Mary Kenny
Following “a terrific reception for his latest document Amoris Laetitia” in America, there are those “who feel that he hasn’t gone far enough”, writes Mary Kenny
I have a friend who wrote a well-researched book about the British royal family as a shrewdly ‘marketed’ celebrity product. When I asked him how his book had been received by reviewers and bookseller outlets, he sighed: “I suspect that it wasn’t sufficiently royalist for those who like the royals, and it wasn’t sufficiently republican for those who disparage them.”
It has indeed been said that those who take the middle-of-the-road approach often get run down.
When I was in the United States last week, I observed that Pope Francis got a terrific reception for his latest document Amoris Laetitia. The media ran approving headlines, and public radio and TV were full of positive commentary on Francis’ “warm compassion” and sense of “pastoral care” for divorced Catholics – and his endorsement of women’s equality.
It was wonderful, they reported, that he urged his followers never to be “judgemental”. True, there weren’t any major doctrinal changes, but it was evident that the Pope’s tone of voice and compassionate attitudes struck a welcoming note.
Message
From what I read of Amoris Laetitia, it seemed to me to be perfectly embedded in Gospel teaching. “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” is written in black and white in the New Testament, and the message couldn’t be clearer. It’s hardly entirely surprising that the Pope should reiterate this teaching.
And while the institution of the Catholic Church has indeed been patriarchal, there is also a long history of women’s participation in the Faith. You only have to consult the standard biographical dictionary of the saints (issued by Penguin in paperback) to find the evidence.
But now come the criticisms of Francis, both from more conservative Catholics, who feel that he is softening the orthodoxies of the Church, and from the liberals, who feel that he hasn’t gone far enough. Mary McAleese, notably, has disparaged the document as lacking “in imagination and innovation”, and being “doctrinally… very traditional”. She feels he hasn’t properly tackled issues in family life today.
I wonder if Francis may share the position of the royal chronicler: occupying the middle of the road, you get run over by both sides.
US churches owe much to Irish Catholics
In New York, I re-visited St Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue which my late sister Ursula so loved. It’s still impressive, though dismayingly touristique: the side altars are sometimes obstructed by visitors taking selfie photographs.
And then I discovered St Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Mott Street, Greenwich Village – an absolute gem of a basilica, dating from 1815, and “the first church in the US to be dedicated to Ireland’s patron saint”.
The names of the priests and bishops over the last 200 years show just how much it owed to Irish Catholics: John Cardinal McCloskey (the first US cardinal), Frs Peter Walsh, John Connolly, Andrew Byrne, John Kearney, William Quinn and many more. In the 1830s it was attacked by anti-Catholic mobs.
I sat in the beauty and stillness and listened to the organist playing, with great skill and serenity.
The complexities of human frailty
Much admiration has been rightly expressed for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who has discovered, at the age of 60, that his biological father was not the late Gavin Welby – his mother’s husband – but a previous boyfriend of hers, Sir Anthony Montague Browne (who happened to be Winston Churchill’s aide).
Dr Welby has taken the news like a man – and like an exemplary Christian too. He has not castigated his mother: rather he has praised her for overcoming alcoholism, which had been a serious problem (and which seems to have been a factor in the pregnancy, according to her own statements). Dr Welby has not said he was a “victim”, or that his whole life is now in crisis.
On the contrary, he sees redemption in his – and his mother’s – story, as is possible in every story.
He has said that “I know that I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics”. He still respects the memory of the man who raised him, Gavin Welby, a whiskey salesman, who was originally a Jewish immigrant, born Bernard Weiler.
The complexities of human frailty revealed in the light of grace – in every sense of the word.