By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
My availability as a confessor prior to all weekend Masses at my parish and at additional times during the week has been a blessing for me as well as for all of those who have come with confidence, seeking the availability of God’s mercy. It doesn’t always translate into increased parish membership. But shouldn’t every parish be a place where people go expecting to find a priest waiting for them in the tribunal of God’s forgiveness if he is available outside of Mass, when most of the faithful find themselves at church for the Lord’s Day?
I was glad to see that venerable journalist Andrea Tornielli is at the helm for Pope Francis’ new book-length interview, The Name of God is Mercy, released early in January simultaneously in various cities. A fresh voice has been needed in presenting Pope Bergoglio to the world, after so many clerical and ecclesiastical careerists have been discovered as merely self-serving in trading on their access to the Pope. I got myself to the bookstore and picked up a copy with the purpose of doing a review, but found instead that as I read, I reviewed instead, with the Holy Father’s help, my own concepts of God’s forgiveness and mercy.
The familiar Pope Francis is here, the preacher of earthy images and pungent admonitions, as well as a refreshing aspect that is not easily discernible in the typical superficial media treatment of him. After years of experience, that treatment has revealed itself to hurt him as often as it helps. Sometimes popularity comes at the cost of authenticity, especially in a world ruled by media, which conquers through sound-bites.
A very different Francis emerges in this book from that dominant in the media and social networks. The book-length interview format allows him to speak freely and expansively without the many journalistic filters through which his in-flight pressers come to us. As he develops and expands upon his ideas surrounding pastoral care, the Francis that is revealed is discernibly distinct from the media image to which many have become accustomed. Here instead we are introduced to a pastor of deep Catholic instincts, grounded in wide-ranging knowledge of the fathers and doctors, the saints and Popes.
Pope Francis’ own deep pastoral experience is evident in the story he recounts of a relative who was unable to marry in the Church, but nevertheless had children, attended Mass faithfully and confessed fully, realizing he could not receive absolution and so requested a blessing instead.
This recollection has been bandied about in the press before, but without all the details available here. With knowledge of all the facts we are able to be deeply touched by the instinct of the then-Archbishop Bergoglio to keep the doors of the Church open to such a soul, always holding out hope that he could one day enjoy a full reunion with Christ through the sacraments. This was done to avoid the evil of turning him away from the Church, which might extinguish such a hope.
The Pope commends this man to our attention as an example of a “religiously mature man” who should always be helped no less than any soul in full communion.
His critics might be shocked to learn that Pope Francis also treats cases in which a confessor may need to deny absolution to a penitent. He limns an integral portrait of the Sacrament of Confession, accounting also for cases where the priest-confessor must refuse absolution, such as for divorced and remarried Catholics without benefit of the Sacrament of Matrimony. He offers some sage advice:
“And if the confessor cannot absolve a person he needs to explain why, he needs to give them a blessing, even without the holy sacrament. The love of God exists even for those who are not disposed to receive it: that man, that woman, that boy, that girl — they are all loved by God, they are sought out by God, they are in need of blessing. Be tender with these people. Do not push them away. People are suffering. It is a huge responsibility to be a confessor.”
For those who would prefer the stereotype of a stern and condemning pastor to one who offers at least a blessing to those unable to receive sacramental absolution: Recognize that the Pope’s emphasis on gentleness is entirely with a view to full integration of each soul one day, perhaps soon, into the fullness of spiritual and sacramental communion with the Church. This is the will of God and should also be for us a rule of life in the Church’s catechesis and pastoral practice.
Francis also pings people who formulaically and mechanically say the same thing every time they confess. For this bad habit he blames little or no preparation, catechesis, or self-examination. Yes, it is better that the faithful go to Confession rather than not at all, but the sacrament also offers grace for growth in self-examination resulting in honest self-appraisal and for more self-knowledge leading to greater refinement in the interior life. A sign of this would be a breaking with a reflexive verbal confessional formula.
Surprising his many critics also will be Pope Francis’ treatment of Catholics who suffer same-sex attraction. Tornielli asks him to touch again on his famously twisted statement “Who I am to judge,” occurring early in his pontificate.
“On that occasion I said this: If a person is gay and seeks out the Lord and is willing, who am I to judge that person? I was paraphrasing by heart the Catechism of the Catholic Church where it says that these people should be treated with delicacy and not be marginalized . . . before all else comes the individual person, in his wholeness and dignity. And people should not be defined only by their sexual tendencies. . . . I prefer that homosexuals come to confession, that they stay close to the Lord and that we pray all together. You can advise them to pray, show goodwill, show them the way, and accompany them along it.”
Pope Francis does not, of course, expect Confession of anyone without at the same time expecting they are open to the grace of avoiding the near occasion of sin in the future, so as to emerge with the grace of absolution from the sacramental encounter. Here he shares the teaching of the Church that same-sex activity should entirely be rejected as grave sin and confessed as such.
This, among much else in the book, is just good simple advice for all of us. Perhaps Pope Francis speaks most compellingly when he urges us all to get up over and over again after we fall.
Those who know their catechism well will find themselves comforted by this conversation with a kindred soul formed likewise in its sacred and inspired wisdom.
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(Visit Reverendo Padre-Kevin Michael Cusick on Facebook and @MCITLFrAphorism on Twitter.)
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