Pope's symbolic actions reflect real change, speaker says

Friday, Jan. 30, 2015

SALT LAKE CITY — Pope Francis favors clerical celibacy and opposes the ordination of women, but by driving a 20-year-old car, declining to live in the papal palace, and other such actions, he is modeling the changes he wishes to see in the Catholic Church, said Jesuit Father Thomas Reese during the 2015 Aquinas Lecture on Jan. 25.

Fr. Reese is a writer for the National Catholic Reporter and former editor-in-chief of America magazine. Last year President Barack Obama appointed him to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; he also is the author of several books, including Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church.

About 300 people attended the lecture, held at Saint Catherine of Siena Newman Center in Salt Lake City. The annual event is intended to contribute to the community’s intellectual and cultural dialog.

A lively presenter, Fr. Reese used humor liberally throughout his talk. For example, when Pope Francis first appeared after being elected and asked those gathered to pray for him “he had his first miracle,” Fr. Reese said. “He had all these Italians in Saint Peter’s Square, and they were quiet!”

Pope Francis’ gestures such as eschewing the lavish papal garments and washing the feet of prisoners on Holy Thursday are more than symbolic, Fr. Reese said. 

“In the Catholic Church, style is substance. … By all of these actions, what he is doing is he is attacking clericalism. He is showing that he is a servant of the people” and modeling the behavior he wants to see from cardinals, bishops, priests and the laity who strive to follow Christ. 

“We evangelize through witness, and that is what he is doing,” Fr. Reese said. “He is trying to change the culture of this institution, the culture of the Church. He is calling us to a conversion of heart through his style, through his symbolism, through his words that he speaks.” 

The title of Fr. Reese’s presentation was “Pope Francis and the Reform of the Church.” For reform of any institution, three things are needed, the first of which is changing the culture, Fr. Reese argued.

Secondly, good people must be placed in the right jobs, which Pope Francis is doing with appointments such as Cardinal George Pell being given the assignment to oversee the Vatican’s finances, among other examples, Fr. Reese said.

Thirdly, policies and procedures must change for the restricting to occur, Fr. Reese said, and Pope Francis is working to reform the Vatican Curia.

For the changes to continue after Pope Francis, appointments to the Curia should be people who aren’t cardinals or bishops because “they are not going to act as servants helping the pope and the College of Cardinals. They’re going to act like governing nobles, princes who know how everything should be done,” Fr. Reese said, but “I’m afraid Pope Francis doesn’t agree with me on this.”

In addition to speaking of reform, Fr. Reese addressed other issues that Pope Francis must deal with.

The pontiff is very strict regarding celibacy, Fr. Reese said. However, the pope is on record as saying that celibacy is a matter of tradition, not a matter of faith and, although he is in favor of maintaining celibacy, “I think what he is signaling is that he will be receptive to a request from bishops in different parts of the world if they come forward and say ‘We want to have a married clergy,’” Fr. Reese said.

The pontiff’s pastoral priorities focus on Catholics’ responsibility to serve, accompany and defend the poor, Fr. Reese said. Although the Church is known for its service to the poor, and social justice requires Catholics to work to help the poor change their situation, Pope Francis is unique in his insistence that people should become friends with the poor rather than simply writing a check, Fr. Reese said.

Pope Francis has said the first words of evangelization should be “God loves you,” Fr. Reese said, adding that in the pontiff’s view,“The Church is a field hospital for the wounded, the broken. The church is not for the perfect. It’d be empty.” 

This message is for all Catholics, not just the bishops and priests, Fr. Reese said. “Everybody has this mission to share the Good News. … You have to evangelize through your actions, through your words, if we are going to be a community of Christians today.”

Fr. Reese’s presentation was a good overview of Pope Francis’ pontificate, said the Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of Salt Lake City, adding that the points he made about accompanying the poor “were very inspirational, and certainly a reminder to pray for our Holy Father as he leads us as the Vicar of Christ on this earth.”

After the lecture, a few Newman Center students informally discussed the presentation and were fairly critical.

“I wish he had started with a definition of reform” and what areas of the Church are open to reform, said Erin Dickson, although she did appreciate Fr. Reese’s statement that the Church  is not a church of the perfect, but Catholics trust the Holy Spirit to lead them to grace. “That is a good orienting principle,” she said.

While Sherry Bube found Fr. Reese to be an engaging speaker and she appreciated that he highlighted the service aspect of the Church, “I wish he would have expanded on that a wee bit more in terms of how that affects our understanding of the theology of the Church,” she said.