“We need a Church capable of warming hearts”
The heart of World Youth Day
During today’s lunch with cardinals and bishops Francis stressed the need to return to simplicity. He also championed the role of women: Without them, “the Church risks becoming sterile”
ANDREA TORNIELLI Rio de JaneiroFrancis was addressing the Brazilian Church but today’s lunch with the region’s cardinals and bishops in Rio’s Archbishopric was much more than this. The Pope laid out a plan for his pontificate. He presented the image of a Church which walks beside its faithful in order to be truly missionary and “is able to make sense of the “night” contained in the flight of so many of our brothers and sisters from Jerusalem.” In order to do this, the Church must stop being “too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas, perhaps the world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions.” It needs to learn to be simple again, warm people’s hearts and “rediscover the maternal womb of mercy.”
The Pope’s speech to Brazilian bishops is the most carefully thought out one he has given so far on this visit to Brazil. It marks yet another step forward in the path taken by this pontificate and is the most thorough expression of the Pope’s thoughts yet. Bergoglio starts off with a moving description of his visit to the Shrine of Aparecida, the story of the three fishermen who find the famous statue of the Virgin Mary broken in three pieces instead of finding fish in their net. “In Aparecida God also offered a lesson about himself, about his way of being and acting. A lesson about the humility which is one of God’s essential features, part of God’s DNA.”
Francis said “perhaps we have reduced our way of speaking about mystery to rational explanations; but for ordinary people the mystery enters through the heart.” The Church needs to make room for “God’s mystery” so “that it can entice people, attract them.” Aparecida teaches us that “the results of our pastoral work do not depend on a wealth of resources, but on the creativity of love. To be sure, perseverance, effort, hard work, planning and organization all have their place, but first and foremost we need to realize that the Church’s power does not reside in herself; it is hidden in the deep waters of God.”
Another lesson the Church must never forget, is that “it cannot leave simplicity behind; otherwise she forgets how to speak the language of Mystery … At times we lose people because they don’t understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people. Without the grammar of simplicity, the Church loses the very conditions which make it possible “to fish” for God in the deep waters of his Mystery.”
Francis reminded bishops and cardinals of the special place Popes have had for Brazil and its Church. He recalled the originality with which the Brazilian Church interpreted the Second Vatican Council despite having gone through various children’s illnesses. This was in reference to the degeneration of certain kinds of theological thought, which he called “adolescent progressivism” in one of the homilies he gave in St. Martha’s House last June. The Pope spoke about the icon of Emmaus as “a key for interpreting the present and the future”: “The two disciples have left Jerusalem. They are leaving behind the “nakedness” of God. They are scandalized by the failure of the Messiah in whom they had hoped and who now appeared utterly vanquished [and] humiliated. “Here we have to face the difficult mystery of those people who leave the Church, who, under the illusion of alternative ideas, now think that the Church – their Jerusalem – can no longer offer them anything meaningful and important. So they set off on the road alone, with their disappointment.”
Francis went on to offer some critical judgements about the Church itself, saying that “perhaps [it] appeared too weak perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas, perhaps the world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions; perhaps the Church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age.4 It is a fact that nowadays there are many people like the two disciples of Emmaus; not only those looking for answers in the new religious groups that are sprouting up, but also those who already seem godless, both in theory and in practice.”
So where to go from here? “We need a Church unafraid of going forth into their night. We need a Church capable of meeting them on their way. We need a Church capable of entering into their conversation.” Francis made some tough comments about globalisation, saying that though many people were “captivated” by it, they “overlook[ed] its darker side, the side that makes one forget the meaning of life, splitting people, taking away peoples’ sense of belonging, breaking up families and pushing people towards drugs, alcohol and sex.
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