Shoes of the Fisherman

You all know the Pope has announced his retirement, in a move that – as one priest reportedly said – demonstrates that the papacy is not about power but service. He has decided that the frailties of age no longer allow him to properly serve the church he loves and the God he worships.

I wonder if the next pontiff will find it in his soul to be as faithful a servant. Because if ever there was a time the church needed a servant on the Throne of Peter, that time is now.

I grew up in the church and although it’s been a long time since I found solace or even reason in its ministrations, it’s nevertheless part of my being, somewhere near the core of my world view.  In fact, my departure from the Church, although it coincided closely with my realization that the God of my fathers was an apocryphal image, was not part and parcel of the same growth process.

My liberation from the God myth came about as I learned adult discernment, as I read and pondered and gradually realized that “God” – at least the carefully constructed and precisely defined God represented in the Baltimore Catechism – was just not likely. This is my take, not necessarily yours and we can argue ad nauseum without coming to consensus and still be friends.

My departure from the church was more of a practical decision. I was increasingly unable to reconcile the teachings of the church with the world I saw around me.  Certainly, that doesn’t make me unique. The pews of Catholic churches have become less and less strained as folks who believe in social justice have voted with their feet.

I have friends and family who are still devout members of the church and a cousin who’s a priest. I know through them that there is a congregation of good people who truly believe that the Bible is the word of God and the church is the conduit of God’s communication with the faithful. But in order to be a useful medium, the church needs to craft a message that’s coherent, compassionate and sensible. 

The choice of the Pope matters more today than possibly at any time in the past. The church has reached a crossroads at which its very existence as an instrument of good is being questioned by its own adherents. Perhaps alone among the world’s religious leaders, the Pope’s pronouncements can move hearts and governments alike. But only if the message makes sense to those receiving it.  

The Church in which I grew up no longer exists. In fact, the Bing Crosby, “Bells of St. Mary’s”  church probably never existed. Not really. But for this brief moment, thanks to the selfless abdication of a man who thinks of himself primarily as a servant, to God and Man alike, the church has an opportunity to truly become what it has always claimed to be.

Look, I don’t believe the College of Cardinals are waiting with baited breath to receive my sage advice but just in case someone in the Sistine has his ear to my wall, here goes.

Choose a Pope who’s attuned to the world. Who understands that of faith, hope and love, the greatest truly is love. Who will take immediate affirmative action to help the church shed itself of ideas that simply won’t play in a global discourse that is, well, global. Who understands that Leviticus was written in and for another time, and that the greatest abomination on the part of God’s church is a failure to listen to the needs of its flock. And speaking of abominations, that the abuse of a child by a priest is one, and that a grown man’s love for another grown man, or a woman for a woman, is not.

So long as the church preaches exclusion, more and more people will be driven to exclude it from their lives. And what its enemies have tried to accomplish through the centuries, it could very well bring on itself.

Anyone who’s paying attention knows that the Catholic Church is at a tipping point. Change now, come into modern times and it may become the agent of social change that it should always have been. Or it can continue down the path of outmoded arguments and indefensible proclamations and reap the ultimate sanction - irrelevance.