Guest Op/Ed: American Catholics Have Many Reasons to be Excited by Pope Francis

Having lived and served as a Roman Catholic Priest in the Diocese of Bridgeport for 12 years from 1980 to the end of 1991, I welcomed the Apostolic visit of Pope Francis to the United States. Moreover, this visit awakened in me long silent hopes for a new ambience within the Church.

Two and one half decades ago, I resigned the active ministry, as I could no longer ”in conscience“ represent the institution of the Church. My departure served as a self-imposed exile. It was ”as if in exile,“ I became intellectually, spiritually, emotionally cut off from part of my heritage as were the People of Israel during the Babylonian Captivity, unable to sing the ”Songs of Zion“ in a foreign land.

In 2013, when I heard the name chosen was Francis, I sensed a foreshadowing. Then came the rejection of the Vatican Palace, and a choice of a two-bedroom apartment on the Vatican grounds, followed by a pledge of reform and removal of certain personnel. Aboard the aircraft, after an Apostolic visit, when asked about priests who were gay, he retorted ”Who am I to judge?“ And so the legacy of Jorge Bergoglio, citizen of Argentina, and man of Italian ancestry, began.

Today–Sunday, October 4–is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patrician from Umbria, who abandoned everything, stripped himself nude in the town Piazza, gave his elegant clothing back to his parents, committed himself to a life of poverty and ”joy“ and spoke of the sun as brother and the moon as sister. It was a medieval premonition of the environmental movement. Thus Pope Francis began to tell the world who he was by his first decision, his choice of name. He has repeated his call for those in leadership to respect the planet lest it ”become a pile of filth.“ The visit to the United States posed many challenges to this first time visitor; only time and events will determine whether or not it was as successful as it may appear at this vantage point.

In a world of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, the USA has the largest segment of highly educated Catholics. Many of those of the baby boom generation and their children, and those even younger, have advanced academic degrees and thus they demand more than pious platitudes and thin answers to their pressing questions. In the view of many of these educated American Catholics, the Church’s adaptation to modernity, which was the challenge begun and faced at the Second Vatican Council, is yet incomplete. They simply cannot leave their intellect and education at the Church door, as they come to celebrate the weekly Mass. Most of them are grateful to hear a thoughtful, prepared and coherent, if not inspiring sermon. I have heard this from Catholics coast to coast in the USA over three decades.

But nowhere is the Church’s challenge from modernity more evident than in a discussion of the role of artificial contraception and pregnancy prevention. You cannot have a discussion on the family without addressing this issue; it touches everyone except for a few who are either celibate or unhappily sterile. The vast majority of Catholics in the west, namely the USA, Europe and Canada, a segment of the Catholic population of more than 1 billion people, overwhelmingly do not follow the ban on contraception. Pew Research has verified this repeatedly since the 1970s.

It is not an understatement to suggest the the Papacy of John Paul II, one of Pope Francis’ recent predecessors, had the quelling of dissent on the official policy regarding birth control as one of his major goals. I had the good fortune to study at the Catholic University of America during the period of time that Rev. Charles Curran was a major figure on the Theological Faculty there. It took the Holy See decades to have him removed due to his dissent from official teaching. The Board of Trustees, all Catholic Bishops, would not allow him to ”teach Theology“ which is a privilege given to the officially ”licensed.“ They literally suspended his license to teach.

Father Curran is currently Professor at SMU and was appointed to the National Academy of Arts and Science in 2010. The Academy was established in 1780 by John Adams. Father Curran led the intellectual charge against the official teaching, with thorough and comprehensive arguments. He was joined by hundreds of academics in theology and in other disciplines throughout the country and the world, and by thousands of parish priests and nuns as well. But those arguments fell on deaf ears.

In the 1980s, in Connecticut, I met one of the laywomen who sat on the Pontifical Commission established by Pope Paul VI to evaluate the teaching on contraception. She was one of 56 who signed the majority report. Her colleagues in the majority included Cardinals, Bishops, lay men and women, physicians, theologians, scientists and philosophers. The minority report was submitted by four Cardinals. Pope Paul VI sided with the minority. This woman member of the majority that I met had very little patience in discussing the topic with ”traditional“ Catholics. It is sad and ironic that the official teaching has simply been ignored. However, this level of rejection has not diminished the devotion or zeal by hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics in the United States.

In the Congress and U.N., Pope Francis raised the question of economic justice. In doing so, he continues to walk in the footstep of ”Il Poverello,“ his namesake. However, on these questions the current pontificate is not forging new territory. The Holy See has taken a progressive position regarding economic rights since the Encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII (1891). His official teaching supported workers’ rights to a living wage, and the right of collective bargaining. It was re-affirmed 40 years later in the Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931) by Pius XI. It was further echoed in the Encyclical Progressio Populorum (1967) of Paul VI. Unfortunately, the economic views of the Holy See have been shouted down in favor of the preoccupation of our culture with issues of human sexuality. But much of what Francis is saying on economics is not new; it has just fallen on deaf ears for more than a century.

The Pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, is now a little more than two years old. They say the Church thinks and moves in centuries, not in years. I heard Governor Granholm of Michigan say on MSNBC last week that she has been waiting for someone like this. Governor, you and I, and so many more Americans, are not alone.