I was born into that religion, it’s true, but beyond the normal concerns one might have with the good book’s logic, the opinions that church officials hold about those with my particular views on a number of social issues, combined with their wretched conduct during the ongoing sex-abuse scandals, effectively turned me away from the buildings with the big crosses.
Years of reading writers like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine have led me to call myself a deist instead, and being as that’s the most open-ended and non-committal of all religious designations, I was pretty happy with that.
Until, that is, this new pope drove into town, on the four old tires of his 1984 Renault.
It’s more than a little ironic that I feel the need to call a 76-year-old man a “breath of fresh air,” but I don’t have another term for it. As an Argentine cardinal, he traded a palace for a small apartment and a limousine for a bus ride, and he regularly took to the worst barrios in Buenos Aires to perform his priestly duties (so much so that he is now known as the “slum pope”).
His single-minded obsession with the needy reminds me of Hugo’s Bishop Myriel, the virtuous cleric in “Les Miserables” who gives all he has to charity, and not only feeds and houses Jean Valjean, but lies to free him from the police even after the latter was caught stealing his silver.
Francis decries the idolatry of “this god called money,” shows remarkable humility — instead of washing the feet of 12 priests on Holy Thursday, as is tradition, he washed the feet of 12 prisoners — and makes personal phone calls to those of his extensive flock whose lives have crashed along tragedy’s reefs.
Overall, he appears far less concerned with issues like abortion than his predecessors, and his remarkable response to the question of how he’d deal with learning that a cleric under his charge was gay is perhaps most impressive: “Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?”
To say that I was shocked when I heard these words, especially after the overwhelming coldness exhibited by the last pope on the issue, is an understatement. It was that very lack of concern, that chilling condemnation leveled at those deemed “different,” that had alienated me in the first place and made me believe that the intense focus on mercy, love, and acceptance preached by Jesus was more of a polite suggestion than a church edict.
This pope is not perfect, I understand that. But he gives me hope that the church may eventually be able to leap forward a few centuries by looking back to its inception, and return to simply helping the lost and disenfranchised instead of encouraging intolerance of those it disagrees with.
When Bishop Myriel sent Jean Valjean on his way, he gave him the rest of his silver and told him to use its worth to become a better man.
Francis is handing the Roman Catholic Church his silver. Whether or not the institution uses it appropriately remains to be seen.
Now, though, he has our attention.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
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