We Support the Pope

It is no secret that Catholicism has been struggling to maintain its traditional relevance in the United States and parts of Europe. The number of Europeans identifying as Catholics has been decreasing since 1975 and despite the fact that America still remains far more religious than its European counterparts, approximately a third of Americans raised Catholic no longer identify as such. Even in the Catholic bastions of Latin America the percentage of Catholics is declining as well. Perhaps this decline in Catholic affiliation can be attributed to Pope Benedict XVI’s vision of a “leaner, smaller, purer church,” his efforts to maintain strict positions on homosexuality, or the persistent specter of sex abuse in the Church. However, Benedict’s successor Pope Francis I seems intent on reversing the Vatican’s insular and non-conciliatory past and intent on making the positive values of Catholicism more accessible to the changing global demographics. We welcome Pope Francis’s new approach to the papacy and hope that his sentiments come to be shared by the rest of the Church hierarchy.

Pope Francis made headlines in July when he publicly told reporters, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Last week Pope Francis reiterated his belief that the Church has become too “obsessed” with the Church’s non-fundamental dogma such as abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. When Pope Francis said that “the teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church,” he made it apparent that the Church wasn’t going to change basic positions on controversial issues any time soon. He did, however, assert that “the dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent” and that instead of remaining “obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently,” the Catholic Church should focus its efforts on fostering a “home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people.” Additionally, Pope Francis indirectly suggested that women should claim a larger role in the Church, acknowledging that “the feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions.”

We understand the constraints on the Pope’s ability and personal religious desire to change Church doctrine to become more conciliatory to marginalized groups, such as the gay community and women. Because of these challenges we commend his push toward openness all the more so. Hopefully, as the Pope makes it clear that controversial issues such as gay marriage and abortion are less important to Church teachings than Jesus’s foundational teachings of kindness and goodness, the Catholic Church will be seen as less as a warden of obscure doctrine and more as a positive force for the promotion of brotherly love and compassion for the less fortunate.