Here in America, this last week has been a big deal for all
sorts of groups. For my people, there
was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. For my Muslim cousins, there was
Eid-al-Adha, one of that faith’s two supreme annual festivals. For the political junkies, there was John
Boehner’s resignation as Speaker of the House, which could result in chaos in
that chamber of Congress. But let’s
face it – none of those was the story of the week. Just as this summer was the Summer of Trump,
this fall is promising to be the Autumn of the Pope. His visit to DC, New York and Philadelphia is
mesmerizing us all and may well leave an indelible impact on our national
consciousness. At a minimum, Francis is
pointing out much of what’s wrong with America. The question is, will he inspire us to do
anything about our problems?
While campaigning in the wake of a Presidential impeachment,
George W. Bush pledged to be a “uniter, not a divider.” Eight years later, Barack Obama successfully
ran on that same platform, demonstrating that Americans are clearly looking for
such a figure. But just as clearly, both
of our last two Presidents have failed miserably in that regard. Apparently, if we hope to reduce the amount
of polarization in our society, the antidote must come from a realm other than
politics.
On the surface, the realm of religion might be the last
place to look for that antidote. For
years, it has been the exclusive province of the hard right. Whether you’re talking about Christians,
Jews, or Muslims, religion has come to be associated with social conservatism. By contrast, the progressives who advance a
more libertine social agenda rarely discuss religion, and some even mock those
who bring their faith into public policy discussions. What’s more, the two teams that line up to
fight each other on social issues tend for the most part to be the same two
teams that go to battle on economic and foreign policy issues. As a result, if a person is devoutly
religious, they are highly likely to be found on the “right” of all these societal
debates, and if a person is unabashedly secular, they are likely to be found on
the “left” – with both sides treating the other dismissively, if not
disdainfully.
Enter Pope Francis. He’s
religiously devout, but hardly a conservative.
He’s critical, but always respectful.
He has a fighting spirit, but his weapon is love.
Francis is a man with a vision – and it’s not the vision
held by either of our polarized camps.
If you’re looking for him to support abortion rights, think again. If you view the right of gays to marry as a no-brainer,
here’s a great brain who wants all marriages to be “traditional.” Then again, if you believe that a fetus has
a right to life but a convicted murderer does not, don’t expect agreement from Francis. Nor should you expect him to look the other
way about climate change, poverty, or xenophobia. Francis cares most about those who are the most
helpless – the poor, the prisoner, the fetus, the endangered species, the ice
cap.
Do I agree with Francis on every issue of public
policy? No. But then again, who does? For progressives, he’s too traditional. For traditionalists, he’s too heretical. Personally, I don’t see Francis as a
philosopher with a compellingly coherent system of ideas. I see him instead as an almost prophetic
figure – a man who sees a great evil and is passionate about confronting it.
Is the evil unbridled capitalism? Environmental degradation? Abortion? Xenophobia?
Gay marriage? One or
more of those things may indeed be evil, but that’s not the main point of
Francis’ mission. He has come to our
shore to preach about polarization and all the crap that comes with it. All the ridicule, the sarcasm, the incivility,
the disrespect, the unwillingness to listen to the “other.” He has come to unify us so that we can
return to a time when we were taking on great causes – like fighting the Nazis
or putting a man on the Moon. He is a
reminder that this is a land where men like Jefferson and Adams could become loving
correspondents whose letters dripped with mutual admiration, even though they
were once political enemies of the first order.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” There is little if anything in my Torah or
in Francis’s Gospels that is more uplifting than that sentence. And yet it was written by a slave owner who had
an affair with one of his slaves. Such
is the human condition, my friends – we are capable of great beauty and great
ugliness. All of us. Even this Pope.
You see, I can behold him and see a remarkable example of a man
who is nearly perfect for his time. I
can admire his heart, his courage and his wisdom and thank God for the fact
that he is now the leader of one of our great faiths. But I can also infer from the fact that he is
a member of our species that he is also a “sinner” – capable of hurting the
poor, degrading the environment, disrespecting marriage, demeaning the
immigrant, taking human life …. As Pope
Francis recognizes, he needs our prayers, just like we need his.
On Yom Kippur, every Jew is required to recite a litany of
sins that “we” have committed, and they include some pretty nasty things. We take pride in the fact that our greatest
Prophet, Moses, “sinned” and thus was not allowed to enter the Promised
Land. We constantly remind ourselves
that to be human is to be flawed, despite how much promise and potential beauty
we all have.
But it is precisely because we are flawed that we must have
compassion for one another and especially for the neediest among us – which is
one of Pope Francis’s central principles.
And it is precisely because we are flawed that we must resist the
temptation to demonize our political opponents or to envision in our mind some
sort of cosmic battle between those who agree with our politics and those who
don’t. And once we do deal with the “other”
compassionately and they show the same courtesy to us, we will find that we do
indeed have plenty of common ground. For
it is in nobody’s interest to degrade the environment, strip the poor or the
foreigner of dignity, undermine the institution of marriage, or destroy human
life.
Personally, I don’t intend to adopt the Pope’s views on gay
marriage. Nor will I oppose a woman’s
right to choose. But I will take his visit as an opportunity to
remind myself that marriage is an institution to be venerated above virtually
all other institutions on earth. And
that whether or not a fetus is a “person” it is quite literally a “human life,”
and that anyone who is preparing to have sex has obligations not to toy with
the prospect that they may create such a life if they are not careful.
As
for my more conservative brothers and sisters, I certainly hope they will take
the Pope’s visit as an opportunity to remind themselves that we are not doing
well by our nation’s poor or our world’s environment, and that if the private
sector can’t or won’t solve those problems, the government may be needed to
lend a hand. Most importantly, though,
let’s all try, just a little bit, to emulate the spirit of this Pope – the warmth,
the gentleness, the civility, the compassion.
It is that spirit that has the potential to bring us all together. And it is that togetherness that has the
potential to lift us to great heights –
as a nation, as a species, and as a planet.
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