Will the Francis wave flow to our shores?

“A big heart open to God,” Pope Francis’ interview by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ, for 16 Jesuit publications, released a wave of reactions worldwide, ecstatic over the appearance of a beachhead.

Naturally, commentators dwelt on statements that struck their strong reasons for frustration or the aspect in great need of reform. “He’s the best!” was the characteristic sentiment; there is no need to repeat the general elation.

But there were cold receptions, too: “tactful silence” among conservatives, wait-and-see for “actions to match the words,” resentment over the insinuation that our local Church has not been compassionate and propoor all this time, shock over “Love over dogma” (Inquirer, 9/21/13), “Sede vacante (The papacy is vacant)” among some extreme rightists. Surprisingly, it was not the cerrado Catolico but the “liberated” Catholics who were generous and warm in their praise.

I’d like to speculate on how and how much the Pope’s spirit and calls for new dynamics will, as pundits say, “trickle down” to our Philippine Church.

A US e-mail wondered “if the Philippine hierarchy will distribute copies in the parishes or tack it to their bulletin boards.” I smiled at that one. Questions rushed to mind. How many in any Sunday Mass crowd knew that such an interview had taken place at all? Had any priest delivered any sermon on it? Did every priest and bishop read it or eagerly seek its full text, like Archbishop Oscar Cruz and, without doubt, Cardinal Antonio Tagle? Was it discussed in seminary classrooms in the country?

Or did any priest or prelate politely snub it? Because it felt like a rebuke? Because Francis’ comfortable, colorful style was a tad “unpapal”? Yet that interview was a policy statement, a papal pronouncement “more important than an encyclical” (theologian Massimo Faggioli, Inquirer, 9/24/13).

Among my devout Catholic groups, the interview hardly came up in conversation, like a nonissue, except for a passing objection to its being “revolutionary.” But it is; in the transformative sense of the word, as its drift calls for 180-degree turns.

As for the hierarchy, “CBCP [was] mum on Francis’ admonition on gays, abortion” (Inquirer, 9/22/13), and would “continue to fight any law that contradicts the faith,” meaning “the RH Law among others” (Inquirer, 9/24/13). The paper’s editorial (9/26/13) put it more bluntly: “The local Catholic hierarchy and its lay leaders and lawyers, still engaged in ruthless opposition to the Reproductive Health Law, are not singing hosannas to the Pope’s remarks…. The local Church appears to be digging in its heels and girding for renewed ‘obsession.’”

This brings me to another point. The Pope has been ever careful to assure that doctrine is intact. “The teaching of the church … is clear and I am a son of the church.” However, the dovetailing of some teachings as they are, with the resolute spirit and thrust of his words, can invite ambiguity.

Not to worry. I believe that in the back of his head, the Pope knows that this seeming ambiguity will resolve in calibrated time. He is very aware of the “development of doctrine” and drops a clear hint when he says: “Human self-understanding changes in time and so also human consciousness deepens…. So we grow in the understanding of the truth. Exegetes and theologians help…. Other sciences and their development help…. There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but now they have lost value or meaning. The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong…. Forms for expressing truth can be multiform and this is indeed necessary for the transmission of the Gospel in its timeless meaning.” He also recalls Ignatius’ statement that “great principles must be embodied in the circumstances of place, time and people.”

Such “reconceptualization” and “reformulation” in light of context and other factors (as done on slavery, interest for money, limbo, creation, etc.) is a mainstay by which the Church keeps up. In fact this is the layperson’s lament. Despite Vatican II, the Church isn’t keeping up. It’s living in another world.

Already, the Pope admits the need for a new “theology of women.” With the universal hue and cry over contraception et al., for many decades and zooming in on our “overcharged opposition to the RH bill,” isn’t it time for a new “theology on sexual morality” (the Church’s bete noire), a rigorous reexamination of: divorce, remarriage, condoms, contraception (within marriage and outside), indirect abortion, artificial insemination, sperm banks, surrogate mothers (doesn’t the Church appreciate the pains and expense couples take to have a child?), natural law, intrinsic evil, collateral moral principles, gender issues (LGBT), etc., and why not celibacy?

There is no lack of theologians, moralists, scientists, doctors, sociologists, the folk themselves, etc. (male and female, lay and clerical) who can come together. Who knows if many teachings now held with closed fists may be proven wanting or wrong? Millions will never be “living in sin” like millions of babies in limbo who were never there!

Meanwhile, I hope that the drooping and dripping red ribbons on church façades will soon be replaced by Christmas decorations for men of good will.

Asuncion David Maramba is a retired professor, book editor and occasional journalist. Comments to marda_ph @yahoo.com, fax 8284454.