Hope in a pope

by David Benjamin

“I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”

— Pope Francis

 

MADISON, Wis.—When Pope Francis made his extraordinary pilgrimage to the Congo and South Sudan to scold those nations’ corrupt despots, my memory somehow clicked on John the Baptist.

The Bible only briefly mentions John as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Mark 1:3) against “a generation of vipers” (Matthew 3:7). His performance is a mere cameo. He immerses Jesus and slinks humbly offstage.

In history books, however, John gets his due, mainly for pissing off Herod Antipas, the voluptuary tetrarch of Galilee. Famously, John fingered Herod for breaking Jewish law—by divorcing his wife and shacking up with Herodias, his sister-in-law. When Herod asks Salome, Herodias’ striptease daughter, what she wants for her birthday, she says: How about John the Baptist’s head, on a platter?

The Baptist’s pious scolding of Herod, followed by his decapitation, established John’s reputation as a sort of fire-breathing, camp-meeting revivalist. We see him standing gaunt and fearsome in the Jordan, calling down brimstone on sinners in the hands of an angry God. “The axe,” he threatened the throng, “is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” (Luke 3:9)

John revered Jesus. But I wonder, had he lived, whether he would have gone along with Jesus’ “liberal” message of inclusion, forgiveness and love. And conversely, what if Jesus had  gone John’s way, staying at the river and baptizing sinners while teaching a kinder, gentler version of John’s Jewish fundamentalism? In such a scenario, which seems to me at least as credible as the Gospel story, Jesus would have disappeared from human memory. There would be no Christianity.

Jesus’s farewell to John at the Jordan was Christianity’s turning point. But John’s spirit did not die. There are echoes of him in the writings of Paul. Since its beginnings, the “Church” has harbored a tension between the dark fanaticism of the Baptist and the forgiving light of the “prince of peace.” As I was growing up Catholic at St. Mary’s School, I sensed this antagonism in every priest, nun, Mass, sermon and catechism class.

Our pastor, Father Mulligan, was a paragon of empathy. His goal in life, I think, was to be everyone’s good Samaritan, ideally with a bottle of wine in a warm room. Even when he tried to scold you, you felt like you were being hugged. I recall particularly how he helped my mother, after she fled my Dad and sought a divorce. In those days, divorce was grounds for excommunication. The Church would condemn Mom as the tree which bringeth not forth good fruit.

Somehow, Father Mulligan found a way to spare Mom the wrath of the Vatican. While outflanking the Diocese, he visited our grubby apartment often, to sit with Mom, consoling, smiling, laughing and being… fatherly.

On the other hand, at St. Mary’s School, I had more than equal acquaintance with the Church’s stern and merciless side. Several assistant pastors were as cold and fierce as the Baptist on his worst day. A gang of Dominican brothers spent an entire month, in an otherwise carefree summer, terrifying me with visions of the Hell—flaming pits, pitchforks, needles in my eyes and a vast sea of boiling shit ten miles deep—where I was almost certainly doomed to dog-paddle for all eternity..

And then, there was Sister Mary Ann. She hated all kids, but seemed to have it in for me especially. I picture her beside John the Baptist, not just dunking sinners but holding us under ’til we all drowned and sank straight into perdition.

In my St. Mary’s days, I witnessed—dimly but memorably—a strange renaissance of Christliness in my Church. With the ascension of John XXII to the Chair of St. Peter and the convening of the Second Ecumenical Council, the Catholic Church came down with a case of enlightenment. John XXIII fought to modernize dogma and ritual. More important, for a moment, a pope embodied the Jesus of my childish faith—one who succors the imprisoned without asking their offenses, who gives drink to those who thirst and food to the hungry, who would take strangers under his roof, cloth the naked and heal the sick, and who warned princes, kings and Sadducees that “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

I might have kept my tenuous faith if Vatican II’s ideals had lasted past 1963. But the Church in which I knelt and prayed was typically more John the Baptist—hip-deep in the cold water of purist rectitude—than Jesus, who blithely consorted with lepers, whores and pagans. John XXIII’s successor, Paul VI, dutifully restored the Holy See to its cloistered opulence—busier cosseting its pedophiles and currying its benefactors than comforting the least of Jesus’ brethren.

Despite my conscientious apostasy, I’ve never forgotten Father Mulligan’s courageous kindness and the audacity of John XXIII. But I’ve watched every new papacy with a jaundiced eye and no expectations. When Benedict retired, I scoffed at Francis. Too old and too establishment, he would follow the same footsteps that have worn a groove into the altar at St, Peter’s.

It took me ’til Francis’ latest African safari to concede that this pope is more John XXIII, friend of JFK, than Pius XII, enabler of Mussolini. Francis did not just acknowledge his clergy’s unseemly predilection for sodomizing little boys. He named, punished and exiled both pedophile priests and their permissive prelates! Venturing beyond the papal tradition of platitudes and prayer, he made common cause with the poor. He touched their hands, shared their pain and demanded that the hungry be fed, the naked be clothed, the homeless be housed, the afflicted be healed. He not only deplored war, he named the masters of war and shamed them in speech and in print. In his trip to Africa, he has confronted the kleptocrats and gangsters who mug the masses and terrorize the helpless.   

To the leaders of Congo and South Sudan, he stood before thousands and issued a warning that evoked Jesus in Matthew 25: “Future generations will either venerate your names or cancel their memory, based on what you now do. The inequitable distribution of funds, secret schemes to get rich, patronage deals, lack of transparency: all these pollute the riverbed of human society; they divert resources from the very things most needed.”

And to the people of these nations, he said, “Your tears are my tears; your pain is my pain. To every family that grieves or is displaced by the burning of villages and other war crimes, to the survivors of sexual violence and to every injured child and adult, I say: I am with you.”

Perhaps most significantly, Francis—unlike his peripatetic predecessor—John Paul, is an intellectual open to ideas that give meaning to the term, “ecumenical.” He has said, for example, “In a way, the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not religious. It is not necessary to go to church and give money—for many, nature can be a church. Some of the best people in history do not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were done in His name.”

Francis is going to die soon, to be followed by a pope who will lead the church in lip service to the wretched of the earth while protecting, above all, the privilege of the silken College of Cardinals and the fortress of the Vatican.

So, while it lasts, I’m going to appreciate the discomfiture of a Catholic royalty who have no choice but to tolerate the peculiarities of a pontiff who shares the same naive vision of Jesus that I saw when I was ten years old at St. Mary’s.