Jeremy Piven-in-Grosse Pointe Blank voice: “Twenty years, man. Twenty years.”
From February 17, 2015, “It’s not hypocrisy, it’s a contemptuous distrust“:
That might seem like hypocrisy — Francis is stating a rule that he refuses to apply to himself. But I don’t think he is being hypocritical — I think he’s doing something far worse than that. This isn’t hypocrisy from the childless pope — it’s a contemptuous distrust of others.
Francis’ own choice “to not have children” is a choice he sees as legitimate, sacred and virtuous. He does not believe that he is behaving selfishly by making that choice. Thus he clearly cannot believe his own categorical statement. He doesn’t really believe that “the choice to not have children” is always selfish. What he means, rather, is that such a choice may be selfish.
And that’s true! It is certainly possible to make “the choice to not have children” for selfish reasons. Such a choice may, in some cases, be a form of inhospitality. It may be, in some cases, motivated by a reluctance to share one’s time, life, home, money and other resources. It may be, in some cases, that people are making this choice for ignoble reasons.
But it is also certainly possible to make “the choice to not have children” for selfless reasons. That same choice can also be a form of hospitality. It can be motivated by a desire to share one’s time, life, home, money, etc., more widely. It may be a choice that people make for noble, praiseworthy reasons. That’s certainly what Pope Francis seems to think of his own choice not to have children — and of the same choice as made by every cardinal, bishop, priest, brother and sister in his church’s celibate clergy.
So here we have a choice that — according to the pope himself — can be made for either good or bad reasons. As a spiritual leader, then, the pope has a choice to make about this choice. One possibility would be for him to teach and encourage his followers to make good choices for good reasons. Another possibility would be for him to preclude the possibility of his followers making bad choices by arrogating to himself the right to make this choice on behalf of everyone else.
And he chose the second one.
That’s appalling and immoral of him. It shows a palpable disdain for the moral competence of his followers. Francis does not trust them. He does not believe they can be trusted. He does not believe they are capable of being trusted. He does not believe they are capable of the kind of responsible choices that he believes he is capable of making. And so he presumes that he is better equipped than they are to make this choice for themselves.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In