Pope Francis’ highly publicized recent interview with an Italian Jesuit magazine has ushered in a new era for the Roman Catholic Church – an era of record levels of misinterpretation of the pontiff’s words, both by the liberal media and by conservative Catholics who have been grousing about Francis ever since he washed the feet of a Muslim girl during Holy Week….
In fact, Francis, as he made clear in his interview, isn’t likely to deviate from any aspect of traditional Catholic teaching. He reiterated that God doesn’t “condemn and reject” anyone, including gays, but loves them, is cognizant of the pain they feel and yearns for them to repent of their sins and confess them. The very day after the interview was published, Francis, in an audience with Catholic gynecologists, vociferously denounced abortion as a symptom of today’s “throwaway culture.”
But that is in some ways beside the point. The Catholic Church really is changing, although not exactly in the fashion liberals would like. The church is changing because the world itself is changing. The hegemony of the West, technologically advanced but in demographic, economic, cultural and religious decline, may well be over.
Balanced and sensible take from Charlotte Allen. In particular, I appreciate her stress on the tremendous significance of Pope Francis representing the momentous shift from a Global North oriented Christianity to a Global South oriented one. She’s right on. In that regard, Rome is leaving Canterbury behind in the dust.
David Handy+
The offer of the Ordinariate was Rome’s last ecumenical outreach to classical European (English) Anglicanism. This is not for any negative reason, either doctrinal or political. It is simply that, to a Church characterized by the Southern Hemisphere, classical Anglicanism is an obscure, peripheral phenomenon of the late second millennium.