My Thoughts on the Holy Father — Carrying the Crippled Child

I had a Facebook chat last night with a Catholic friend of mine.  He started by asking “What do you think of Pope Francis?” and then went on to tell me how nervous he is about what he’s seeing. He’s a pretty traditional guy, and the deviations from the norm are beginning to worry him. What if these little chinks in the armor of tradition grow to become widespread cracks?

It’s a question I’ve been reading a lot of lately. There seems to be a lot of hand-wringing and worrying going on among the more hard core traditionalists. Their mantra is “Save the Liturgy, Save the World” which is leaving them unsettled by a Pope who won’t wear red shoes and washed the feet of a Muslim woman.

Is the Holy Father putting social justice and good works ahead of faith? Is he leading us down a primrose path of do good-er-ism that will lead people out of the churches? Is he de-emphasising the importance of being Catholic in the name of being charitable? What if he decides to ordain women? (I’m not sure how they jump to the ordaining women place, but they always leap right to it.)

I’m genuinely puzzled by the kerfuffle. I don’t see what he’s doing that way at all. I see a man who is so moved by the love he has for his fellow human beings that he can’t help but to reach out to them. I’m at a loss to figure out how that can be wrong.

This is how I see it:

We have an eight year old daughter who has arthritis in both of her legs. There are times when it flares up and makes it painful to walk. There have been days when the swelling in her joints made walking impossible except in an awful and ungainly gait.

Last year, she made her First Communion. The classes were meant to process in together at the beginning of Mass. The night before the big event, they has a dress-rehearsal for all of the children. There were around 120 children, 2 priests, and a gaggle of parents. My daughter was positioned about halfway down the right-hand line. She couldn’t walk it at the speed they wanted. She flailed and lurched her way up the aisle in her beautiful white dress, and her line fell further and further behind the one next to it.

One of the priests, a very kind man, turned to the Director of Religious Education and suggested that they let my daughter skip the procession and wait for her classmates in the pew. He would bring the Eucharist over to her,she wouldn’t have to walk, and the Mass could proceed without the distraction she would be.

The other priest walked down the aisle, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her to her seat. “If you can’t walk it tomorrow,” he told her, “I will carry you.”

It wasn’t the right form, or following the rubrics, and yet it was beautiful to see. The second priest looked at my daughter through the eyes of a father and did what any daddy would do. He carried her.

That’s what I see when I look at Pope Francis. I don’t see a man who doesn’t care about the rubrics or the liturgy at all. I see a Pope who loves his people with the heart of a father.  I see in him a man who knows that as vital as the rules and tradition are, sometimes you have to set that aside and carry the crippled child.

My sweet girl who was able to walk it by herself after all