Here is a wonderful letter from Harvey Cox to The New York Times, courtesy of my friend George Wilson, who is Cox's good friend:
Dear Editor:
I read your article (Sunday 10 Nov.) just after returning from Rome where I met Pope Francis personally after he had spoken to twenty thousand enthusiastic people from at least a dozen countries in St. Peter’s Square. He has an immense job ahead of him, and of course he will face some opposition. Yet in talking with him he seemed calm and centered, but open and unassuming. He listens well, and has already sent a questionnaire asking a billion Catholics for their views on important issues facing the Church. As we parted, he took my hand in both his and asked me to pray for him. I intend to, and I wish those who are already grumbling about him would cease their complaining and do the same.
Harvey Cox,
Hollis Professor of Divinity
Harvard University
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Prescience
I make no claim to prescience - foreknowledge of something before it happens; even less to precognition, which has become associated with paranormal psychology and extrasensory perception, although the word's Latin origin (præ-, "before" + cognitio, "acquiring knowledge") suggests nothing about extrasensory knowledge. The acquisition of knowledge is always tenuous, tentative and developmental, although it can sometimes feel like it happens in a flash of what we usually call insight.
Perhaps waking from a dream - we have, after all, been engaged in what Freud called "dream work" while asleep - we may discover that we have found the solution to last night's puzzle. Usually that means we have loosened our hold on the felt need for the solution. That may seem like precognition - in effect, we think we knew the solution before we knew we knew it - and is usually a pleasant surprise. Dierdre Barrett, a professor of behavioral medicine at Harvard Medical School, published a study of "dream incubation" in the journal Dreaming in 1993, suggesting that going to sleep with a problem on one's mind often resulted in memorable dreams about that problem, leaving a conscious residual movement towards solution.
I've wandered from prescience, but not very far. And I have yet to come to Pope Francis. So I'll cut to the chase. More useful words than prescience are premonition and intuition. Carl Jung sometimes referred to intuition as the capability to "see around corners." A useful analogy, but only that. We don't literally have x-ray capacity to see through the brick wall to what remains invisible around the corner. The analogy is nonetheless useful because it returns us to our senses. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, the shiver of embodied anticipation: all contribute to our sense of what's "around the corner." So do our hopes and fears.
Pope Francis
So to Pope Francis. Since hearing of his seemingly offhand remark about gay life and marriage, "Who am I to judge?," I've been listening to Francis with hope for - premonition of - a more tolerant, humane and humble papacy. As John Feffer has recently remarked, Pope Francis "has
brought the Franciscan ethos of humility into the magnificent halls of the Vatican. Indeed, Pope Francis signaled his new style by eschewing the richly appointed papal apartment in favor of the Saint Marta hotel. That’s a four-star accommodation, but it’s still a step down from where his predecessors bunked. It allows the new pope to maintain some distance from the flatteries and intrigues of the Vatican, what he has called 'the leprosy of the papacy.'
He has expressed the view "that the Church should be more catholic in its embrace of others: gays, atheists, those who use contraception, those overcome with doubt. He has even gone so far as to call proselytism 'solemn nonsense.'" Feffer writes that there three distinct realms in which Pope Francis may bring a kind of liberation theology to the Church, specifically in the United States.
The first is immigration: "In September, the new pope emphatically stood with the vulnerable with his message on the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. 'Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity.... They are children, women and men who leave or who are forced to leave their homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having, but above all for being more.”
So Feffer writes,
"To do: Perhaps a visit by Pope Francis to key House districts in the United States could provide the push the Obama administration needs to get comprehensive immigration reform, which the Senate passed over the summer, through Congress."
Feffer's second realm is economic justice: the enormous problem of growing inequality. "After all, Feffer reminds us, "he adopted his name to honor the legacy of Francis of Assisi, who abandoned his wealth to live practically as a beggar, ministering to the poor, the lepers, and the animals. Last month, Francis decried the 'globalization of indifference' and urged world leaders to break down 'the barriers of individualism and the slavery of profit at all cost.' He has not been afraid to point fingers. Growing inequality has resulted 'from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, thus denyng the right of control to States, which are charged with providing for the common good.'"
A second To Do: "Pope Francis has already met with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to talk about ways to alleviate extreme poverty. Perhaps he could next meet with the IMF’s Christine Lagarde to roll back the austerity mindset that dominates thinking about the global economy."
Finally, the realm of Islam:
"Pope Francis has sought to repair ties with the world of Islam. As Akbar Ahmed and Craig Considine have written in The Washington Post, 'Before an audience of ambassadors from 180 countries, he explained how he wanted to work for peace and bridge-building between peoples. Muslims and Catholics, he claimed, needed to intensify their dialogue. Positive shockwaves were sent into Muslim-Catholic circles, and Muslim scholars and religious institutions around the world welcomed Pope Francis’s election.'"
To do: "Pope Francis could help the world move from the heightened tensions of the post-9/11 era into an era of mutual understanding. Maybe it’s time for another major address in Cairo, with a new and more pointed message about the need to cooperate across confessional boundaries."
Feffer concludes, "If Pope Francis's audacity not only shakes up the Catholic Church (Vatican III, anyone?) but also helps to reframe globalization and geopolitics (a tall order indeed), then the Nobel committee might start thinking about awarding its first peace prize to a pontiff."
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Another important message from the Vatican, reported by Agence France Press:
The Vatican on Tuesday launched an unprecedented worldwide consultation on the new realities of family life including gay marriage as part of Pope Francis’s efforts to reform the Catholic Church.
A questionnaire has been sent to bishops around the world asking them for detailed information about the “many new situations requiring the Church’s attention and pastoral care”.
“Concerns which were unheard of until a few years ago have arisen today as a result of different situations, from the widespread practice of cohabitation… to same-sex unions,” it said.
The 39 questions are unusual because of their non-judgemental, practical nature in what could be a signal of greater openness and increased pastoral care regardless of a believer’s background.
Referring to gay couples, one questions asks: “What pastoral attention can be given to people who have chosen to live in these types of union?”
“In the case of unions of persons of the same sex who have adopted children, what can be done pastorally in light of transmitting the faith?”
On remarried divorcees, who under the current rules are not allowed to receive Holy Communion in a Catholic church, the questionnaire asks: “Do they feel marginalised or suffer from the impossibility of receiving the sacraments?”
On divorce and separated couples in general, it asks: “How do you deal with this situation in appropriate pastoral programmes?”
The initiative is part of preparations for a synod of bishops next year and another in 2015 that the Vatican said will formulate “working guidelines in the pastoral care of the person and the family”.
Lorenzo Baldisseri, head of the synod of bishops, told reporters that the meeting’s theme “reflects very well the pastoral zeal with which the Holy Father wishes to approach the proclamation of the Gospel to the family in today’s world”.
He said the consultation also showed Francis, who has said the Catholic Church is too “Vatican-centric”, wanted more “collegiality”.
Cardinal Peter Erdo, president of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, referred in particular to the increase in cohabiting Catholic couples who do not intend to marry, saying “the phenomenon requires a deepened reflection.”
Pope Francis has shown a more open style since being elected in March and a desire to bring the Catholic Church more in touch with the lives of ordinary people, although experts say he is unlikely to bring about major changes in doctrine.
Francis has said priests should baptise children even when the parents are not married and, when asked recently about his views on gays, he replied: “If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?”