Will the Surprising New Pope Fulfill Our Hopes?

Pope Francis has been making wonderful surprise gestures. Hopeful signs.

 He has shown concern for people:

 Ignoring security, he leaves his armored car to mingle with the St. Peter’s Square crowd. He urges humility and care for the poor in his homilies.  And in the week this is written, he is conducting Holy Week services at a juvenile detention center rather than at St. Peter’s Basilica.  

What’s more, Pope Francis has opted not to live in the elegant and isolating Vatican papal apartment. He will lodge permanently in the pedestrian hotel when he stayed prior to his election. He wants to be with people—ordinary priests and others doing business with the Vatican.

The changes are inspiring.

For many Americans, though, hope in Pope Francis will be fulfilled if and when he acts to heal the wounds and scandal caused by pedophile priests and callus bishops and when—and if--he leashes the Vatican hounds yapping at our American nuns.

It may be unreasonable to think the Pope was advised of two St. Patrick’s Day broadcasts on American television. Had learned about them, he would have gotten a good idea how U.S. Catholics and others currently feel about the institution he heads.

Meet the Press proved especially revealing.

David Gregory, the NBC program’s host, conversed with four public figures known to be Catholics: Chris Matthews, NBC political commentator and host of his own show; Ana Navarro, GOP political strategist; Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, author and former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and Frank Keating, politician and former GOP Governor of California.  All expressed the hope that Pope Francis would at last change the Church’s trajectory. They indicated why.

Said Mr. Matthews:

“…A lot of us that go to church talk about it. It really doesn’t sound right on television. But there’s always been a real suspicion…about the way the church handled sexual abuse of altar boys…it was never dealt with quick enough.

“…The slowness made a lot of us suspicious they were covering up more than just this…. every Catholic that goes to church thinks like this. They don’t like talking about it; maybe I shouldn’t have…but the church wasn’t on top of this thing. And people say, ‘Wait a minute, what side are they on, the priests’ or the altar boys?’ They should be on the side of the altar boys.”

 “I don’t think you should be feeling any Catholic guild about talking about this,” Ms. Navarro declared. “We must air it out. And I think this pope needs to understand…. I can tell you, I’m a Catholic who’s grown very distant from the church, and it has been over this sexual scandal.

“I just can’t get over the cover-up. I can’t get over putting the institution above the people. This [election of Pope Francis] is something that I hope he brings me back. And I think there’s a lot of American Catholics who feel the same way. We want that hope. We want the hope from the new pope, and hope that he brings it back. ”

Ms. Townsend has aired her feelings in her book, Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God and Politics and Losing Their Way. On Meet the Press, though, she noted that for decades American Church leaders have focused almost exclusively on sexual matters and downplayed the Church’s social agenda.

“That and the scandals leave you suspicious,” she said. “The Church always has a range of issues, and what are they focused on? Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, I would say they focused mostly on sex. And I hope that with this pope, they’ll focus more on something that brings us together rather than individually saying, ‘You’re bad on sex.’ It’s just the church of sex.”

Of course the Church has been more than a church concerned about sex. It has been a church of fear also—the hierarchy’s fear of opinions that challenge current Vatican rules.

Church leaders especially fear outspoken U.S. nuns who declare for the equality of women in the Church.  The nuns have been called “insubordinate,” “radical feminists” who have created a “crisis” and are “undermining the Church.” A censor has been appointed to scrutinize all the nuns’ writings and the words of speakers at their meetings.

 In a nation where free expression of ideas is a prized, insisted-on right, the Vatican’s action against the nuns seems harsh, even churlish.

The CBS program 60 Minutes depicted the standoff between America’s nuns and the Vatican. The program aired interviews with Sister Pat Farrell, head of the Leadership Conference of Nuns, and with J. Peter Sartain, Seattle’s archbishop. The archbishop has been appointed watchdog over the Conference, which represents 80 percent of the nation’s 57,000 U.S. Catholic nuns.

Importantly, 60 Minutes’ videos showed the nuns doing basic good works, doing what many of us call ”God’s will”—feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and dispossessed, counseling addicts, teaching poor children and comforting society’s rejects. Among the nuns there are nurses and lawyers dedicating their talents and their lives to help the needy.

Yet the Vatican chastised the nuns for doing such work to the exclusion of campaigning against same sex marriage and abortion. Many Catholics and non-Catholics were appalled.

If what the nuns do is insubordinate, let’s have more nunish insubordination. I f these educated highly articulate and completely loyal ladies of the Church think they should have equality in Church affairs, well, they have earned it.

And it’s practically certain that  a talented and devoted women running a diocese would have been on the side of the altar boys, as Chris Matthews put it, and not prone to shield monster rapist priests.

                                                                                ----Gus Gribbin