A Revolution of Mission

by Editor · Published September 25, 2013 · Updated May 7, 2017

A Little over six months ago, an elderly South American appeared on a balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square and bade the crowd a good evening. That Buona sera was gentle and self-effacing, but it launched what may turn out to be a revolution of the Church so thorough that it cannot possibly revert to old ways when the time comes for the arrival of a new pope, an event we pray may be long in the future.

“Pope Francis is taking it a step further by advocating that the Church be not only for the poor, but itself be poor.” (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

This revolution is not one of the magisterium, as some might have hoped. Indeed, it is perhaps more profound than that. Pope Francis is giving the Catholic Church a new identity.

There is a brave new wind blowing, one that is stirring up the accumulation of dust in the Church.

We see the revolution in the small things: when the pope carries his own briefcase, gets behind the wheel of a car, makes his own telephone calls, pays his hotel bill all acts which grab our attention because they defy our expectation of papal protocol.

Pope Francis is demystifying the papal office, and with it the offices on all clerical levels. He is the consummate pastor. He teaches that priests must earn esteem by what they do and how they do it as they walk with the People of God.

We see the revolution in the symbolic things. Pope Francis reportedly has acknowledged that by living in a guesthouse instead of the papal apartment which itself isn’t particularly palatial he is hoping to encourage in others more modest lifestyles.

He has stripped down the papal throne and done away with many of the trappings of the ostentatious which are traditionally associated with the papacy.

Pope Benedict XVI was pro-poor, radically so. Pope Francis is taking it a step further by advocating that the Church be not only for the poor, but itself be poor.

When Pope Francis insists that the shepherds must smell like the sheep, his example is the deodorant of evangelisation.

We see the revolution in the pope’s vision of the Church. After many years of division among Catholics, Pope Francis is calling us to unity by shining his light less on matters of doctrine but on the salvific mission of Christ, God’s perennial love and mercy, the Church’s sacrament, Our Lady’s protection, the Christian obligation that rests with us all, and so on.

Where Popes John Paul II and Benedict were willing to concede division in the Church as an inevitable condition of solidifying doctrine, Pope Francis is calling on Catholics to focus on what unites us.

Pope Francis is not advocating, to use the terminology favoured by Pope Benedict, a hermeneutic of discontinuity, but by returning to the roots of the Church, he preaches a hermeneutic of radical continuity.

But this must not be read to mean that the teachings of the Church are now negotiable. The Franciscan revolution is not going to deliver doctrinal reform. Pope Francis is doctrinally conservative and does not suffer open dissent gladly.

There may be modifications in emphasis for example, the pope has said very little about same-sex unions, a subject that occupied the previous papacy but he will not change the Church’s doctrines and disciplines governing women priests, clerical celibacy, homosexuality, birth control, abortion and so on.

At the same time, it is clear that Pope Francis is seeking a more collegial spirit across the Church. Time will tell where this will lead us.

The budding revolution has already changed public perception of the Catholic Church. Pope Francis energises the Church in ways not seen since the heyday of John Paul II. He connects even with people whose default position on the Church is to be critical.

Pope Francis is opening the doors of the Churchnot only for the seekers of God to enter, but also for Catholics to go out into the world and spread the Good News.

It is an openness that serves as the fundamental basis for evangelisation, one from which all the other gifts of our faith can be revealed.

In this way, we are at the beginning of a revolution of mission.