pope

January 9, 2014

The Pope Francis Phenomenon

Pope Francis wants a church that’s “bruised, hurting and dirty” – his words -- in the streets with real people, not confined or clinging to its own security. He had the audacity as no Pope before him to choose the beloved name Francis for the saint of birds and nature, the saint marked hand and foot with the wounds of Jesus.
Mary Gordon on Pope Francis: Hope for Grown-Ups
Peter Manseau on Growing Up Catholic in Boston as the Son of a Priest and a Nun

We’re searching the Pope Francis Phenomenon in this radio hour: the man from Argentina and his many messages from Rome, his body language, feet-washings, mob scenes in Vatican Square. He “even uses words” now and then, as the 13th Century Saint Francis urged back in the day.

Pope Francis wants a church that’s “bruised, hurting and dirty” – his words — in the streets with real people, not confined or clinging to its own security. He had the audacity as no Pope before him to choose the beloved name Francis for the saint of birds and nature, the saint marked hand and foot with the wounds of Jesus. As the votes were being cast to elect him last Spring, the name “entered my heart,” he said. “Francis of Assissi; for me he is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects others.”

We have to search his past, his plans for a faith and an institution that seemed to be limping. We want to search ourselves too: what is the human hunger Pope Francis has confirmed – not just Catholic or churchy — all across the world. What is the wave-length on which so many non-religious people “get” him? Why TIME magazine’s hands-down runaway pick for Man of the Year, 2013? And what does the blogger Andrew Sullivan mean when he says “you don’t have to be a believer to recognize a moment of grace…”? Delivering not hope, but “proof that hope is not groundless.”

Podcast • January 9, 2014

Peter Manseau on Growing Up Catholic in Boston as the Son of a Priest and a Nun

Peter Manseau wrote a brilliant op-ed in the Times a few months ago about married priests, a no-no in the Catholic Church, of course. But, nevertheless, his father was one, is one. He met Peter’s ...

Peter Manseau wrote a brilliant op-ed in the Times a few months ago about married priests, a no-no in the Catholic Church, of course. But, nevertheless, his father was one, is one. He met Peter’s mother in Dorchester years ago, married her and had to leave the priesthood as a result. They are still married today and his father still a priest, by his own lights. Peter is a devoted son but not an active Catholic. This goes in the file of the infinite varieties of religious experience – the individuality and courage and discrimination all kinds of people bring to their religious lives. We asked him to tell us his story of how this new Pope Francis has registered on his heart, his history.

Podcast • January 8, 2014

Mary Gordon on Pope Francis: Hope for Grown-Ups

Mary Gordon – a steady light among American writers labeled ‘Catholic’ – has strong, mixed emotions about the Pope who loves the same steamy Anna Magnani movies that the Catholic church used to ban. She ...

Mary Gordon – a steady light among American writers labeled ‘Catholic’ – has strong, mixed emotions about the Pope who loves the same steamy Anna Magnani movies that the Catholic church used to ban. She “burst into tears,” Gordon remembers, when she first read Pope Francis’ open-hearted interview in the Jesuit magazine America — his identification of himself as, first, “a sinner;” his picture of his church as “a field hospital after battle,” his sharp turn from “obsessive” fixations on sex. She got “hysterically giddy,” she’s telling me, then “scared.” Her tears signaled “how sad I’d been, for so long” about her church. Hope seems possible again, and disappointment, too. She makes writerly distinctions here – that “tone” matters and the Pope’s is a radical turn; but that his “diction” is different when he speaks of women in the priesthood. “His phrase was ‘the door is closed.’ What’s the one thing he won’t talk about? Giving full power to women.”

Mary Gordon is prized as independent-minded, feminist, faithful, and nuanced in novels and searching reflections from Final Payments (1978) to Reading Jesus (2009).

Mary Gordon gave us a roster of female theologians we all might get to know better: Elizabeth Johnson of Fordham,  Sandra Schneiders of Santa Clara, Lisa Cahill of Boston College, Margaret Farley at Yale and Mary Boys of the Union Theological Seminary in New York.