By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
In Matthew, chapter 11, the man who invites his guests to the “great dinner” symbolizes God the Father and the banquet of Heaven. Jesus tells the story of those who rejected the invitation, making excuses by setting up unnecessary conflicts with other competing goods. The resulting command sends the servants out to “the streets and alleys of the town” to “bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.”
These others are at “the margins” spiritually and do not possess the rich grace of God’s merciful Fatherhood, are blind to God, or cannot walk spiritually in the Lord on their own. What does it mean to “make them come in”? This is the central issue and the key to Francis’ papacy.
These others whom the Father seems to even want to forcibly bring in to his dinner could symbolize above all the divorced and civilly remarried Catholics about whom we have heard so much in the Roman synods on the family, and the surrounding media and theological dust-ups. The parable of the man who invites to the great dinner describes well the quandary of the Holy Father in this regard: How to bring in those who at this time are excluded or who, rather, have excluded themselves from a share in the great dinner of the Eucharist as a result of their moral choices?
The elder sons, the obedient Catholics who attend Sunday Mass, for example, and are compliant in regard to moral teachings, or at least go to Confession or abstain from Communion when they are not, are contrasted with the ones who reject the invitation. These others the Pope is very intentionally targeting, to “make them come in.”
How he is doing this, and whether he should be the one to do it, is at the heart of the issues tearing at the unity of the Church bound to the teaching Magisterium of the Lord.
One cannot help but be sympathetic with the Pope who, as universal pastor, finds himself in conscience bound to a solicitude for all, to include those who like those in the parable make excuses for not attending the meal, and who the host seems to condemn finally by saying, “I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.”
Pope Francis’ efforts to woo those already seated at table as well as “the poor, the blind and the lame” have resulted in something of a dilemma, as his lobbying efforts at times fall flat when those who have no intention of sharing in the riches of grace nonetheless demand a seat at the table.
Card-carrying conforming Catholics resonate well for the most part with the Pope’s homilies and talks at Santa Marta, the Wednesday general audiences, and in St. Peter’s. One example of these is the homily Pope Francis delivered the Sunday before the October synod which quoted Pope Benedict and sounded a very orthodox tone.
But the Pope seems simultaneously to sound a dissonant chord while extending the olive branch through private means to those who embrace an agenda alien to the Church’s moral stance, and who often later publicly brandish these private moments of friendship as a sign for Church-wide change. The resulting media earthquakes send a predictably unnerving shudder through the Body of Christ.
A lay woman and a monsignor were arrested this month in anticipation of the publication of two books which shed a negative light on the state of Vatican finances under Pope Francis. The lay woman was released, but, as of this writing, there is no word of mercy for the monsignor.
When private phone calls from Pope to atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari are twisted publicly to “generate confusion and partial and tendentious conclusions,” the results on the lives on the faithful are invisible to the same Vatican parties who are quick to bemoan such fallout if it imperils the good reputation of Vatican money-handling.
Private Vatican hugs for a “transgender” woman and her so-called female spouse were later made public. The reaction, predictable in such cases, swung between recognizing that Popes are called to embrace everyone as Jesus did while worrying that such pointed private attention may lead in the wrong public direction morally, given the already rampant societal sexual confusion.
In the course of his D.C. visit, the Pope had another private “diversity hug” at the Washington nunciature. The Pope has personal friends, as do we all, and as is true for many families, some of them live in glaring public contradiction to unbending Catholic moral teaching.
But when orthodox marriage defenders began to trumpet news of his meeting with Kim Davis on that same day at the nunciature, the Vatican PR machine ground into high gear to insist in response that, not only did the Pope not meet with Kim Davis outside of a group handshake context, he had only one private audience and that was with someone who represents all that Kim Davis and marriage defenders oppose: a practicing homosexual and his “partner.”
What results is the impression of a Vatican agenda to keep the Pope in the middle as he sees it: not promoting every aspect of Kim Davis’ life any more than the Pope does that of his Argentinean friend.
Culture warriors, however, as a result are left feeling very much undercut by such tactics, as if the Vatican was quick to pull a diversity arrow out of its quiver expressly to pop a bursting culture warrior orthodoxy balloon that was threatening to frame the U.S. visit in a way that might tip the desired balance for the public pastoral papacy in an unwanted direction.
More on this next week.
+ + +
(Thank you for reading. Follow me on Twitter @MCITLFrAphorism and on Facebook at Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress