What the Church Needs Now

What the Church Needs Now

COMMONWEAL

Thank you for Paul Moses’s insightful take on the new pope and his name (“Why ‘Francis’?” April 12). I appreciate Moses’s recounting of the life of St. Francis, as it relates to both the failings and strengths of the church over the centuries. Seeing Pope Francis hop on the bus and refuse the Mercedes does inspire some hope for his pontificate, and for the church. There is important symbolic meaning in Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s decision to take the name Francis. Being from Latin America, the pope recognizes the great importance of serving the poor. His humility connects with St. Francis as a model of Catholic spirituality.

But therein lies the problem. As Moses writes, St. Francis “avoided speaking out against church authorities or miscreant clergymen, and instead made his point through example.” He taught by example in ways that remind us of Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day. They aspired to a profound personal spirituality that was both interior and engaged in the world—a compelling approach. Yet the silence of St. Francis assumes an idea of the “good Catholic” that may prolong the corrupt and dated structures of the church.

The Second Vatican Council tried to renew the decaying structures of the church inherited from the Counter-Reformation. The council was, in many ways, our own Reformation. Yet many of its reforming efforts were largely thwarted by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Those popes imposed an atmosphere of obedience and “orthodoxy” that has squelched dissent, and all but lost an entire generation of priests, nuns, and laypeople. They made it impossible for dialogue and renewal to overcome the archaic demands of silence and obedience to church authorities.

Taking their lead, conservative forces in the church resisted open discussion; they were not comfortable having the power of the clergy diluted by the laity, especially women. Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day will, of course, become saints, just as St. Francis did. They will serve as models of obedient Catholicism. But obedience is not what the church needs from the faithful. It needs compassion. Catholics must be willing to do the hard work of transforming the church and the world. That can only be accomplished if the church relinquishes its need to control the lives of the faithful. I hope Pope Francis can move beyond silent humility and challenge the church to divest itself of the social control it is so good at imposing.

Robert Oliva
Floral Park, N.Y.

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