So this popped up in my facebook feed today:
Yes, it’s a fake quote (here’s Snopes, though you hardly need Snopes to recognize that the Pope wouldn’t have said this), and Shriver seems to have figured this out, because it’s no longer on her page. Should I just laugh it off? “What fools!” Only if it’s funny, rather than worrisome, that people believe this — and two separate people, from two separate social circles, one Catholic and the other nonreligious, shared this photo with the earnest approval of the sentiment.
And at the same time, Slate says that the Pope’s hidden message in talking about capital punishment rather than abortion, and loss of hope among young adults rather than addressing gay marriage explicitly, is admittedly not that he has removed these from the “sin list” but that these are not as important as the “more pressing problems” of poverty alleviation and environmentalism. And a Huffington Post article put it this way, “In His Speech To Congress, The Pope Said 10 Times More About Poverty Than Abortion; It’s clear where his priorities lie.” Not to mention a further Huffington Post article, “Will Republicans Heed the Words of Pope Francis?” which suggests that Francis’s message is that Republicans should stop trying to defund Planned Parenthood.
In other words, the message that liberal writers are taking from Francis’s message, and promoting to the wider world is this: “yes, Francis technically can’t change Catholic teaching, but he’s teaching us that they don’t really matter all that much.” Non-marital sex and abortion may still be on the Sin List, but they’re about as serious as that white lie when you tell your wife that the dress doesn’t make her look fat, and as relevant to non-Catholics as whether or not you can eat that cheeseburger on a Friday in Lent.
Oh, and they other thing they’re getting from it is, “the Pope said all the Bad People who oppose us had better change their ways.”
But here’s the thing: Jesus’s message, and the Church’s message, is not “God loves you.” It’s “God loves you and” — “and wants you to follow him.” Or, as the postulant Maria said, “to find out the will of God and to do it wholeheartedly.” And this doesn’t just mean “voting for politicians who support social welfare spending and carbon taxes,” nor does it mean “buying a hybrid car.” And it doesn’t mean compartmentalizing sex into this thing you do with your body, of no moral moral significance than whether you choose to go for a run or play basketball with friends as a recreational activity, nor does it mean deciding that the Fifth Commandment has an asterisk.
True, for those who feel dejected and hopeless, they need to hear the first message before they can hear, and act on the second half. But there is a second half to the message, and this is being lost.
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to lose his soul?
There has to be more than financial well-being. This is true for individuals, but this is true for our country, our world, too, isn’t it?
Look at today’s Gospel reading:
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,
it would be better for him if a great millstone
were put around his neck
and he were thrown into the sea.
If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.
It is better for you to enter into life maimed
than with two hands to go into Gehenna,
into the unquenchable fire.
“Unquenchable fire”? Whoops! Where’s the kum-ba-yah?
I’m also grumpy because of a recent Pew Survey, which reported such statistics as:
“Do you believe in the concept of sin, that some actions are offensive to God?”
11% of Catholics said no or “I don’t know”, broken down into 6% of weekly mass-goers, 13% attending monthly or yearly, and 21% reporting seldom or no mass attendance.
And, as far as specific actions go: barely more than a majority, 57%, reported believing abortion is sinful (the others responded “no”, “don’t know”, or “don’t believe in the idea of sin in the first place”); 44% agreed that homosexual behavior is sinful; 41% believed that buying luxuries without donating to the poor is a sin, 35% believed that remarrying without an annulment is sinful, and 33% believed that cohabitating with a sexual partner is sinful. Broken down, 73% of the regulars, 47% of the irregulars said abortion is a sin; the breakdown is 59% / 35% for homosexual behavior. Interestingly, a full 31% of the weekly churchgoers agree that contraception is a sin.
(Tangentially, the numbers are also relevant for the whole debate about divorce and remarriage; the percentages agreeing that remarriage without an annulment and the percentages agreeing that cohabitation is sinful are nearly identical. For weekly attenders, 46% agree that both actions are sinful; for the monthlies, 26% believe cohabitation and 30% believe remarriage is sinful; for the seldom/nevers, it’s 18%/21%. What do you make of this? It’s striking, anyway.)
One hopes that if, at least, Pew had asked about adultery, or murder, or first-strike nuclear warfare, or at least that guy with the price-gouging medicine in the news, some sturdier majorities would have agreed these actions were sinful!
Now, defenders of the Pope will say, have said, that he can’t help it if the media distorts his words. And I’m not saying that he’s directly culpable. But if his visit ends with a greater share of Americans, or Catholics specifically, believing that this fake quote says, that it’s OK to just “be a good person” (as they perceive themselves) because in their mind, the Pope said so, that’s a Bad Thing — and I don’t care how many people, at the same time, have been inspired by Francis to buy hybrid cars.
(Yes, I’m grumpy. I’m not giving the Pope a fair shake. I’m told he said some Very Inspiring Things, after all. And my mood is probably influenced by a 15 year old who spent the day yesterday complaining about his homework, and I can’t quite shake the issue of How to Fix Mom and Dad after having watched Still Alice the other day, and some other things going on. But there is is.)
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