Nitpicking rules

How will Catholic leaders here react to Pope Francis’ call to move beyond “small-minded rules”? Focus instead on “becoming merciful,” the pontiff urged in a “La Civilta Cattolica” magazine interview.

“Heal the wounds and seek those fallen away,” the 265th successor to Peter the Fisherman stressed. Or the church’s moral structure will lose the “Gospel’s fragrance…and fall like a house of cards.”

The interviews were conducted by editor Fr. Antonio Spadaro inside the Pope’s spartan private quarters in Casa Santa Marta. Francis earlier waved away sprawling Apostolic Palace digs.

Time magazine distills Francis interview into four themes. First: The church must have a pastor’s heart. Second: Faith demands putting people over issues, not the other way around. Third: Stop constricting Christ’s message to abortion, gays and contraception. The Gospel’s message is not to be “reduced to some aspects that, although relevant on their own, do not show the heart of Christ’s message.” Fourth: “We must work harder to develop a profound theology of women.”

This pope is not shattering traditional doctrine,” veteran Vatican correspondent John Allen writes. He quotes Francis: The “teaching of the church… is clear and I am a son of the church… But it is not necessary to talk about gays, contraceptives, abortions all the time. It is not possible.”

“Instead, this pope is trying to shift the emphasis away from condemnation to mercy and craft the church as a force for tolerance.” Benedict XVI called for a smaller church of orthodox followers. Francis says the 1.2 billion-member church should be “home for all.”

This is the approach he took as an Argentine cardinal in Latin America, Christian Science Monitor recalls. Latin American clergy applied “church doctrine progressively, choosing to focus on the poor in a region deeply divided along class lines.”

Not everyone is pleased. US Bishop Thomas Tobin wrote he was “disappointed” Francis hadn’t addressed abortion. Here, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference declined to comment – for now.

Archbishop Ramon Arguelles, however, rushed in where angels fear to tread. The Lipa archbishop boxed in the pontiff’s open arms: He was only “talking about repentant people whom the Church should attend to with God’s mercy.” Arguelles’ exclusions supplanted Francis inclusions.

Is mercy to be withheld from those who supported the Reproductive Health Law ( RA 10354), now being challenged before the Supreme Court? Arguelles urged voters in the last elections to repudiate candidates who voted for the RH law—and was badly trounced..

“We must be a listening Church,” Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle urged. Filipina mothers are hard put to get family planning services. Daily, 14 to 15 women die at the hands of underground hilots. The “silent screams” from from induced abortions in 2010 was 560,000—up from 470,000 in 2000. Cagayan de Oro archdiocese provides family planning services in 54 parishes. What about Lipa?

“A surprise pope keeps on surprising,” said New York Times. “Francis is challenging the status quo so determinedly, shaking up the scandal-mired Roman Curia.” Bigger changes could include revamp to national conferences of bishops or synods. “The Curia should be at the service of the church, the bishops and the pope — not vice versa.”

Ahead is the meeting of the “G8”: Eight cardinals—none of them Italian—will meet October. Francis asked them to consider the prickly issue of Communion for the divorced and remarried, aside from Curia reforms. Another panel will recommend changes for the scandal-tarred Vatican Bank. That could include a shutdown. “Francis wants feedback from people who aren’t just telling him what they think he wants to hear.”

The pope’s interview “hit the Catholic world like a thunderbolt,” Los Angeles Times noted. “Liberals, conservatives, the devout and the secular find something to like—for widely divergent reasons.”

Those outside the church and liberals were delighted with his complaint the church has been unduly “obsessed” over abortion, contraception, etc. Those who focused on these remarks—roughly 600 to 800 out of the 12,000 word interview—“missed the forest for a few trees,” conservatives countered. Francis merely expressed Catholic doctrine.

“The interview revealed the pope’s thinking on a wide variety of issues, and reflected the Catholic Church’s ability to ‘reboot’ itself to be relevant to contemporary society,” wrote Kathyrn Jean Lopez of National Review Online. “Whatever your politics be careful what you read into this. Francis is talking to you. He’s talking to me. He’s reminding himself. The news isn’t that he isn’t ‘a right-winger,’ as he tells us. It’s that he’s a pastor. He’s a priest, not a politician. The pope is right that single-issue Catholics need to rise above their immediate concerns,” the conservative Catholic League’s Bill Donohue wrote on his organization’s website. “He did not say we should not address abortion or homosexuality. He said we cannot be absorbed by these issues. Both the left and the right should heed his message.”

Does Francis have a grand strategy? John Allen isn’t certain. In any case, “its path is not completely predictable.” As a cardinal, Francis was known best for his pastoral style. He didn’t hesitate in confronting more liberal Jesuit Argentines.

The 217 cardinals at the March conclave “believed they were electing a conservative,” Allen adds. “I don’t know if they felt they were electing a moderate who would reposition the church ideologically. But that is, in fact, what is happening.”