Does the pope really think Jesus sinned?

ope Fran­cis has, once more, got­ten him­self in trou­ble with those blog­gers he usu­al­ly gets him­self in trou­ble with. Noth­ing new under the sun. This time, it involves the fol­low­ing odd words from his homi­ly on Decem­ber 27, for the Feast of the Holy Fam­i­ly:

At the end of that pil­grim­age [to Jerusalem, when Christ was twelve], Jesus returned to Nazareth and was obe­di­ent to his par­ents (cf. Lk 2:51). This image also con­tains a beau­ti­ful teach­ing about our fam­i­lies. A pil­grim­age does not end when we arrive at our des­ti­na­tion, but when we return home and resume our every­day lives, putting into prac­tice the spir­i­tu­al fruits of our expe­ri­ence. We know what Jesus did on that occa­sion. Instead of return­ing home with his fam­i­ly, he stayed in Jerusalem, in the Tem­ple, caus­ing great dis­tress to Mary and Joseph who were unable to find him. For this lit­tle ‘escapade,’ Jesus prob­a­bly had to beg for­give­ness of his par­ents. The Gospel doesn’t say this, but I believe that we can pre­sume it.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the pope-bash­ing blogs are all over this.

What does the pope mean, Jesus “had to beg for­give­ness”? they say. The pope is telling us that Jesus sinned! they say. That’s heresy! That’s blas­phe­my!

(See here, from Novus Ordo Watch. More­over, see here, from Restore DC Catholi­cism. Sec­on­dar­i­ly, see here, from Roman Catholic Impe­ri­al­ist. Sixth and last­ly, see here, from Suscipe Domine. Third­ly, see here, from Vox Can­toris. And to con­clude, see here, from The Rem­nant.)

•••

But let’s not jump so fast. It can’t real­ly be as sim­ple as all that, can it? I would need much more evi­dence to con­clude the pope thinks Christ was a sin­ner than a sin­gle state­ment in a sin­gle homi­ly that. At worst it would mer­it a sin­cere cross-exam­i­na­tion before I would con­clude any such thing.

And not only that, but at least three times in the past year the pope has express­ly affirmed that Christ was with­out sin.

First, on Octo­ber 18, 2015, dur­ing a can­on­iza­tion Mass, the pope said these words:

There can be no com­pat­i­bil­i­ty between a world­ly under­stand­ing of pow­er and the hum­ble ser­vice which must char­ac­ter­ize author­i­ty accord­ing to Jesus’ teach­ing and exam­ple. Ambi­tion and careerism are incom­pat­i­ble with Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship; hon­our, suc­cess, fame and world­ly tri­umphs are incom­pat­i­ble with the log­ic of Christ cru­ci­fied. Instead, com­pat­i­bil­i­ty exists between Jesus, ‘the man of sor­rows,’ and our suf­fer­ing. The Let­ter to the Hebrews makes this clear by pre­sent­ing Jesus as the high priest who com­plete­ly shares our human con­di­tion, with the excep­tion of sin: ‘We do not have a high priest who is unable to sym­pa­thize with our weak­ness­es, but we have one who in every respect has been test­ed as we are, yet with­out sin’ (4:15). Jesus exer­cis­es a true priest­hood of mer­cy and com­pas­sion. He knows our dif­fi­cul­ties at first hand, he knows from with­in our human con­di­tion; the fact that he is with­out sin does not pre­vent him from under­stand­ing sin­ners. His glo­ry is not that born of ambi­tion or the thirst for pow­er; it is is the glo­ry of one who loves men and women, who accepts them and shares in their weak­ness, who offers them the grace which heals and restores, and accom­pa­nies them with infi­nite ten­der­ness amid their tribu­la­tions.

Sec­ond, in his Ash Wednes­day homi­ly, on Feb­ru­ary 18, 2015, the pope had this to say:

Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between us and God is pos­si­ble thanks to the mer­cy of the Father who, out of love for us, did not hes­i­tate to sac­ri­fice His only begot­ten Son. Indeed Christ, who was just and with­out sin, was made to be sin when, on the Cross, He took on the bur­den of our sins, and in this way He redeemed and jus­ti­fied us before God. ‘In Him’ we can become just, in Him we can change, if we accept the grace of God and do not allow this ‘accept­able time’ to pass in vain. Please, let us stop, let us stop a while and let our­selves be rec­on­ciled to God.

Third, in a homi­ly in the Philip­pines, at Tacloban Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, on Jan­u­ary 17, 2015, he said:

[Christ] is like us in every­thing. In every­thing but sin, for he was not a sin­ner.

The pope affirms Christ was with­out sin at least these three times. It is just not plau­si­ble that the pope changed his mind on a cen­tral dog­ma of the faith some time dur­ing the last two months and now thinks Christ was a sin­ner. When is this change sup­posed to have hap­pened?

•••

All this does, how­ev­er, raise the key ques­tion: How are we to under­stand the pope’s words? For he is, by his own admis­sion, spec­u­lat­ing beyond what Scrip­ture tells us. In fact, far from telling us that Jesus asked for for­give­ness, St. Luke tells us that he chal­lenged his par­ents: Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house? (Luke 2:49)

It might help, in try­ing to answer this ques­tion, for us to look at the orig­i­nal Ital­ian. The pope said:

Per ques­ta sua ‘scap­patel­la’, prob­a­bil­mente anche Gesù dovette chiedere scusa ai suoi gen­i­tori.

The phrase in ques­tion, being trans­lat­ed “begged for­give­ness,” is “chiedere scusa,” and it seems to have a broad­er appli­ca­tion than just abso­lu­tion from sin. (See here and here for exam­ples of the wide range of uses the word has.) If you bump into some­one by acci­dent in a crowd, for exam­ple, or if you cough, you would say “scusa”; or, as we do in Eng­lish, “excuse me.” But no one sus­pects you are guilty of sin. Instead, you say it as a cour­tesy in a social sit­u­a­tion.

So per­haps the pope’s mean­ing was to spec­u­late (for he is spec­u­lat­ing at this point in the homi­ly) that Jesus may have said to Mary and Joseph some­thing like, “Oh, I see I caused you wor­ry. I am sor­ry.” That is not an admis­sion of sin, but a giv­ing of com­fort to his wor­ried par­ents.

That is pos­si­ble, on a ver­bal analy­sis of the pope’s words. But the one real prob­lem with such an inter­pre­ta­tion is that many of the sur­round­ing para­graphs have to do with the impor­tance of our seek­ing for­give­ness dur­ing the Year of Mer­cy. Here, for exam­ple, is the very next para­graph of the homi­ly:

Moments like these become part of the pil­grim­age of each fam­i­ly; the Lord trans­forms the moments into oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow, to ask for and to receive for­give­ness, to show love and obe­di­ence. In the Year of Mer­cy, every Chris­t­ian fam­i­ly can become a priv­i­leged place on this pil­grim­age for expe­ri­enc­ing the joy of for­give­ness. For­give­ness is the essence of the love which can under­stand mis­takes and mend them. How mis­er­able we would be if God did not for­give us! With­in the fam­i­ly we learn how to for­give, because we are cer­tain that we are under­stood and sup­port­ed, what­ev­er the mis­takes we make.

So from the bib­li­cal text, Pope Fran­cis seems to draw the les­son that we too need to admit our mis­takes and ask for­give­ness, just like Christ. An inter­pre­ta­tion like the one I sug­gest above, far from putting the pope’s words in con­text, seems to be tak­ing them out of con­text. One would have to assume that the pope was speak­ing loose­ly and ram­bling around and not keep­ing to a con­sis­tent con­text. The pope nev­er does that! Does he?

So one can be—scusa­mi—for­giv­en for think­ing that the pope sure seems to be say­ing: Do not be afraid to seek for­give­ness when you sin; for in doing so you are being just like Christ after he was found in the Tem­ple.

Let me empha­size that I do not believe that is at all what the pope had in mind. But from what the text says, I can’t exact­ly blame some­one for scratch­ing his head and ask­ing: “Did the pope just say what I think he said?”

Still, we must be will­ing to inter­pret the less clear in light of the more clear; as we do in bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tion. And while the pope does not say, “Jesus sinned,” he does say, “Jesus did not sin.” Even when the pope makes us scratch our head, we need to take a breath and try to work through it; and not leap to accu­sa­tions of heresy that don’t match up with the evi­dence.

•••

But none of this even begins to address the pope’s odd descrip­tion of the whole episode as an “escapade” on Jesus’s part. (As though Christ wan­dered off to play hooky.) I sus­pect the pope was using the word loose­ly, or tongue-in-cheek. (For it is in quo­ta­tion marks in the text, as though to under­score that he is not being lit­er­al). But it is still an odd word choice. Jesus said, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” These are not the words of some­one describ­ing an “escapade,” even loose­ly, but a duty. And he chal­lenges his par­ents: Why would you not under­stand this?

We know that Christ was obe­di­ent to his par­ents and obe­di­ent to death. We know that he was bap­tized, though he did not need to be since he had no sin. It may not be too much to guess, as the pope does, that Christ may, at this time, have said “I am sor­ry”; even though, speak­ing strict­ly, he did not need to.

But that is not what this text in Luke is about. This text is about the fact that, though Christ was hum­ble and obe­di­ent to Mary and Joseph, he had a high­er obe­di­ence that he owed to God. That is why he stayed in the Tem­ple.

And that leads me to a sec­ond pos­si­bil­i­ty; which is that the pope, being some­one who is prone to speak extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly, sim­ply wan­dered down a rab­bit trail and did­n’t ful­ly think through the impli­ca­tions of what he was say­ing. He was try­ing to find an illus­tra­tion in the text; and he stum­bled upon one that he did not edit before it rolled off his tongue. Who among us has not been guilty of that?

In any case, and because the pope-bash­ing blog­gers are hav­ing a field day, this is the kind of per­plex­ing state­ment that the Vat­i­can real­ly should come out and clar­i­fy.

Note: This is a slight­ly revised ver­sion of a post that orig­i­nal­ly appeared at Catholic Stand under the same title.