The eCrozier

In an eCrozier in November of 2013, I wrote that Francis had become the first “Anglican Pope.” Today, I’m even more convinced that’s the case. I wrote then: “this Pope is a man who has a deep and abiding faith in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. His strong faith gives him the freedom to be gracious and compassionate and to approach life with humility, openness, and curiosity. Maybe that’s why he’s so confounding to so many people, both in the Roman Church and outside it.”

In his recently published document called Amoris Laetitia, or “The Joy of Love,” he didn’t issue any new doctrine. He, however, insisted that his clergy focus on the pastoral care of their flock, rather than on the judging of them. Each Roman Catholic, he contends, should listen to their individual consciences while also keeping in mind the Church’s dogma. This doesn’t mean Francis is throwing out Roman Catholic dogma. Rather, he seems to be saying that an individual’s conscience matters and if a person deep in her/his heart discerns something to be God’s will for her/his life, then that may well be the truth she/he must follow. He’s creating some “wiggle room” between the experience of the individual and the official teaching of the Church.  

We Anglicans live in that “wiggle room,” not because we’re “soft on sin” or because we don’t believe Jesus or the Mosaic Law taught us moral behavior, but because we know that life is usually messy, that we don’t always make the right choices (not a news flash), and that such “wiggle room” is where we often experience the powerful thrust of God’s grace in our lives. Pope Francis calls upon his flock, and particularly his clergy, to “examine the actual situation of families, in order to keep firmly grounded in reality.” Whenever we put rules above people’s lives, then we tend to get hard-hearted, caring more about the rules than the people who are called to keep them. Yes, Francis acknowledges that Jesus set forth a demanding ideal for his disciples, but in doing so Jesus “never failed to show compassion and closeness to the frailty of individuals.”

And then we have Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who recently received news that the man he thought was his biological father, Gavin Welby, actually wasn’t. Instead the Archbishop learned that it was Sir Anthony Montague Browne who for many years was the private secretary to Winston Churchill. In explaining what happened, the Archbishop’s mother wrote that right before her wedding to Gavin Welby, she was “fuelled by a large amount of alcohol” and “went to bed with Anthony Montague Browne.” Such news could’ve become the brunt of tabloid snickering, but the Archbishop addressed this news with grace and compassion toward his mother recognizing that she was an alcoholic at the time and suffered from its addiction. He wrote that he and his wife have faced much harder news in their lives (they had baby daughter who was killed years ago in a car accident). He ended by saying: “I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics, and my identity in him never changes.”

Two remarkable disciples of Jesus modeling for us how to follow our Lord with grace and compassion for others (and also for themselves).

+Scott