Boy he's a popular guy

I have a confession to make... I like to frequent news aggregate sites and read/post in comment sections.  I say confession because I can't imagine a more spectacular waste of time than arguing religion, politics, and other issues, on the internet.  I make this confession for context.  There is a lot of anti-Catholic/anti-religious sentiment whenever a news article comes up about the Church, good or bad.  Now some of it is rational criticism of Church teachings (although usually built on a misunderstanding of Church teaching), but for the most part, it's a lot of anger, opinion, and flat out hate.  I point it out because I've noticed a pretty big shift in tone since Pope Francis has been elected.  I'm seeing more and more posts that say things like 'I'm an atheist, but I like this guy', or 'I'll never say anything good about the Church, but if I were going to like a Church leader, it would be this guy'.  High praise coming from forums known for militant anti-theism.  (please don't take any of this as an attack on atheists, it is merely a juxtaposition of different tones in posts and comments).

All of this is to say Pope Francis seems to be pretty darn popular among the general population, both Catholic and not.

So the question I want to post is whether that's a good thing.  Don't worry, this isn't a reactionary post where I go on to clarify what the Pope actually means or anything like that.  It's a reflection on power.  Jesus actually gave us a really good model for how to challenge power, and how to know if we are popular with the right people (and by corollary, how to know if you are pissing off the right people).

Popularity is a bit of a difficult metric to work with.  Popular doesn't necessarily mean good or bad, but with a close enough analysis it can be meaningful.  Here's a though experiment, if Christ was successful with the pharisees would we consider his ministry successful?  What about with the Romans?  Many, both within and outside the church measure the value of Christ's teachings by the fact he was popular with the disenfranchised.  He was perfectly capable of seeing the injustice in the power structures of the day, and then giving some of the power and voice of those people to the everyday person, and even more so, to the people who are the farthest from it.

By that metric, who is the most disenfranchised in the Church?  It depends one the lens we use, but through the lens of doctrine, it's probably the people who either struggle with a rule, or are breaking it.  That's not to say the doctrine is bad, or that we need to change it to be more inclusive.  Christ never said that, and neither has Pope Francis.  The way Christ gave sinners at the time a voice was by building a relationship with them.  He didn't stand on a street corner threatening them with hell if they didn't change.  He showed them love, got to know them, and then challenged them to be better.  They loved him for it.  The ones with the power to exclude them, judge them because they had broken the rules, and threaten them with hell were the ones who were pissed off, because by bringing the sinners from the outside to the inside, the pharisees lost their power.  But to be sure, Christ didn't alter a single stroke of a single letter of the law when he did what he did. 

In the end it's hard to judge if Pope Francis' popularity is meaningful.  I'd say the media's love for him is some nice positive attention, but that's about it.  His popularity with the disenfranchised groups... the sinners?  That means the world.  So the challenge for us already in the circles of power, the ones with privilege (and by that I include any of us who have had the benefit of lots of formation and teaching, a deep understanding of the faith and the church, and relationships which afford us a position where we can confidently call ourselves 'real' Catholics), is whether we hold that power and long for days when we can dominate the message with moral rules, or whether we take up the yoke and do the hard work of building relationships, lending our voice to the disenfranchised.  What Pope Francis is calling us to is to use our doctrine as an instrument of healing... as a shared meal, a salve for those in pain, and a voice for the voiceless, not a sword for building armies and cutting down the ones we consider bad.

Is Pope Francis' popularity good and meaningful?  It will be if us, his congregation, listen to his whole message with an open heart.