Popes Can't Afford To Be Tone-Deaf

According to news sources, the Holy See is instructing bishops that it is “not necessarily” their duty to report accusations of clerical child abuse and that ultimately victims or their families should make the decision to report abuse to police.  The document, produced by the Pontifical Council for the Family, advises bishops that while they must be aware of local laws that require allegations to be reported to civil authorities, as far as the Holy See is concerned the only duty of the bishop is to deal with the matter internally. 

Now, despite the impression the news agencies are giving, the Vatican isn’t telling the bishops that they can break the civil law in those places where it is required for social workers, teachers, and other authorities to report abuse cases. And I can understand the dilemma of a bishop who becomes aware of an allegation against a member of the clergy or a Church employee but also is confronted with a victim or a victim’s family that is reluctant for the matter to be made public.  But the directive obviously shows that some people in Rome are still tone-deaf to the crisis of credibility that is facing the institutional Church. 

And, of course, this story follows up on the the suspension of clerical sex-abuse survivor, Peter Saunders, from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.  Saunders was “voted off the island” by an all but unanimous vote of his fellow commission members.  (There were sixteen votes against, one abstention, none for Saunders.)  Now, again, this was not an executive decision from above but a decision by peers.  And we have all served on committees where one member keeps gluing up the works with his or her own agenda.  But again, however justified the commission members might be, it is a matter of tone-deafness that brings considerable scandal on the Church and undermines our credibility. 

And now we have the president of a Catholic University, fortunately in this instance a layman and not a priest, comparing under-performing students to “bunnies” who “should be drowned.”  Boy, where in the Gospel do you get that????    I realize that good academic management requires weeding out those who will not succeed so that more viable candidates can take their space—but again, how does the murdered bunnies image play in Peoria?

Why is the Catholic Church on a suicide mission?  If there is a failure in regard to implementing the mandate of the Second Vatican Council for the Church to take its place on the modern world, it is this: the presupposition that we, as Church, are not accountable to the larger human community among whom live and work.  How can we be that “light of revelation to the nations” if we maintain that we are somehow exempt from the standards of behavior we ourselves set with our Christian ideals? 

And I must admit that as much as I admire Pope Francis he too seems at times to have become bogged down in protecting the institution rather than witnessing to the integrity of the Gospel.    The Pope’s appointment and defense of Juan Barros Madrid as Bishop of Osorno, Chile, despite Barros’ ties to notorious priest-abuser Fernando Karadima, is another case of Rome being tone-deaf.  Barros’ installation in his cathedral church turned into a huge fracas as the vast majority of the faithful made their rejection of their bishop public.  Moreover, the vast majority of his brother bishops in Chile, including the two Chilean Cardinals, refused to attend the installation, signifying that few, if any, supported the Pope’s appointee.  Francis allegedly referred to those who opposed Bishop Barros Madrid’s appointment as “lefties” and “dumb.”  Holy Father, we know you can’t carry a tune in a basket, but get to a hearing-specialist and get your ear canals cleaned out.  We can’t afford to have a tone-deaf Pontiff sitting on the chair of Peter. 

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that hearing confessions desensitizes the clergy to the evil of certain sins.  This isn’t just a Catholic problem.  I suspect that many Protestant clergy  and rabbis after years of pastoral counseling ministry, also become somewhat immune to the impact of evil.  The problem is that most of the evil encountered in confession or counseling is done by basically good people. Bad people—and there some—generally don’t come to see the priest or rabbi.   Most people sin to, in some way or other, escape the pain they feel in life.  (Pardon the split infinitive in the above sentence; I too am a sinner.)  The husband who finds himself continually rejected by his wife (or the wife, by her husband), turns to an illicit relationship. This is not right but the sin is most often the result of the pain and anger of rejection.  Beneath the abuse of alcohol or drugs is often a huge amount of psychological pain.  And when it comes to physical or emotional or sexual abuse: how many abusers have themselves been the victims of abuse?  None of this justifies the evil we choose,  but the priest or minister, becoming aware of the complexity of people’s lives, puts sin in a context that not only involves judgment but compassion.  In pastoral care that is most probably a good thing.  But it can’t leave us, as a Church, in a world of moral ambiguity.  It is a difficult balance to achieve, especially without risking the sin of phariseeism ourselves, but we need to find it.   Our integrity as a Church demands that while we deal compassionately with sinners we keep true to the moral compass of the Gospels. 

Perhaps the problem is, at least in part, that the bishops and clergy have no idea that they are in any way accountable to us, the People of God.  We are still an overly hierarchic Church rather than a true community of the faithful.  There are still too many working on the pyramid model of Church where the Pope is over the bishops, the bishops over the clergy, and the clergy over the people.  In this model, communication is one way—top down and the role of the laity is still perceived to be “to pay, pray, and obey.”  And need I say that for many of us, those days are over. 

We need to develop an ecclesiology in which we—and I mean all of us, not just the laity—see ourselves  not in a hierarchic pyramid but in a communal model of concentric circles with the bishop at the center, the clergy around the bishop, the faithful around the clergy.  In the same way the larger perspective is viewed with the Bishop and Church of Rome at the center surrounded by the communion of local Churches with their bishops at their center.  This model of Church is far from new and was the predominant ecclesiology in the patristic period from the second century through the thirteenth. 

To a certain extent we have already begun to move towards this model of Church.  The decrees of the Second Vatican Council, particularly Lumen Gentium (the dogmatic Constitution on the Church) and Christus Dominus (the Decree on the Bishops), and to a lesser extent in Apostolicam Actuositatem (On the Apostolate of the Laity), actually lay out this theology.  Unfortunately, as we all know, John Paul II didn’t much care for this model and pretty much smothered it in its post-Paul VI cradle.  Francis has given us hope of reviving it, but the above-mentioned actions on the part of the Holy See show not only some back-pedaling but even the Pope’s failure to see the implications of his actions.  Hopefully his remarks about “lefties” and “dumb” is only another case of a live-mike picking up an indiscreet comment from a world leader, but it is still troubling that the Pope doesn’t see the profound theological issue when not only the faithful but the regional episcopate reject a candidate for bishop. 

Today’s adults are not going to continue to belong to an organization—even a Church—that doesn’t take them seriously.  I am not advocating a democratic Church but one in which there is genuine communication so that those whose ministry it is to speak the faith of the Church know what is in the mind and the hearts of the Church’s members.  The consensus fidelium needs to be restored as an essential part of the dynamic of the Church’s teaching and governing mission. 

The Church That Francis Built

Pius XII--each pope in
his own papacy remakes
the Church 

There is no doubt that in two and a half years Pope Francis has effected a radical change in Catholicism—creating a very different Church than the one he inherited from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.  The Franciscan Revolution has not yet been complete and its thoroughness will depend, to some extent, on how much longer Francis continues in the papal ministry, but once again the toothpaste is out of the tube and will not successfully be put back, at least in its entirety. 

The most notable change in this papacy is from an emphasis on objective moral norms to a much stronger personalist appreciation for the vagaries of human behavior, most particularly regarding human sexuality.  As practically every commentator has pointed out, Francis has not changed any Church teaching on sexual morality but his openness to encounter and willingness to dialogue with transgendered individuals, the divorced and remarried, people in same-sex relationships, has done far more than change a tone.  It has torn down the barriers that isolated non-conforming individuals from the larger Catholic community.  It has put sexual behavior in its proper context and not let it be any longer the overriding defining characteristic of a person’s moral quality.  Francis doesn’t claim that non-marital sexual relationships are not sins but he treats them like any other area of moral fracture and doesn’t impose some sort of Scarlet Letter on individuals who don’t measure up to our somewhat strict Catholic codes.  Consequently people once seemingly isolated from full participation in the life of the Christian community are finding the Church a comfortable spiritual home and learning to integrate themselves back into the community.  More and more are even taking responsibility for their spiritual integrity and deciding for themselves questions about whether their individual choices are indeed serious fractures in their relationship with God and how to handle their taking responsibility for their moral integrity vis a vis participating in the Eucharist and other sacraments.  There is nothing really new in this except for the scale on which it is proceeding.  Some individuals have long had that maturity and spiritual depth to plumb their own consciences and act accordingly, but it is now almost becoming normative.  This does drive some people of the old Scribe and Pharisee Club ‘round the bend however.  Always did.  Even back in the day when the disciples picked corn on the Sabbath.  But that is another story.

The second way in which the change is becoming effective is a move away from the triumphant style of recent years.  Towards the end of the reign of John Paul II there was a very notable shift in sartorial style in Vatican circles.  Cappae Magnae had not been seen in years but were suddenly popping up at all these “traditional” Pontifical Masses in the “Extraordinary Form.”  Silver buckles and violet and scarlet stockings began appearing on prelatial feet.  JPII kept his ox-blood loafers for everyday, but began wearing some vestments, especially copes, that were exceptionally beautiful but also quite different from the more simple style set by Paul VI and used by JPII himself in the first two thirds of his reign.  Then Benedict hit the scene with a fury that can only be compared to a confused six-year old allowed to raid his Gramma’s attic for dress-up.   I mean he was giving Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess of Grantham a run for her money in period costume.  I don’t mean to be unkind or demeaning but frankly, it was embarrassing.  It was certainly hard to explain to people who live in the everyday world.  And it was threatening to turn the Church into a bizarre fantasyland as the enthusiasm for vintage costuming trickled down through Bishops Burke and Finn and Slattery and Morlino et al to local clergy.  Francis’ return to the more simple style of vesture as well as his Ford Focus and apartment in the Vatican Guest House has set a standard of normalcy. 

I suppose there are other ways in which Francis has changed the Church.  One would certainly be the reduction of bureaucracy and the levels of transparency, especially in financial matters.  There is still a long way to go in these areas, but more progress has been made in these areas in the last two years than in the previous thirty-five.  Another is the move away from a juridical mentality where every canon and each liturgical rubric was noted and enforced.  Francis is not one for allowing his agenda to be snared by minor points.  Francis’ willingness to speak off the cuff is a huge difference from his predecessors and witnesses to his concern for the broad picture rather than sweating the small stuff.  His permitting free and open discussion at the Synod of Bishops witnesses to this same point.  And of course his willingness to take on the issues of the day—Climate Change, Income Inequality, Migrants—is notable.  His predecessors brought up these issues as well but always heavily veiled with abstractions.  Francis is very specific and concrete in his approach. 

We must remember however that the Church Francis inherited was not the Church as it came down from the Apostles.   John Paul II, along with Cardinal Ratzinger—later Pope Benedict XVI—had done much to create the Church as it stood on March 13, 2013.  It was not the Church John XXIII and Paul VI had left.  Francis’ predecessors re-centralized authority in the Roman Curia at the expense of the local bishops whom Christus Dominus at Vatican II recognized as heads of the local Churches.  Ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue had largely gone into a stall.  Liturgical development had taken an ugly turn with “The Reform of the Reform” and even worse with Ecclesia Dei and Summorum Pontificum.  There was a serious attempt to re-interpret the Second Vatican Council in a minimalist fashion.  In fact, much of what Francis has done, has been to restore the Church to the track envisioned at the Council. 

And John XXIII and Paul VI themselves had radically reshaped the Church that Pius XII had left at his death on October 9, 1958.  Few popes have had the opportunity to shape the Church in their papacy as had Pius XII.  His years as a diplomat gave him the skills to exploit the WWII period and the post-war period to extend papal control at the expense of local bishops and cathedral chapters as well as traditionally autonomous religious communities.  Resistance to Communism required the surrender of local independence to centralized Papal authority.  With henchmen like the American Francis Spellman, the French Maurice Feltin, British Bernard Griffin, and Spaniard Enrique Pla y Deniel Pius was able to control the Church throughout Western Europe and the Americas.  He was uncompromising with the Communist Regimes of Eastern Europe and Asia even though it meant the imprisonment and death of numerous bishops, priests, religious and faithful.   He created a political alliance with the United States government to check the spread of Communism, especially in Latin America and placed the resources of the Church at the disposal of the CIA in their joint efforts.  He was the most powerful pope since the 13^th century apex of papal power and, at least until is health problems began in 1954 was able to concentrate all power, curial and diplomatic, in his own hands.  His failing health and loss of ability to manage the Curia is in great part responsible for creating that behemoth that has plagued every pope since. 

We could go back further and see how Church has morphed to fit the vision of each Pope, some simplifying and others aggrandizing the Church and their own office.  But for this posting suffice it to say that while Pope Francis has done remarkable work, substantially he has done nothing other than what each of his predecessors has done in his reign. 

More Thoughts on Pope Francis' "Merry Christmas" to the Boys in the Curia

a heart contrite and humbled, O

God, you will not reject.  

Let’s continue our “examination of conscience” as we look at Pope Francis’s call out to the papal Curia in his bombshell of a Christmas message.  The reform of the Church needs to be in root and branches—that means not only those men in long red dresses lunching at da Roberto in the Borgo Pio or at Scarpone up there on the Janiculum—but here on the local level as well.  And not just Monsignor Quinn at the chancery or Father Jasek in the parish but you and me and the rest of the people in the pews.  There is no shoe-size that only fits a Cardinal. 

The disease of excessive planning and of functionalism. When the apostle plans everything down to the last detail and believes that with perfect planning things will fall into place, he becomes an accountant or an office manager. Things need to be prepared well, but without ever falling into the temptation of trying to contain and direct the freedom of the Holy Spirit, which is always greater and more flexible than any human planning (cf. Jn 3:8). We contract this disease because “it is always more easy and comfortable to settle in our own sedentary and unchanging ways. In truth, the Church shows her fidelity to the Holy Spirit to the extent that she does not try to control or tame him… to tame the Holy Spirit! … He is freshness, imagination, and newness”.

Planning is a good thing.  Jesus tells us in the gospel that a man building a tower will sit down and plan his finances to see if he can complete it; a king preparing for battle will come up with a plan to defeat a larger army or flee the field.  But there are those for whom the Church is a business and not a mission.  They have a business plan.  It is their plan.  The Christian knows that we need to stand back and prayerfully discern God’s plan and our place in it.  What is even more off-putting are those whose plan is not to advance the mission of the Church but for their own advancement in the Church.  This has been a huge problem for decades now.  In the heady years after Vatican II there were many priests who would have made good bishops but they didn’t want to give up the “work in the trenches” of parishes and schools and so they declined the appointment.  We too often were left with the second-stringers, the ones who wanted to get a red dress of their own, the careerists.  The situation deteriorated even more when under John Paul II and Benedict, loyalty to the institution rather than dedication to mission became the bottom line in choosing bishops.  We were flooded with men like Fabian Bruskewitz (now retired of Lincoln) or Paul Loverde of Arlingtion or Joseph Martino (now emeritus of Scranton), or Edward Egan (retired of New York) who couldn’t think for themselves but swallowed the “party line” hook, line, and sinker.  Even worse we got the opportunists who were bright enough to think critically but sufficiently cynical to suck up in hopes of advancing their own careers, people like Robert Finn of Kansas City or Robert Morlino of Madison or Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco.  (Actually Teddy McCarrick, formerly of Newark and Washington, was one of the worst of these until he got his red hat and once having arrived as far as he was going to go, showed a little backbone.)  It got so that intelligence and integrity were almost a barrier to a miter.  We need bishops who have a vision of the Kingdom of God and can see a path to lead us there, bishops who buy into God’s plan with a prophet’s eye and wise man’s heart.  The task is not to preserve what we have—our own “sedentary and unchanging ways” but to allow the Holy Spirit full freedom to spread his wings wide and soar into the future God has planned for us. 

Sometimes we see this problem just as strong on the local level where priests and more interested in keeping things smooth with the chancery than providing their people with the spiritual nourishment they are looking for.  One of my favorite movies, back in the day, was Mass Appeal starring Jack Lemmon as a priest who sold his soul in order to be loved by his wealthy parishioners, but I have met far too many “don’t rock the boat” priests over the years who either for popularity or for advancement have gladly surrendered their integrity.  Sycophantism  does not become the holiness of the priesthood. 

The disease of poor coordination. Once its members lose communion among themselves, the body loses its harmonious functioning and its equilibrium; it then becomes an orchestra which produces noise: its members do not work together and lose the spirit of fellowship and teamwork. When the foot says to the arm: “I don't need you ”, or the hand says to the head, “I’m in charge”, they create discomfort and scandal.

This is another subject for which we Americans have long been condemned by people in Rome who are even more guilty of it than we are.  Americans are individualists.  It has long been so.  Tocqueville mentioned it in his 1835 Democracy in America.  But the Curia Romana has long deteriorated into one of the most pitiless aggregates of individuals in the history of bureaucracy.  The jealousies and rivalries as the various prelates try to slither up the caterpillar pillar, each constantly trying to edge the others off to reach the purpled destiny they lust after rather than working for the common good of the faithful has long scandalized any outsider who has had to work with them in any capacity.  But we often see this same malady in the local chancery offices or among priests vying for “better” and “better” parishes.  And as women take their place in chanceries and parish administration they are often no less ruthless in eliminating any opposition to achieving their particular vision of Church rather than being responsive to the needs of the rank and file.  And how often do we “go to the mats” to defend our own ecclesial turf?  “I am always the lector at 10 am Mass.”   “Father Joe comes to all my parties.”  “I do the purificators and corporals around here.”  “I pick the music!” 

The sixth malady the Pope mentioned in his message is:

There is also a “spiritual Alzheimer’s disease”. It consists in losing the memory of our personal “salvation history”, our past history with the Lord and our “first love” (Rev 2:4). It involves a progressive decline in the spiritual faculties which in the long or short run greatly handicaps a person by making him incapable of doing anything on his own, living in a state of absolute dependence on his often imaginary perceptions. We see it in those who have lost the memory of their encounter with the Lord; in those who no longer see life’s meaning in “deuteronomic” terms; in those who are completely caught up in the present moment, in their passions, whims and obsessions; in those who build walls and routines around themselves, and thus become more and more the slaves of idols carved by their own hands.

This is perhaps the saddest.  Here are men who have so completely fallen in love with the power and perks of their office that they have forgotten the Love that first called them to the priesthood or the Religious Life.  Their heart is given to “the Church”—but not the Church as the spotless bride of the Lamb but the Institution with all its what the old baptismal rite used to refer to as “pomps”  as in “Do you renounce Satan and all his pomps.”  They salivate over cappae magnae and mitrae pretiosae and long ceremonies with numerous acolytes to carry a bugia or a thurible.  Love for the Crucified has been reduced to a ceremonial kiss of an ivory crucifix while kneeling on a damask draped prie-dieu at the Church door.  Zeal for souls expresses itself in keeping people from Holy Communion.   “Prayer” is the self-indulgent piety of a daily Holy Hour in one’s private chapel where one prays with the good gentleman of Luke 18:11-12.  Religion, granted “the true religion” has replaced God in this forgetful heart.  Where is the boy who dreamed of going to Africa to minister to lepers?  Where is the young man who dreamed of monastic solitude?  Where is the young priest who made midnight calls to the hospital?  What makes us forget why we raised our head and cocked our ear to a soundless call for sheer love?  It is so easy to slip into vocational dementia.  And that is true for all of us.  Why is it so easy to turn over on Sunday morning and sleep when once we never would have missed Mass?  Why is it so easy to relegate one hour a week to God when we used to find our social life in the parish and its outreach?  Why have we forgotten that beneath that panhandling drunk or that old woman in the nursing home lurks Jesus himself.   Why has love grown cold when it was once so ardent?  

Francis Merry Christmas: Christians 15, Lions 0 cont.

 Let’s look some more at that bombshell that Pope Francis dropped on the Curia in his Christmas message—not only because it gives us some insight as to why the Papal Curia is as dysfunctional as it is, and not even because it gives us hints where the Pope sees that Reform is necessary, but maybe mostly to see if the silver buckled shoe on the feet of one Cardinal or another might also fit your foot or mine.  The New Year is a good time to examine our consciences as well as taking guesses about the state of another’s soul, or as Jesus put it, to take the beam out of our own eye before we try to remove the speck from someone else’s.

Pope Francis characterized the second spiritual disease infecting the Curia and, by extension, the Church as:

Another disease is the “Martha complex”, excessive busy-ness. It is found in those who immerse themselves in work and inevitably neglect “the better part”: sitting at the feet of Jesus (cf. Lk 10:38-42). Jesus called his disciples to “rest a while” (cf. Mk 6:31) for a reason, because neglecting needed rest leads to stress and agitation. A time of rest, for those who have completed their work, is necessary, obligatory and should be taken seriously: by spending time with one’s family and respecting holidays as moments of spiritual and physical recharging. We need to learn from Qohelet that “for everything there is a season” (3:1-15).

You know, when Leo XIII condemned “Americanism” in the 1899 Encyclical Testem Benevolentiae, one of the criticisms proffered by the Holy Father was that Americans tend to underappreciate the contemplative essence of the Christian life and here Pope Francis is slamming the prelates of the Roman Curia for the very same fault.  Notice that he hits them on two levels: they are not spending enough quality time with Christ, sitting at his feet (contemplative prayer) and they are not spending enough quality time with others, especially their families.  The Pope sees the Curia bureaucrats as men (and nowadays some women) who let their work consume them, forgetting that God did not created us for the purpose of work—even his work—but for love.  We were created to love God with our entire hearts, souls, strengths, and being and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We need to redefine our lives putting the primacy of our life on relationships not on accomplishments.  But, of course, we are evaluated (judged) on our work and it is our work that wins us advancement.  But what does it profit us to gain the whole world and lose our very selves in the process?  How many of these bureaucrats have lost themselves in their desire to gain higher and higher position in the caterpillar tree that administers the institutional dimensions of the Catholic Church?  And at the same time, how many of us too trade time with God and time with those whom we are called to love in hopes of advancing our careers?  Oh, we do it for our families.  We do this to be better providers.  We do this so they can have tae kwon do.  We do this so they can afford piano lessons or to be in the school band.  yada yada yada   But at the end of the day we aren’t there for them because of all the things we “do for them.”  The fact of the matter is we opt for a higher standard of living that we could afford if we have our priorities in the right place.  At the end of the day all that matters is that we have been there and given them love.   

Then too there is the disease of mental and spiritual “petrification”. It is found in those who have a heart of stone, the “stiff-necked” (Acts 7:51-60), in those who in the course of time lose their interior serenity, alertness and daring, and hide under a pile of papers, turning into paper pushers and not men of God (cf. Heb 3:12). It is dangerous to lose the human sensitivity that enables us to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice! This is the disease of those who lose “the sentiments of Jesus” (cf. Phil 2:5-11), because as time goes on their hearts grow hard and become incapable of loving unconditionally the Father and our neighbour (cf. Mt 22:34-35). Being a Christian means “having the same sentiments that were in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5), sentiments of humility and unselfishness, of detachment and generosity.

And hasn’t this just been the problem?  We have cardinals and bishops and monsignors and priests who, far from having the shepherd’s heart that is a proffered grace of the Sacrament of Orders, have chosen to have hearts of stone.  The Law is what is important.  You know the routine—it is rooted in our Christian tradition from the first days: the High Priest declared: “We have a Law and by that Law this man must die.”  And so too we have our laws: who can go to Holy Communion; who can have a Church wedding or funeral; who can have their children baptized etc.  Gay people can’t be Eucharistic ministers or lectors.  Catholic School teachers must not be remarried after a divorce.  If you are in a same-sex marriage you can’t be the Director of Music.  And don’t forget the famous “Canon 915”—you know the one; it’s the canon that says “I’m holier than thou, you miserable piece of moral turpitude and I will decide that Jesus doesn’t want you coming to the Table of His Body and Blood.”  That’s a loose translation, admittedly, but you get the idea—or at least how some people read it.  Stone, stone, stone—hearts of stone that are quick to judge without knowing the story, without knowing the pain, without knowing the struggles.

This certainly has been the sin of some prelates in the Curia—or, at least formerly in the Curia and now, thanks to Francis the Compassionate, relegated to more ceremonial functions where they can do less harm.  But we find this same legalism in some of our parishes and even among the laity who, given their life experience, should know better.  But it is so much fun to be better than everyone else and to make sure that they, and everyone, knows it.  Why doesn’t the sins of others make us weep in compassion for the struggles they have faced in making their decisions?  Why do we let the failings of others give us an unholy glee to celebrate our moral righteousness?  I think Francis is right on—not just in the sins of the boys in the purple dresses but in raising the questions that should give us all pause. 

We can only be hopeful that the call of Pope Francis to his Curia will bring them to an ever deeper awareness of the Compassion Christ has for each of us and a renewed desire to use their office bring the mercy and forgiveness of God into the lives of all people to heal us of our own spiritual maladies and bring us reconciliation for the forgiveness of our sins.  We need a new face on the public image of the Church.  Francis has brought that at his level, but it needs to spread down and out through the entire administration, not just in Rome but also to our dioceses and our parishes.  For too long everyone has known what the Catholic Church is against.  That is no way to spread the Gospel.  Now we are being given the chance to proclaim loudly what we are for: the spread of the Good News of Jesus Christ that in his infinite mercy God has so loved the world that he sent his only son that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life; God did not send his Son to condemn the world but rather so that the world might be saved through him.