A man I know said to me yesterday that I must be outraged about what Pope Francis is saying. I inwardly rolled my mind’s eye.
Let me just tell you who this guy is. He’s a professed non-believer. A former Catholic. The worst kind, right? And he’s a bit in your face about it too, if I’m being honest. (I’ve told him that so I think it’s ok to write here.) He occasionally reads my stuff here at The National Catholic Register because his wife is a Catholic who comes across my stuff occasionally.
He’s a funny guy who loves his wife and kids but when it comes to religion we’re not typically on the same side of the issue. Doesn’t mean we don’t have fun together when we’re standing on the sidelines at the kids’ games but it means that I just about never bring up issues about religion. He does, especially whenever there’s something particularly embarrassing in the news about the Church. So to put it bluntly he’s had a lot to talk about the past decade or so.
So anyway, he came up and said that I must be outraged about the pope. I asked him why he thought so. “Well, he’s a liberal, isn’t he?” I told him that I didn’t understand what that meant in the context of Catholicism. I mean, I know what he meant but I was at least going to make him do a little work to get there.
He said, “He told all the Catholics to can it on abortion and gay marriage and all that stuff and just get back to loving your neighbor and all that.” My first instinct was to school him and tell him that’s not actually what the pope said. I wanted to tell him that may be what MSNBC told you the pope said but that’s not actually what the pope said. But I stopped myself. I was also conflicted because here’s this guy who knows me a little and he thinks there’s a difference between the Catholics he knows (which includes me) and loving your neighbor. If that is true, I believe I have failed in a terrible way. Continue reading
Sources
- Matthew Archbold in National Catholic Register
- Image: The Guardian
Matthew Archbold writes a column for National Catholic Register.