Looking Back at 2015: The Church

by Michael Sean Winters | Dec. 23, 2015

If the year 2015 was dismal in the world of politics, as discussed yesterday, it was a far more hopeful year in the life of the Church, both the Church universal and the Church in the United States. Both here and elsewhere, that hopefulness has a single source, our amazing Pope Francis.

The Holy Father began the year with a trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Millions, literally, turned out to see him, to pray with him, to cheer him on. From the interviews conducted with the people lining the streets of Manila, they did not seem “confused” by what the pope had to say, the way some high–ranking prelates and conservative commentators complain that they are confused. The Holy Father’s trip to South America again showed him at his best, especially his extraordinary speech to the meeting of social movements in Bolivia, which was a kind of mini–encyclical.

Then there was the trip to Cuba and the U.S. Did he hit a wrong note in either country? Nope. His speech before the U.S. Congress could not have been more deft. Reflect for a moment on the way he reminded the assembled legislators about the foundational role of the right to life, which made the Democrats start to squirm, followed immediately by his call for the abolition of the death penalty, which made the Republicans start to squirm. That is what a religious leader who exercises his ministry in the name of Jesus Christ should do when speaking to the powerful: Make them squirm. He left the U.S. Capitol and went to Catholic Charities and there he made no one squirm, but showered his love and his core respect for other human beings, especially those who are poor and suffering, on the homeless people gathered for lunch. The Holy Father’s visit to the prison in Philadelphia was, for me, the highlight of the entire trip. If watching him greet the prisoners one–by–one, shaking their hands, embracing them upon request, treating them with dignity and compassion, if that did not move you to tears, you have a heart of stone.

The Synod on the Family showed the opposition to the pope at full bore. I am told more than one curial cardinal told the pope he couldn’t do what he thought he could do. That nasty letter, signed by thirteen cardinals, impugning the integrity of the process and the pope’s choice of a drafting committee, marked a new low in papal opposition. Yet, that supposedly suspect drafting committee yielded a document that secured two–thirds support for each of its paragraphs and the text, as a whole, set a tone for the anticipated apostolic exhortation to call upon the Church to do more for those whose lives are not so neat and tidy, those who need the Lord’s mercy amidst the brokenness they have endured. Like the Master confronting the doctors of the law, he reminded the assembled pastors that it is not their place to burden the people of God, but to serve them. It was a stunning achievement not least because of the opposition the pope had to overcome. Indeed, it is worth noting that the intensity of the opposition the pope faces in the curia is a measure of his seriousness about reform. If it were just window dressing, as some of his critics on the left seem to think, there would not be so much opposition.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/looking-back-2015-church