REFLECTION
THINKING ABOUT POPE FRANCIS: NOTES ON FAITH, TRUTH AND MERCY
Martí Colom
Francis’ pontificate, and especially the issues that the
Pope wanted to include in the agenda of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family,
have caused uneasiness in some sectors of the Church (no doubt that at the same
time they have been received with great joy by many others). And it has become
common to hear among those who look with some doubts at the direction of this
papacy the opinion according to which, in their estimation, the Pope’s message
will eventually force us to choose between truth and mercy, between right
teaching and compassion, between doctrine and a welcoming spirit.
Certainly, the Pope and those who are in tune with him insist
in the need to make of mercy the mark that would identify Christians. Those who
hesitate about this attitude accept, obviously, that compassion is desirable
and rooted in the Gospel, but they listen to the call to build up a more
welcoming and merciful Church (the famous “war hospital” of which Francis has
spoken about) and then ask themselves: Will we have to end up giving up the
truth in exchange for the pastoral and welcoming style that Francis is asking
of us?
It seems to me that to frame the issue in these terms
(truth or mercy) is a mistake. Perhaps we have to reach the point where we can
declare that our truth, our right teaching and our doctrine are first of all
mercy, compassion and hospitality.
No truth should ever weigh more for us than the respect
towards the dignity of every human being and the promotion of his or her
wellbeing. When we forget this and we begin to think about mercy as an aspect
of our faith that is desirable but somehow secondary, then we have emptied
Christianity of its very essence.
To be Christian is not to follow a collection of finished,
intellectually understood religious and moral truths as much as it is an
attitude in life, grounded in the example of Jesus of Nazareth, a way of being
in the world and to relate to others; an attitude which has an enormous
potential to transform our reality and to help us be open to God. Our faith resembles
more a search for the Divine, a slow and humble approach to the Mystery, than
the mandate to guard an unchanging body of truths. In fact, it is when we
believe the latter that the defense of these truths ends up justifying the
exclusion and even condemnation of those who do not accept them.
Therefore, it is simply false that we are moving towards a
dead end where we will have to forget about truth in order to be able to
practice mercy. What we will have to forget are partial understandings of the
faith, easy suspicions, simplistic dichotomies and legalistic reduction-isms of
the Gospel that so often disfigure the merciful and
welcoming face of Christ.
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