ASLEEP AT THE VATICAN [F, 4-25-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Memorials of an FOF [1] —ASLEEP AT THE VATICAN [F, 4-25-25]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy sent the following to me:

 

As a father, I know that is true. Of course, in my case, it was because I knew they could create no more havoc for me if they were asleep. Come to think of it, that’s probably the way God views it, too.

Except maybe for Francis. I doubt that God ever worried about Francis causing havoc, the way God had to worry about a couple of other guys named Francis—my father and brother, both with the middle name of Francis.

I feel that I should write about Francis, as his soul makes the transition from an earthly body to a spiritual body [I Corinthians 15]. but there is very little that this Methodist can say about the leader of the Roman Catholic Church that others have not said better.

Except I don’t think of Francis as the leader of all those people. I think of him simply as a fellow Christian, because that is the way he thought of himself. He seemed to me to be the kind of man who would have sat down with a commoner like me—we are the same age, after all--and had a cup of coffee and chatted about our mutual concerns for The Body of Christ, the church. I would have felt comfortable telling him about all my ideas for how he could renew the church, and he would have listened respectfully and humbly, and then been smart enough to ignore me.

 

Because he was smart, for real. So many leaders these days, unlike Francis, are so stupid that they think they are smart when they are not. Because, even more importantly than being smart, he was humble, as befits one who shares a name with the prophet and church reformer of Assisi. In a time when most religious leaders, and leaders of all sorts, claim to be infallible, Francis was a model of humility. Other leaders of today want to be feared. Francis wanted to be trusted.

One of the stupidest things we do in America, especially in the media, is talk about “the transfer of power” as we go from one president to another. No, in a democracy, there is no power to transfer. There is only a transfer of responsibility.

Francis understood that for his church to move into position to be useful in proclaiming Christ in the modern world, it needed to move from its old hierarchical power approach into a lateral responsibility commitment. He saw his own role not as power but service.

Francis started a new reformation in his church, moving it toward greater acceptance of the people normally left outside the walls of the basilica.

 

No reformation lasts without pushback. Some conservative folks have always criticized Francis for being too liberal, Be assured that as a new pope is elected, there will be forces that want to forget Francis, to return to the excluding ways of the past, to the power approach where a few get to lord it over the masses. [Pun intended.]

Now he is being criticized by liberals for saying the right things but not actually changing the structures of the church. Damned by both right and left, he must have been doing something right.

I think that “something right” is this: Francis made it clear, through example if not rubrics, that inclusion and exclusion are human choices, not divine commands. Once that is so clearly stated, it cannot ever be totally obscured.

Now, brother Francis, rest in peace, upheld by the everlasting arms.

John Robert McFarland

1] FOF – Friend Of Francis