What Does the Pope Really Mean?

'The pope is a pastor' says Msgr Antall. If he is a pastor he's a very poor one, bullying and abusing his flock, depriving them of spiritual goods. 

From Crisis

By Msgr Richard C. Antall

The pope is a pastor more than a thinker. We cannot expect the intellectual rigor of either of his two most recent predecessors. But am I the only one who feels like this “two steps forward, two steps back” is a little confusing?

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
—Walt Whitman

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his famous essay “Self-Reliance” that a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

I suspect that the Holy Father would not like the full implications of the remark, but I wonder that he doesn’t realize that some people might see in his many different interventions in the broad stream of social commentary similar disregard for said hobgoblin.

In his 60 Minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell, he seemed to rule out the morality of surrogate motherhood. When O’Donnell said that sometimes this was the only hope a couple might have, the pope said, 

I would say that in each case the situation should be clearly considered medically and then morally. I believe in these cases there is a general rule, but you have to go into each case in particular to assess the situation, as long as the moral principle is not skirted. 

If the moral principle is that surrogacy is not moral, then why this insistence on “the situation”? The ghost of Joseph Fletcher seemed to flash by briefly. Didn’t it sound as though he was giving Ms. O’Donnell reason to believe there might be exceptions? He then concluded congratulating the interviewer for her compassion for people contemplating surrogacy. That was, he seemed to be saying, a credit to her sympathy to others’ suffering. It is very charming to compliment opponents to teach about the altruism behind their equivocation, but isn’t it a little confusing.

The pastoral strategy behind personal warmth is very obvious. However, it can lead to a kind of collective cognitive dissonance on the part of those who listen to the message. Isn’t it disingenuous to understand Fiducia Supplicans as no more than a separate blessing of individuals? A priest friend of mine whom I asked about it said he blesses everyone at the end of Mass, “come one and come all,” and that should be enough.

Another instance is when the pope used a derogatory word about homosexuals in a meeting with Italian bishops. He was seen to be draconian about “faggots” and “faggotry” in seminaries and in priestly ministry. His press office then said that he intended no offense to anyone in the expressions in the remarks he was “reported” to have said. This implied almost that he had not said those expressions. 

Then he replies to a man rejected from the seminary because of his sexual orientation in very warm words and encourages him to “follow his vocation.” No one asks, did you say what was reported, did your language reflect your version of Italian or what vocation is the young man to continue pursuing? Only President Biden would be given such a pass by mainstream media for similar inconsistency in America. 

Soon after that tornado in the news cycle, the pope spoke to some priests and again used the “faggotry” word. His remarks almost sounded like he is trying to appeal to macho sentiment, because he then admitted (not for the first time) that said evil was present in the bureaucracy of the Vatican. Throwing some of his staff under the wheels of his popemobile is nothing new, and some conservative voices in the U.S. rejoiced in the language of the successor of St. Peter. But, as usual, it was too soon.

The inevitable James Martin, S.J. was due about that time in Rome for the kumbaya celebrityfest of the Holy Father with “comedians” from various countries. The American Jesuit, a favorite of Pope Francis, then has the de rigueur personal meeting with the boss and they discuss the latest kerfuffle about clerics and same-sex attraction.

Fr. Martin then is very happy that he had the permission of the Holy Father to tell the world that Pope Francis admitted to him that he knew priests and seminarians who might have felt characterized by his strong language of judgment and exclusion but who were nevertheless good examples of priestly ministry and men in formation.

It is a little dizzying to try to put all this together. The pope is, no doubt, a pastor more than a thinker. And he is quoted relentlessly. We cannot expect the intellectual rigor of either of his two most recent predecessors in his remarks. But am I the only one who feels like this “two steps forward, two steps back” is a little confusing?

What are the practical consequences of the pope’s animadversions? That men hoping to enter in formation would come into the door of the seminary professing a sexual identity at odds with biblical and traditional moral teaching seems strange to me. That priests would feel it necessary to provoke in their congregations alienating doubts about the sexuality of their pastors seems absurd to me. Concentration on the “sexual identity” of men who have professed celibate commitment to perfect continence seems not only counterproductive but also ideological. A chaste minister of the Church really should not choose to identify himself with a behavioral category.

The incomparable Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J., said that homosexuals in clerical life pull some Church leaders 

into their service by the gambit of discussing chastity and sexuality in terms of “affective maturity.” This is how it works: first one wins the admission that “affective maturity” is the principal gauge of authentic celibacy. Once this is conceded, it is stipulated that the condition sine qua non of affective maturity is “comfort” with one’s own sexuality (mature men are comfortable being themselves), and this in turn is seen to preclude disgust or moral censure directed at a “sexuality other than one’s own.”

Mankowski famously estimated that half of the men who entered religious life when he did (mid 1970s) were homosexuals who were trying to avoid uncomfortable questions about their choosing the unmarried state. “Affective maturity” could cut in different ways. I knew some young priests (and some not so young) who were very comfortable with their heterosexual sexuality and caused the bishop I worked with headaches and scandal to the faithful. 

But what is the screening process implied by the pope’s private and a bit contradictory remarks? I had surgery this year and the hospital that attended me asked me about marriage status, sexuality, frequency of sexual relations, and the amount of alcohol I consume in a week. Are vocation people supposed to do a new twist on the Clinton compromise about the Armed Forces: “We ask, you tell, and goodbye if you answer wrong”? And then will there be handwritten notes from the Holy Father or the comfort of knowing that the pope, in private conversation with an activist, “knows” of exceptions to the rule? 

How can you test for something very intimate to the personality of the subject without that subject’s full cooperation? Not tolerating ambiguity in social behavior will help, and clarity about what celibacy means as a spiritual gift is necessary, but there are some secrets that are concealed from view during formation. 

Policies should not be obiter dicta, dropped inter nos in a conversation with colleagues. Nor should they be worded in language that is more customary in informal settings. Oscar Wilde said, “I am never so true to myself as when I am inconsistent.” That can be fun, but not so much when we are talking of magisterium.