[Vision2020] Beyond the Bedroom

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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March 16, 2013
Beyond the Bedroom By FRANK
BRUNI<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/frank_bruni/index.html>

IT was too much to hope that after the white smoke rose and the TV anchors
began nervously filling time and the cameras lingered for what seemed an
eternity on that balcony over St. Peter’s Square, the man who stepped onto
it would be someone open to revisiting the most archaic, obsolete matters
of Roman Catholic doctrine. The group electing him was assembled by the
last two popes, both conservatives. Its choice was bound to be more carbon
copy than new page.

But it’s not too much to hope that the man who did appear there — and who
has lived a willfully humble material existence until now, and took the
name of the poor’s patron saint — will change the church’s emphasis. That’s
the great opportunity before Pope Francis, whose biography and style make
him an ideal candidate to point the church toward a new conversation and a
better focus for its spiritual energies. To have it dwell less in the
bedroom, more in the soup kitchen.

It’s time for the church to stop talking so much about sex. It’s the
perfect time, in fact.

It’s on matters of sexual morality that the church has lost much of its
authority. And it’s on matters of sexual morality that it largely wastes
its breath. By insisting on mandatory celibacy for a priesthood winnowed
and sometimes warped by that, by opposing the use of contraceptives for
birth control, by casting judgment on homosexuals and by decrying divorce
while running something of an annulment mill, the church’s leaders have
enraged and alienated Catholics whose common sense and whose experience of
the real world tell them that none of that is wise, kind or necessary.

The church’s leaders have also set themselves up to be dismissed as
hypocrites, unable to uphold the very virtues they promulgate. Just weeks
before the conclave, the most senior Catholic prelate in Britain, Cardinal
Keith O’Brien, resigned his post, forgoing a trip to Rome and a vote on the
next pope, because he’d been accused of, and admitted
to<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/03/cardinal-keith-obrien-admits-sexual-misconduct>,
sexual misconduct. His case suggested the potential loneliness of a
Catholic clergyman’s circumstances, and those circumstances, in the eyes of
many Catholics, cast priests as odd, flawed messengers and counselors on
the subject of a person’s intimate life.

The new pope’s own story includes a bold lesson on Catholics’ estrangement
from, and defiance of, church edicts in this regard. More than 90 percent
of Argentines identify themselves as Catholic, and in 2010, as the
country’s politicians debated the nationwide legalization of same-sex
marriage, Pope Francis — who was then a cardinal, and arguably the most
prominent church official in the country — lobbied vociferously, even
venomously, against that proposed law. He called it nothing less than a “plan
of the devil<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/world/americas/argentines-divide-over-selection-of-pope-francis.html>.”
It nonetheless passed, with some observers speculating that the stridency
of his opposition worked in its favor. Argentina is now one of 11 countries
that have legalized gay marriage. Two of the others, Spain and Portugal,
also have populations that are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, at least
nominally.

The child sexual abuse crisis, of course, has factored mightily into the
church’s eroded credibility on sexual morality. And the media’s sustained
examination of that crisis has made it difficult for church leaders to
redirect attention toward the church’s concern for economic justice, its
ministry to the needy and the extraordinary work that many of the church’s
servants perform on those fronts.

But new cases and new revelations are ebbing or certain to ebb. Fewer
cardinals and bishops now indulge the kind of denial that protected
molesters and abetted cover-ups. And there’s not a watchful parent anywhere
who would unquestioningly let a son or daughter go off with Father Bruce
for long periods of time. Years ago, such permission aggravated the
problem: priests — men of God — were trusted in situations where no other
adult with an unusually intense interest in children would be. That epoch
is over, that innocence lost.

POPE Francis comes along at an opportune juncture. There’s a growing
consciousness and worry about inequities of wealth in a world in which
the estimated
1.3 billion <http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview> people
living in extreme poverty, with an income of $1.25 a day or less, outnumber
the roughly 1.2 billion Catholics.

That desperation is fertile territory for the church, whose voice is most
persuasive and essential on the landscapes of hunger, homelessness,
sickness, war. To many Catholics, active and lapsed, the beauty of the
faith and the essence of Jesus Christ reside in a big-hearted compassion
that has been eclipsed and often contradicted by church leaders’ excursions
into the culture wars.

Pope Francis could pull back on those excursions. He’d be wise to, and he’s
well positioned to. In Argentina he was known in part for his rejection of
material wealth and his concern for those without it. He opted for a simple
apartment over a baronial residence. Did his own cooking. Rode the bus.
Advised supporters not to travel all the way to Rome for the ceremony in
which he became a cardinal.

The money necessary for the trip, he told them, was better donated to a
good cause.

And during his first 48 hours as pope, he clung to that sort of humility,
riding with other cardinals in a
minivan<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/world/europe/pope-francis.html>rather
than alone in a papal chariot. The vigor with which fellow cardinals
and Vatican spokesmen heralded this suggested their eagerness for a new
image for the church and their understanding that the pivot from Benedict
XVI to Francis — from furs to frugality — might provide it.

It’s a gilded enclave that Francis is entering, one of grand rooms,
majestic artwork, regal costumes. From my time on the papal plane a decade
ago, I remember sumptuous meals wheeled up to the first-class section where
Vatican officials sat. They ate well.

And that has turned off many Catholics: the perception that these officials
are coddled, arrogant and out of touch. Francis could challenge that and,
in doing so, have a real impact.

I know more than a few Catholics who, despite no other involvement in the
church, make it a point to have their children christened. I always figured
them to be superstitious. They’re hedging their bets.

But there’s more to it. On the far side of all the church scandals and all
its misspent energy, these Catholics still see a fundamental set of values,
a compass, that they don’t want to lose touch with or give up on. The
church’s stubborn attachment to certain negotiable traditions and
unenlightened positions has distanced them, but they’re not entirely gone.
It’ll be interesting to see how, and if, Francis tries to bring them back.



•

I invite you to visit my blog <http://bruni.blogs.nytimes.com/>, follow me
on Twitter at twitter.com/frankbruni and join me on
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/frankbruninyt>
.

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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