If the faithful came to Capitol Hill hoping to be spiritually wowed by a papal sermon to rival that delivered by the Galilean master on another hill at another time, they would have left with a somewhat empty feeling. Although no one will have been necessarily expecting a reprise of the loaves and fishes routine, the faithful among the pilgrims and lawmakers might have hoped for something more – an actual sermon perhaps.
One is always reluctant to criticise a Pope. In the glory days of the church it usually ended with a particularly unpleasant and humiliating death, often involving fire. Even in our more enlightened modern era, tearing up a photo of the Pope during a live performance of one’s latest ditty is frowned upon, as Irish singer Sinead O’Connor experienced ca. 1992. Whilst Pope John Paul II was, generally, well regarded, even if appearing at times in public like a corpse well before he actually was one; his successor Pope Benedict endured the unfortunate twin handicaps of presiding over the explosion of child abuse revelations whilst seeking to reassure the masses in a thick Germanic accent that always seemed to recall the less glorious moments of that nation’s past. The current Pope speaks with a charmingly florid Spanish accent in broken English, for which he is much admired.
So there were high hopes among the faithful for the Pope’s address to the Congress, whilst visiting the United States, direct from Cuba. A strong sermonic calling of the nation back to God perhaps? A condemnation of the godless ways of the modern legislature and its obsession with political correctness? Not on your life. The socio-political lecture the Holy Father did, in fact preach (deliver), was lapped up by the starstruck American media, and widely circulated in digital form as required reading among wealthy socialists, a sure sign that it lacked anything much resembling a religious message even if it was being delivered by a religious leader
Rather than being moved to ponder the things of God, or being tearfully reaffirmed in one’s Christian faith, there was, nothing much in the Papal discourse by way of spiritual succour or challenge for atheist or god-botherer alike. Even the avowedly irreverent must have left the chamber wondering if it would be at all possible for the leader of the largest religious Christian organisation on earth to squeeze in some reference to the Almighty. If said Almighty does, in fact, exist (and there was nothing much in the Papal oration to confirm or deny this), one can only assume the deity was experiencing much the same sense of perplexity at having been left wondering whether or not the matter of God the Son becoming incarnate and enduring the agony of the cross might have occurred to the Holy Father as worthy of a mention in the context of an oration given by the Almighty’s number one go to guy this side of heaven.
But this was, of course, much more political lecture than sermon, and far more concerned with the need to address climate change than with personal sin and the need for a Saviour. What use, anyway, is the Son of God nailed to a cross when you are faced with sea level rises of a few millimetres a year? All in all, the European migrant crisis, climate change, the death penalty, the human rights movement, climate change, the founder of the Catholic worker movement, the (re)distribution of wealth, climate change, and finally the importance of the family, all figured prominently in the Papal discourse. Apart from a fleeting reference to Moses, the Bible was left unopened. Even the moral imperatives were theology free – the importance of the family was introduced because the Popemobile heads next to a conference on that theme in Philadelphia, not in the context of a lesson in moral theology for the legislature.
Among the prominent mentions were Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day (no, not Doris Day), and Thomas Merton, all of whom received extended hagiography. A certain Jesus of Nazareth, however, did not merit any direct mention, although one of his more memorable aphorisms was recalled, somewhat divorced of its context in reference to the European refugee crisis. But it was not all bad news for the Holy Trinity – the lecture did end with the invocation “God bless America,” this a sure reference to the omnipotent one, even if the benediction was no more profound than that routinely trotted out by half tanked dinner suited types when receiving an Oscar.
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Source: Transcript: Pope Francis’s speech to Congress – The Washington Post
