Vugt: Francis – a Pope of mercy

TWO words are at the heart of the Pope’s drive to reform the Church: accompaniment and discernment. And they are keys to understanding the document at the center of increasingly heated debate, Amoris Laetitia.

Pope Francis has made it clear what he wants to achieve in and for the Church. In his apostolic letter, Misericordia et Misera, issued at the end of the Year of Mercy last November, he spoke of "a perennial activity of pastoral conversion and witness to mercy." He speaks of generating a "culture of mercy in the Church." This, it seems, is Francis’ real program.

Next year’s Synod of Bishops will be on "Youth, Faith and Vocational Discernment." When the Pope was asked what young people fear today, he replied with one word, "failure." Reflecting on the Church’s teaching, especially on sexuality, he said, "I have no room for failure. It is impossible for us to work with."

This phrase, "culture of mercy," holds the key to understanding the entire reform that Pope Francis is trying to bring about. It is important to understand this, as it is related directly to Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”), the apostolic exhortation from the Synod of Bishops in the Family.

Two words are at the heart of Pope Francis’ drive to see the Church become a place of mercy and salvation: accompaniment and discernment. These words were central to the next Synod of Bishops, and they are central to understanding Amoris Laetitia.

This passionate drive of Pope Francis arises from the conviction that the whole point of the Church founded by Christ is to bring us to the Father, to God, through the transformation of grace. This, he insists, is God’s entire project, working through creation and redemption, and through every moment in the life of every human being, in a wonderful phrase, Pope Francis describes the world as "God’s construction site."

Francis is calling for a radical reform of the Church, of you and me, asking us to go back to these very basic truths and learn again how to live them and be shaped by them. I say "go back." I see in these truths the very best of much traditional teaching, pastoral wisdom and practice.

For Francis, reform or renewal is not an idea, or a theory, imposing itself on history or on the Church. Reform is an accompaniment of each other – bishops with the Pope in the Synod, priests in a council, pastoral reflection in a deanery or in a parish, the confessor in the confessional box – as we try to discern the working of God in each concrete circumstance. To be part of this process, we may have to allow some models we had formed in our heads to be broken down.

Two axioms lie at the heart of the Pope’s vision. The first is this: time is greater than space (explored in his encyclical letter, Evangelii Gaudium, 222-225). We should not be trying to fill or dominate and shape it as we believe it ought to be shaped. Rather, we must respect the speed, the timing – slow or fast – of processes of growth and change.

(to be continued)

(for your comment email: nolvanvugt@gmail.com)

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