Global Catholicism: The Church is Changing, But Not How We Might Think

And turns out, I’m not the only American guilty of solipsism in ecclesiastical matters. In fact, I’m hard pressed to find a commentator who doesn’t mention those “hot button” western cultural issues, and even more hard pressed to find any who seriously contend with Pope Francis qua churchman-from-the-global-south.

Over at TJP-not-on-Patheos, Jeremy Zipple takes advantage of his thoroughly international Jesuit community to ask what they see as the most pressing issues facing the Church.

The list of issues runs like this:

Poverty made the top #1 or #2 of all but three lists. Other top vote-getters among the Africans included: tribal tensions, HIV/AIDS, reconciliation after genocide, the rise of an aggressive form of evangelical Protestantism. Central and South Americans often mentioned evangelicals, drugs, and lack of educational opportunities. Many of the Asians mentioned poverty, too, as well as interreligious issues, i.e., the challenges of co-existing in multi-religious societies in which Catholic Christians were minorities. Clericalism and lay-cleric tensions were mentioned by nearly everyone I talked to.

However, far beyond just a list of issues, Zipple suggests that understanding what the Church’s issues look like from the perspective of the global south is vital for us to avoid consistently misunderstanding Pope Francis’s approach. What if, Zipple, asks,

when [Francis] steers clear of contraception and instead focuses on the plight of migrants, his primary intent isn’t bridging ideological divides in the West but addressing the most pressing issues that daily confront the great mass of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics? Could it be that he prioritizes Catholics dying of poverty in Madagascar over an American battle over healthcare?

Click on over to the main TJP site for the full article — well worth a read.