Ah, Pope Francis. We know so much about you … and so little of it is true.
If it felt like 2014 was the year the media joined the Pope Francis misunderstanding-of-the-month club, that is probably because, well, they did. Let’s look at a few media misunderstandings from 2014.
January: The Rolling Stone Pope?
If you read the cover story on Pope Francis in the January Rolling Stone, then you knew the magazine’s journalism was spectacularly wrong long before everyone else started talking about how spectacularly wrong the magazine’s journalism is. At The Week, Damon Linker listed nine ridiculous claims in that cover story.
February: Cardinal Kasper’s Communion
It was at the February consistory of cardinals that Cardinal Walter Kasper made his argument for a path to communion for divorced (but not annulled) remarried Catholics. The myth that Francis was a supporter of this idea festered and grew throughout the year, climaxing at October’s Synod on the Family. The myth was unnecessary. Pope Francis put it to rest more than once.
For instance, in August, he said: “About the problem of Communion to those persons in a second union, that the divorced might participate in Communion, there is no problem. When they are in a second union, they can’t.”
Most importantly, the document that prepared the Church for the Synod reiterated the teaching on unannulled divorced and remarried and made it clear that the Church was never interested in changing the rule — the Church was interested in finding more loving ways to insist on compliance with the rule.
March: The Obama Meeting
In March, Pope Francis and President Obama met for the first time, and American Catholics were disappointed when the initial word had it that the Pope spoke not about religious freedom and the right to life but about safe areas of agreement. Hot-button issues were “not a topic of conversation,” said that initial word.
However, that initial word came from Barack Obama. The Vatican had a very different take on the meeting shortly thereafter, and the right to life and faith were very much part of it.
June: The Syncretist Pope?
A viral email that Snopes flagged as “FALSE” has long been spreading the rumor that Pope Francis was a syncretist — a believer that all religions are equally true. When Pope Francis held a multi-religious prayer for Holy Land peace in the Vatican June 8, that seemed to clinch it.
The meeting — Muslim prayers in St. Peter’s worried critics — was flagged by some critics as Francis’ “Assisi moment,” a reference to Pope John Paul II’s 1986 inter-religious prayer service that him defending himself against charges of syncretism.
But as Father Dwight Longenecker pointed out, the Vatican hosted a joint prayer service for peace that consisted of delegations from Israel and Palestine. The Israeli delegation had both Jews and Muslims in it; the Palestinian delegation had both Christians and Muslims in it. Each tradition got to pray – but each prayed in its own tradition. And it all went down not in St. Peter’s, but in the Vatican Garden.
The “syncretist” charge reared its head again in November when Pope Francis prayed in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The Vatican press office reassured Catholic critics: Francis prayed the same prayer as Benedict XVI, author of Dominus Iesus, had prayed in the same way in the same place.
Early October: Mid-Synod Storm
All heck broke loose in the media when a report mid-way through the Synod on the Family was released. The English language version contained this fateful phrase about same-sex-attracted persons: “Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?”
That “valuing their sexual orientation” phrase was what caused the problem. The Church has long taught that we value homosexual persons. But to value the orientation itself? That is inconsistent with the other Catechism teachings about homosexuality.
It was not long before the mistranslation at the heart of the problem was revealed: In every other language the document recommended we “evaluate” their sexual orientation, not “value” it. Pope Francis a month later prayed for “all who seek to support and strengthen the union of man and woman in marriage as a unique, natural, fundamental and beautiful good for persons, communities, and whole societies.”
Late October: The Darwinist Pope?
On Oct. 27, Pope Francis spoke to the Academy of Sciences and said “evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation,” then added with his typical flair, that God is not a “magician” who creates with a “magic wand” but rather “created beings and left them to develop according to the internal laws that He gave each one, so that they would develop, and reach their fullness.”
The remarks created a sensation when the media forgot briefly that Pope Pius XII said the same thing first in Humani Generis (see No. 36), and the Catechism says much the same thing in No. 283.
November: The Cardinal Burke "Demotion"
The long expected announcement came on Nov. 8: U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke would move from his Vatican post as prefect of the Apostolic Signatura — the “Supreme Justice” of the Vatican high court — to be patron of the Order of Malta. “Pope Francis Demotes Outspoken Conservative American Cardinal,” said the Reuters story, repeating the spin found elsewhere.
Catholics who appreciated Cardinal Burke’s candor on hot button issues worried that Pope Francis was showing his hand — and using the back of it against adversaries.
No one need have worried. In fact, Cardinal Burke’s was the longest term a cardinal has had as prefect of the Apostolic Signatura in 37 years. And as several Vatican watchers pointed out, if Pope Francis was trying to fire outspoken people, how did he miss Cardinal George Pell? And if he wanted to silence Cardinal Burke, why put him in a position where he was freer to be outspoken?
In a recent interview Pope Francis put more nails into that misunderstanding’s coffin: He said he made the Malta decision with Cardinal Burke’s approval, well before the Synod, but kept Cardinal Burke in his old position longer than he otherwise would have so that he could be involved in the Synod.
December: Fluffy Goes to Heaven!
The news made the front page of the New York Times: Pope Francis had reversed the mean conservative theology that denied Fluffy and Fido a place in heaven. “Pope Francis says dogs can go to heaven” is how the USA Today article, shared on many a Facebook wall, put it.
Alas, though, it is just not true. The report is just a misreported 1978 Pope Paul VI quote returning from the grave. Religion News Service tracked the falsehood’s journey into the U.S. media.
And so …
And so it remains, as I argued before, that Pope Francis serves as a kind of Rorschach test: We project our dreams or fears onto him. The media projects its wishful thinking on him and gets the story all wrong.
In the end, the best critic of papal misunderstandings is Pope Francis himself. “I don’t like the ideological interpretations, a certain ‘mythology of Pope Francis,’” he said in an interview one year into his pontificate. “Depicting the Pope to be a sort of superman, a type of star, seems offensive to me. The Pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps calmly and has friends like everyone. A normal person.”
Indeed, he is.
Tom Hoopesis writer-in-residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
And today we celebrate...