Poverty and mercy: key themes in Cuba

In Cuba, Pope Francis has not said much about church-state political questions. Instead he is diving deeply into his call for a church that is poor, merciful and forgiving.

His talks Sunday and Monday have been fascinating, and at times pure Francis – his off-the-cuff riff on “poverty” in an encounter with church ministry personnel was classic.

But if the pope uses the same language when he comes to the United States, he’s likely to need an official explainer. I’m not sure most people will understand what he means by evangelical poverty and the idea that “wealth makes people poor.”

“How many souls have been destroyed! Generous souls … that began well and then became attached to that rich worldliness, and ended up badly. In other words, mediocre. They ended up without love,” he told priests, nuns and seminarians Sunday evening.

“The spirit of poverty, the spirit of detachment, the spirit of leaving everything to follow Jesus. This leaving everything is not something I made up. It’s found various times in the Gospel. In the call of the first ones, who left their boat, their nets and followed him. Those who left everything to follow Jesus,” he said.

The church, too, has to resist the temptation to accumulate wealth. “Bad accountants are among the best blessings for the church, because they make it free, they make it poor,” he said.

He echoed that message when talking a little later with young people, saying youths today are “part of the throwaway culture.”

“All of us know that today, in this empire of the god money, things are thrown away and people are thrown away, children are thrown away, because they are unwanted, because they kill them before they are born, the elderly are thrown away — I’m speaking of the world in general — because they don’t produce anymore. In some countries, there is legal euthanasia, but in so many others there is a hidden, covered up euthanasia. Youth are thrown away because they are not given work.”

When it comes to the role of the church, the pope emphasized closeness to the people, especially those who are suffering and who need forgiveness. Priests in particular, he said, need to seek out the hungry, the imprisoned and the sick, and make the confessional a place of mercy.

When someone confesses their weaknesses, the pope told priests, “don’t yell at them, don’t punish them, don’t castigate them. If you have no sin, then you can throw the first stone.” He added: “Please, do not tire of forgiving. Be forgivers. Do not hide behind fear and rigidity.”

At a Mass Monday in Holguin, Cuba’s third-largest city, Pope Francis returned to the theme of mercy and its capacity to change people. He said Christ’s calling of St. Matthew, a tax collector who became his disciple, showed this transformative power.

“Matthew is no longer the same; he is changed inside,” he said. “He leaves behind his table, his money, his exclusion. Before, he had sat waiting to collect his taxes, to take from others; now, with Jesus he must get up and give, give himself to others.”

The church’s attention should be directed especially toward those who feel excluded or abandoned, the pope said.

“May we learn to see them as Jesus sees us. Let us share his tenderness and mercy with the sick, prisoners, the elderly and families in difficulty.”

In Havana, the pope also had some interesting words on the concept of church unity. They were part of the text he set aside in his meeting with priests and nuns, but the Vatican published them on its web site.

Unity is not uniformity, he said, and can never be imposed or forced by decree. On the contrary, it depends at times on open expression of disagreement.

“Conflicts and disagreements in the church are to be expected and, I would even say, needed. They are a sign that the church is alive and that the Spirit is still acting, still enlivening her. Woe to those communities without a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’! They are like married couples who no longer argue, because they have lost interest, they have lost their love.”

"We do not serve ideas, we serve people."

Celebrating his first Mass in Cuba, Pope Francis delivered an interesting homily today that highlighted a couple of key themes of his pontificate.

He focused first on service to others as the fundamental expression of Christianity. This service is never about self-promotion and never merely about setting up programs, the pope said, but involves encountering real people in their suffering.

“Service always looks to their faces, touches their flesh,” he said. “Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people.” He was speaking about the Christian approach to life, and his words carried wider meaning in a country that recently began “restructuring” its socialist policies.

The pope’s second point was the temptation to engage in “service that is self-serving,” or that helps only “our people.” This is a process of exclusion that’s often based on judging others before assisting them, he said.

I think we’re going to hear a lot about exclusion during this trip, both in Cuba and in the United States. Most of the pope’s critique of the dominant global economic system, for example, is centered on the fact that it excludes so many people from opportunities reserved for the privileged.

Pope Francis’ homily in Revolution Square was far less political than those delivered by his two predecessors. In 1998, Pope John Paul II bluntly appealed for “great change” in Cuba and urged greater respect for religious and other human rights. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI issued a similar call.

Pope Francis stayed away from direct criticism of Cuba’s government and its continuing restrictions on church activities. Perhaps he is saving that for private talks with government leaders, or for other events.

The pope seemed more intent on explaining how Christians express their faith as citizens, primarily by fighting for human dignity and helping those most in need: “That is why Christians are constantly called to set aside their own wishes and desires, their pursuit of power, and to look instead to those who are most vulnerable.”

He was, of course, speaking mainly to a Catholic audience at the liturgy. But in attendance was Cuban President Raul Castro and other government officials, and the pope’s closing remarks, which praised and challenged Cuba’s people, seemed aimed at them as well.

“It is a people that has its wounds, like every other people, yet knows how to stand up with open arms, to keep walking in hope, because it has a vocation of grandeur,” he said.

He urged Cubans to continue to care for the weakest in society, adding: “Do not neglect them for plans which can be seductive, but are unconcerned about the face of the person beside you.”

Pew survey outlines challenges, opportunities for Pope Francis

There are enough interesting numbers in the just-published survey on U.S. Catholics by the Pew Research Center to keep Vatican-watchers busy for days. Here are my thoughts on a few of the highlights:

— The Pew summary underlines that while U.S. Catholics overwhelmingly favor a married mother and father as the ideal situation for raising children, a strong majority also rates as “acceptable” other kinds of families, including cohabitating parents, single parents or divorced parents. A smaller majority said it was acceptable for children to be raised by gay or lesbian couples, though the Catholic respondents were evenly split on church recognition of gay marriage.

Some would see this as an implicit challenge to church authorities and their defense of the traditional family. But these respondents were not simply theorizing; they were speaking largely from experience. One-fourth of the Catholics surveyed said they have gone through a divorce, and more than 40 percent have, at some point in their lives, lived with a romantic partner outside marriage. The reality of family configuration is changing even inside the Catholic Church, something that was recognized at last year’s session of the Synod of Bishops, where many bishops said pastors should reach out to people in “irregular” situations and build on the good in their relationships.

— I’ve seen some headlines today that focus on one finding of the survey: that 77 percent of people raised Catholic but no longer Catholic say they don’t envision returning to the church. That is seen by some as a type of wall facing the perceived “Francis effect” among fallen-away Catholics.

I would point out two things. First, the survey found a similar majority (70 percent) among current Catholics who say they’ll never leave the church. But it also found that among adults raised Catholic, 52 percent have left the church at some point in their lives, and many have returned. Catholics move in and out of the church more than people recognize, and perhaps more than Catholics themselves expect.

In addition, the survey found that among “cultural Catholics” – those who don’t self-identify as Catholics today but who have some ties to the church – 43 percent could see themselves returning to the church. This group (cultural Catholics) was large, 9 percent of the total respondents, and it certainly represents a target audience for Pope Francis.

— According to the survey results, the overall number of Catholics as a percentage of U.S. population is down, from nearly 24 percent in 2007 to 20 percent today. More worrisome for church authorities is that the number dips to 15 percent among “millennials,” those born between 1981-1996. Among that same millennial group, 35 percent say they have no religious affiliation.

Those are challenging statistics for the Catholic Church, I think. Although young people have a very favorable impression of Pope Francis, that may not matter when it comes to belonging to the church. It’s much easier to bring someone back to the church who is already in touch with Catholic life, than to evangelize young people for whom life in the church is completely foreign.

— Although the Catholic share of the U.S. population may be diminishing, the Pew survey found that 45 percent of all respondents said they were connected to Catholicism in some way – as members of the church, as fallen-away Catholics, through marriage or through a cultural connection. That’s an amazingly high number, and it helps explain, I think, why the actions and words of Pope Francis resonate so deeply in this country these days.