I’ll begin with two confessions: First, my sense of hope for the future is rather dim, if not quite non-existent. And second, there was a time, not too long ago, when I’d all but given up on Catholicism. I felt that Christianity was too self-obsessed, that the Church’s leaders had betrayed the teachings of Jesus: to love unconditionally, to show compassion especially toward those on the periphery of the periphery.
My disillusionment with the Catholic Church really began after divinity school. The faith I’d practiced since childhood had become a nuisance, a scandal even, not least because of the sex-abuse scandals––a scourge that left no corner of the Church unsullied, all the way to the highest levels of the Vatican. I have little tolerance for spiritual abuse or coercion. I became a kind of anti-Church. I quit my gig as a high-school theology teacher and entered law school. I even wrote a brief piece on my flirtation with atheism. My skepticism and suspicion of the Church lasted for some time.
Then something unexpected happened. Pope Benedict XVI resigned, and thanks to that unlikely (though not entirely unprecedented) act, a new pope, Francis, emerged. He didn’t just change the course of Church history and politics. Francis also helped me find my way back to an institution I had sworn off.
Francis’s pontificate brought much to celebrate. Of course I applaud his attempts at reforming the Curia, his emphasis on making Vatican finances more transparent, and his commitment to fostering synodality and mercy. When asked by a Vatican reporter why humanity is so in need of mercy, Francis answered, “Because humanity is wounded, deeply wounded. Either it does not know how to cure its wounds or it believes that it’s not possible to cure them.” Francis’s teachings and pastoral ministry refuse to succumb to what he called a “globalization of indifference” that prevents collective human healing. His unwavering commitment to the poor and marginalized—especially refugees and stateless people—and his efforts to expand women’s roles in Church leadership have been inspiring, as has the pontiff’s constant attention to care for creation amid the crisis of global warming.
But no one is perfect, and idolizing Francis risks obscuring the hand of God, present even amid messiness and imperfections. Francis could have done more to promote women’s ordination; he could have spoken out more forcefully on the inclusion of queer Catholics. The Church has always struggled with sexuality and gender, but that is no excuse, really. Loving unconditionally means loving without conditions—or it means nothing.
I consider Laudato si’ to be the crowning achievement of Francis’s pontificate. (His repudiation of the nefarious Doctrine of Discovery is a close second.) I mentioned earlier that I leave little room for hope for what’s ahead in our world. My students also express a sense of hopelessness––perhaps even dread––at the current state of affairs and the prospect of a bleak future. One student recently wrote to me in email: “Maybe we just have to go through a shared depression to propel us into acceptance of a new world and hopefully people learn from the mistake of capitalism.” I have been writing about the need to embrace hopelessness for some time now; it usually falls on deaf ears, unless my audience is under twenty-five.
Despite wide coverage in the Catholic press and elsewhere, and despite its unequivocal critiques of capitalism, Laudato si’ remains strangely under the radar. I have taught introductory Catholic theology courses at three Catholic universities for the past five years. During the first week of class, I anonymously poll my students to gauge their overall familiarity of Catholicism, and with Francis’s writings in particular. Out of the 534 students polled during this five-year span, only 54—just 10%—had ever encountered Laudato si’ in their education and lives. Yet 67% identified as Catholic. Clearly, there is a disconnect.
But just because they’re unfamiliar with Laudato si’ doesn’t mean they’re uninterested. On the contrary: I’ve seen students grow curious about intergenerational cooperation and the inherent unsustainability of a “throw-away society.” They’ve grown up in an age of disconnection and distraction; Francis’s message resonates with them. Why aren’t more Church officials—and theology professors, for that matter—engaging them?
Latinx theologians speak of “lo cotidiano”––that is, everyday life and reality—as a context for theological reflection. Francis’s whole pontificate can be interpreted in light of this concept, too. With respect to his scholarly predecessor, Francis showed again and again that theology, quite literally, is done in the streets. Hence his constant travel, his obvious sense of ease in prisons and slums and homeless shelters—the places where many of us prefer never to go, so as not to see. But Francis never averted his gaze: he kept his eyes fixed on reality, on bodies, especially those in pain, not just migrants and the elderly, but the victims of genocide and war. He kept up his daily calls with the only Catholic parish in Gaza until the very end of his life.
In his book Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, Mark D. Jordan writes that “example-characters tend to matter more in the writing of premodern ethics than principles, rules, or cases.” What he means is that for most of human history, we humans learned morality not from abstract concepts but from other bodies, from other people. Of course, the role of the embodied teacher has always been a dominant feature of Christian moral teaching. Jesus used examples and parables to illustrate the essence of the law. Francis’s last lesson was his weak, frail body—on full display during his final few public appearances. His ailing body—swollen, tired, lacking the lightness that we’d all grown used to—reminded us that mortality need not be a cause of shame.
During a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Elon Musk stated that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” He’s wrong: the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is lack of empathy, especially for the most undesirable and marginalized. Cruelty and injustice are paradigmatic of modernity; vulnerability, compassion, and empathy are liabilities in an economic system that prizes calculated efficiency and high output. Francis, following the ancient Jewish teacher and rebel, instructs otherwise. No wonder the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal criticized the pope, on the day after his death, for being a “champion of the poor while favoring ideas that keep them poor.”
Money or artificial intelligence can’t facilitate real human connection; only vulnerability does. Vulnerability cues mortality and death, a fate that awaits us all. This shared sense of humanity, of our flesh on its way to death, can propel us beyond ego and enmity, toward a capacious compassion that truly borders on the divine.
Before the papal funeral begins, before the conclave and the media circus and never-ending stream of takes that will surely surround it, take a moment to ponder Francis’s lifeless body as it lies in state at the Vatican. There, you’ll see the powerlessness that lay, paradoxically, at the very heart of his pontificate. Perhaps it’s too much to hope that one day, that flesh—along with ours, too—will rise. But to what other miracles did Francis bear witness on his mystical pilgrimage of love and compassion within all-too-human constraints?
