The Francis Effect?

The year began with an unprovoked attack on a US military base. It shattered a truce that had been brokered by Pope Paul VI. At the end of that January, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, ushering in the beginning of the end of American hopes for a victory in Southeast Asia. 1968 was the height of the war for America. We had over half a million troops there with more than 16,000 killed in action. It was also our most expensive year in terms of the money we spent on the war. We were in it up to our necks and the American people were watching it on the television news every night. The protest movement took hold and the long goodbye began. Some people say that our country has never been the same since.

In the decades between 1968 and 2015, a lot of scholarly analysis has looked deeply into the Vietnam era. This is not that kind of analysis. This is a middle-aged woman looking back to a confusing and fearful time. I was growing up in a country that felt as if it had lost its way. We had divided ourselves into opposing camps. We screamed slogans at one another, but we had forgotten how to listen. Our leaders weren’t statesmen as much as media figures who spent their energies blasting their opposition. And every night we watched the film from the front lines and hoped we wouldn’t see someone we recognized being lifted onto a stretcher. All these years later, we’re still dealing with the consequences of those pivotal years.

As a Catholic in America it feels a bit like 1968 again. We aren’t at war exactly, but we seem to be floundering. My Church is under the pastoral leadership of a new Pope. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Pope Francis is in the media a lot these days. Everything he says tends to become a headline. He says he’s going to reform the Vatican bureaucracy and vows that the Church will be more focused on serving the poor. Yet some of the issues he speaks about in public have confused many Catholics, me included. Pope Francis has given some “conservative” Churchmen new assignments and has promoted others viewed as “liberal” He wants the Church to have an open discussion on same-sex relationships, extramarital sex, and divorced and remarried Catholics. It makes it seem like he wants to change what the Church has taught for centuries. That’s where the “floundering” comes into play.

All this “busyness” and calls for discussing the practices of our faith has prompted some rumblings in the pews. It can be unsettling when something you care deeply about is undergoing change. It’s even more disturbing when you hear our leaders comparing the Church to a “ship without a rudder”(Cardinal Raymond Burke, 10/21/14).Sometimes it feels like we don’t have a clear direction. Sometimes it feels like 1968.

But the Church isn’t a country in wartime. Nor is she led by a President and a Congress. The Church is the Bride of Christ and is led by the Holy Spirit. We aren’t a democracy. Public opinion polls have no place in our faith. When you think your country is headed down the wrong path, you vote in new leadership. When you are in the Church that Christ founded on St. Peter, you pray for the Pope and our bishops and priests. You do your homework by investigating Church teaching and you don’t take every headline at face value. You go to Mass and Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament. You trust that God is in control and will never allow His Church to teach or support error. You believe His words to the Apostles: “…the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). You know that fears and division are sown by the enemy and have no place among us. We cling to the Cross and we pray for one another. God has a great plan for His Church and each one of us has a part to play in it.

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and ‘Hallelujah’ is our song.”
—-Pope St. John Paul II