ideas discussed in a sermon. If you can provide me a citation so I can read more, I would be grateful.