Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Pope Francis unites divided Americans as Obama praises his work

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Amid adoring crowds, the pope addresses climate change and touches on immigration as president reflects: ‘You shake our conscience from slumber’
 

in Washington
The pontiff’s journey through the centres of US power and history began on Wednesday with an elaborate arrival ceremony and balmy sunshine at the White House’s south lawn. “What a beautiful day the Lord has made,” President Barack Obama beamed.
Fifteen thousand spectators, including the first lady and the vice-president, packed the lawn for the official start of the pope’s six-day tour of Washington, New York and Philadelphia.
Francis pulled up in his now-famous Fiat, a Lilliputian marvel in the world’s limousine and SUV capital, and listened as the commander in chief of the world’s mightiest military made common cause with him, the head of a 110-acre city state guarded with pikes.
“In your humility, your embrace of simplicity, in the gentleness of your words and the generosity of your spirit, we see a living example of Jesus’ teachings, a leader whose moral authority comes not just through words but also through deeds,” said Obama.
Francis is not only the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, including 70 million Americans: he is popular, a global sensation whom conservatives and liberals alike wish to co-opt – a minor miracle in a polarised country where Republican and Democratic presidential contenders clash bitterly over immigration, economic inequality, the environment, foreign policy, abortion and same-sex marriage.
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Highlights from Pope Francis’s speech at the White House. Link to video
The Latin American pontiff, visiting the US for the first time in his 78 years, put himself simultaneously above, and on both sides, of the divide, a feat closer to magic realism than triangulation.
“As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families,” he began, in what was perhaps a veiled swipe at the xenophobic lurch of US politics.
Donald Trump at least would have appreciated that the Argentinian spoke English, his weakest language, carefully enunciating each word.

He explicitly endorsed Obama’s regulatory programme to fight climate change. “I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution. Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation,” he said. “When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history.”
Lest climate-change deniers miss the urgency, Francis added: “To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King: we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honour it.”
A grateful Obama sounded like the 2008 candidate of hope and change. “Holy Father, you remind us that we have a sacred obligation to protect our planet – God’s magnificent gift to us.” He also hailed the pope’s call to help the poor and dispossessed. “You shake our conscience from slumber,” he said.
Social conservatives – not least US Catholic bishops who resent the pope’s relatively soft tone on abortion and divorce – noted his reference to his visit to Philadelphia for the Eighth World Meeting of Families “to celebrate and support the institutions of marriage and the family at this, a critical moment in the history of our civilisation”. Translation: in the age of same-sex marriage.
After a private meeting with Obama in the Oval office, Francis swapped the Fiat for a popemobile – a converted Jeep Wrangler – and kissed babies and saluted cheering, ecstatic crowds lining the route to the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle, the patron saint of civil servants.
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Pope Francis rides through the streets of Washington DC. Link to video

There, speaking in Italian, he addressed about 300 US bishops who are grappling with division, declining congregations and vocations and a sex-abuse scandal. “It is not my intention to offer a plan or to devise a strategy. I have not come to judge you or to lecture you,” he said, though he did urge unity and dialogue. “The world is already so torn and divided, brokenness is now everywhere. Consequently, the church … cannot allow herself to be rent, broken or fought over.”
He alluded to the victims of sex-abuse “crimes”, with little elaboration, and referred to the “innocent victim of abortion” along with children who die from bombings or drown in search of a better life.
Outside crowds waited patiently for the 266th pontiff to emerge, bells pealing across the sunlit city. The only snafu, it seemed, were long delays on the metro, prompting wags to request an exorcism of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
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Taken from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/23/pope-francis-unites-divided-americans-barack-obama

Friday, September 11, 2015

What a Times Op-Ed Gets Wrong about Pope Francis and Abortion

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If there has been one overarching theme of Pope Francis’s papacy it is mercy. Almost immediately, he began preaching, “that this is the Lord's most powerful message: mercy.” The boundless love of God has been his clear and constant first message. And so it is a bit shocking to see the pope accused of being unforgiving on the opinion pages of the New York Times.

As the Jubilee Year of Mercy approaches, Pope Francis issued direction to “to enable the celebration of the Holy Year to be for all believers a true moment of encounter with the mercy of God.” In the note, he goes through a list of communities who are often excluded or find it difficult to experience forgiveness. Within this context he expresses concern for the homebound and prisoners, each experiencing barriers to experiencing forgiveness within the community. Yet, Francis is not being accused of being unforgiving towards prisoners. As one would expect in U.S. culture, it is the mention of abortion that earns Francis the disdain of Jill Filipovic in her recent op-ed. According to Filipovic, Pope Francis isn’t exhibiting mercy towards women, but cruelty.

What did Francis do that is so awful? He removed any restrictions that may exist in some diocese in the global church on who can hear confessions and offer absolution on abortion because, “The forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented, especially when that person approaches the Sacrament of Confession with a sincere heart.” Now abortion is always an attention grabber, but this doesn’t change the practice in the United States, which already allows priests to absolve the sin of abortion. While many have embraced the idea that we begin with mercy not condemnation, Filipovic is angry that the pope still insists that abortion is wrong. It is not surprising then that she does not understand the Catholic position on abortion, sin or mercy.

Complaint #1: By saying he understands the intense and difficult situations that lead women to resort to abortion, Pope Francis reduces women to victims.

When Francis states, “I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal. I have met so many women who bear in their heart the scar of this agonizing and painful decision. What has happened is profoundly unjust; yet only understanding the truth of it can enable one not to lose hope.” Filipovic accuses him of turning women into victims.

Over the last four years, Pope Francis has developed a strong cultural critique of a throwaway culture that values profits and status over people and excludes those who are not considered useful. This tyranny of money, he recently said, is holding the family hostage and he has praised single mothers who bravely struggle to raise their children. The United States does not have guaranteed paid maternity leave, still has a significant problem with pregnancy discrimination, a serious lack of access to affordable childcare—it is not a society that is welcoming and supportive of women and children. I suspect if Pope Francis was showing compassion to single mothers constrained by the minimum wage, lack of paid sick leave and the inability to find affordable housing, Filipovic would be cheering his recognition of the way social structures constrain the full flourishing of women.

Why not here? Because, Pope Francis still believes that abortion is morally wrong and Ms. Filipovic doesn’t. It is ironic that in an effort to insist that the real guilt and stigma comes because people don’t support a woman's choice to have an abortion, she minimizes the experience of women for whom abortion is experienced as tragic and complex. She falls into the trap of which she accuses Francis—reducing women’s experience to fit her ideological position.

Complaint #2: Pope Francis still insists that women who’ve had abortions are sinners.
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We are all sinners. There is no human being alive who is not a sinner. This is a basic tenet of Christianity. When asked ‘Who is Jorge Mario Bergolio?,’ Francis answered, “I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.” It explains why upon walking out onto the balcony of St. Peter’s, the new Pope Francis asked the thousands of pilgrims present to pray for him before anything else.

Yes, Roman Catholicism makes a clear and unequivocal judgment that abortion is morally wrong. There is no sugar coating that for someone unapologetic in her insistence that abortion is a perfectly fine choice. Pope Francis is not going to come out and say that abortion is anything other than a grave tragedy and moral evil. But sin does not have the last word for Francis. Nothing is more powerful than the love of God and the experience of this is the clear mission of the Jubilee of Mercy. It takes some serious twisting of terms to turn that message into cruelty.

Complaint # 3: This is all a public relations cover for the church’s global anti-contraception, anti-abortion crusading.

After spending most of her op-ed arguing that abortion is another normal reproductive choice for women and against Pope Francis’s treatment of it as a sign of tragedy or moral complexity, the author uses as her example an extreme and controversial case of a child who’d been raped in Brazil. Absolutely every aspect of that case is horrifying. What I want to challenge is the claim that Pope Francis is engaging in one elaborate PR move to somehow hide the real agenda.

In "The Joy of the Gospel," after reaffirming the church’s unwavering belief in the sacredness of all life, including the unborn, Pope Francis acknowledges the failures of the church to sufficiently accompany vulnerable pregnant women. He states “it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty.” This week he stated that priest’s who do not show mercy do not belong in ministry and the confessional.

Pope Francis is not perfect. He would be the first person to insist he is not perfect and is in fact a sinner, like the rest of us. He has rightly been critiqued on some issues of women and gender. What he cannot be legitimately accused of is cruelty or of using God’s mercy as a weapon. From start to finish this op-ed twists Catholic theology to fit an ideologically based position—abortion isn’t wrong therefore it’s illegitimate to talk about mercy.

Meghan J. Clark is an assistant professor of moral theology at St. John’s University, Queens, N.Y. and the author of The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: The Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights (Fortress Press).

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Taken from: http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/what-times-op-ed-gets-wrong-about-pope-francis-and-abortion

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Pope Francis asks Catholic priests to pardon women who have undergone abortion

Pope Francis arrives at Rome's San Gregorio church
 
Related Story: Pope says church should not obsess over homosexuality, abortion

Pope Francis has announced all priests will have the discretion to forgive women who have had an abortion during the forthcoming Jubilee year, which is traditionally associated with forgiveness.
"I have decided, notwithstanding anything to the contrary, to concede to all priests for the Jubilee year the discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness," he said.
In a message outlining special measures for the Jubilee year starting in December, Pope Francis said he knew that while "abortion is experienced by some with a superficial awareness" many others "believe that they have no other option".
He said he had met many women seeking forgiveness who bore "the scar of this agonising and painful decision".
Pope Francis, who has repeatedly urged the Church to show greater compassion, said priests should use "words of genuine welcome", as well as making sure those involved were aware of "the gravity of the sin committed".
Catholics for Choice, a US-based pro-choice organisation, said this was another positive example of Francis trying to bridge the gulf "between what the hierarchy says and what ordinary Catholics really do".
"However, despite what Pope Francis has said, I do not believe that Catholic women will be queuing up to ask for forgiveness," the organisation's president Jon O'Brien said in a statement.
And limiting the period of forgiveness to one year "suggests that he still has a blind spot when it comes to women and what they want".
Abortion is considered a particularly serious sin that is punishable under Canon law by excommunication, by which those guilty are expelled from the Church and considered to be condemned to hell in the afterlife.
In 2009 the Vatican drew heavy criticism after it supported a bishop who had excommunicated the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who was given an abortion after her stepfather raped her.
Bishops are already able to authorise priests in their dioceses to forgive those who undergo or carry out abortions.

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Taken from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-01/pope-francis-asks-priests-to-pardon-women-who-have-abortions/6742154