How Pope Francis shocks us on life.

ope Fran­cis came to Wash­ing­ton, and some of us appoint­ed our­selves experts on what he ought to say. (Here is one exam­ple. Here is anoth­er.) Once you do that, you also become cer­tain what the pope ought not say. Don’t talk about cli­mate change, sir. Don’t men­tion cap­i­tal­ism. Stay out of pol­i­tics when you talk to Con­gress.

And once you say that, you stop lis­ten­ing, with open ears, to what the pope does say. You hear him only so that you may find some­thing to pick apart and crit­i­cize and decon­struct. You become his crit­ic, not his sheep. You become the pope of the pope. Why, the pope said noth­ing about abor­tion! Why, he did not even men­tion the name of Jesus!

I sus­pect that is not the way Christ meant for us to hear Peter.

(Note here that, when Pope Bene­dict XVI spoke at the White House, he did not talk about abor­tion, or men­tion Christ’s name, either. Just an aside.)

Pope Fran­cis did speak very plain­ly, how­ev­er, at the White House, about reli­gious free­dom for Catholics:

Mr. Pres­i­dent, togeth­er with their fel­low cit­i­zens, Amer­i­can Catholics are com­mit­ted to build­ing a soci­ety which is tru­ly tol­er­ant and inclu­sive, to safe­guard­ing the rights of indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties, and to reject­ing every form of unjust dis­crim­i­na­tion.

With count­less oth­er peo­ple of good will, they are like­wise con­cerned that efforts to build a just and wise­ly ordered soci­ety respect their deep­est con­cerns and their right to reli­gious lib­er­ty. That free­dom remains one of America’s most pre­cious pos­ses­sions. And, as my broth­ers, the Unit­ed States Bish­ops, have remind­ed us, all are called to be vig­i­lant, pre­cise­ly as good cit­i­zens, to pre­serve and defend that free­dom from every­thing that would threat­en or com­pro­mise it.

And then, as though to under­score that point, Pope Fran­cis made an unsched­uled vis­it to the Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor, who are fight­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion on that very issue. It was an unmis­tak­able show of sol­i­dar­i­ty with those who, in their own turn, stand by the weak and vul­ner­a­ble. The pope stood with those who want to help the poor and not sac­ri­fice their beliefs to those who claim to speak for the poor.

Save Them Both

He also made a pass­ing ref­er­ence to reli­gious free­dom in his speech to Con­gress yes­ter­day morn­ing. But it was on the right to life that he showed once more his abil­i­ty to sur­prise and unset­tle us:

The Gold­en Rule also reminds us of our respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect and defend human life at every stage of its devel­op­ment. This con­vic­tion has led me, from the begin­ning of my min­istry, to advo­cate at dif­fer­ent lev­els for the glob­al abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. I am con­vinced that this way is the best, since every life is sacred, every human per­son is endowed with an inalien­able dig­ni­ty, and soci­ety can only ben­e­fit from the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of those con­vict­ed of crimes. Recent­ly my broth­er bish­ops here in the Unit­ed States renewed their call for the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. Not only do I sup­port them, but I also offer encour­age­ment to all those who are con­vinced that a just and nec­es­sary pun­ish­ment must nev­er exclude the dimen­sion of hope and the goal of reha­bil­i­ta­tion.

He does not men­tion abor­tion, though you expect that is the very thing com­ing when he says we should “defend human life at every stage of devel­op­ment.” Those words make sense when you mean the unborn life in the womb. But at what “stage of devel­op­ment” are those who sit in prison, con­vict­ed of vio­lent crimes, await­ing pos­si­ble exe­cu­tion?

One must lis­ten to the Holy Father. He tells us. He tells us when he notes how impor­tant it is always to seek the criminal’s reha­bil­i­ta­tion. The man sit­ting on death row might not be in a stage of phys­i­cal devel­op­ment. But he is—like all of us—in a stage of moral devel­op­ment. We must want him, too, to be born into life.

It is impor­tant to be clear here that one can sup­port of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and still be a faith­ful Catholic who is not in dis­sent from Church teach­ing. We may dis­agree on this. The Church does not demand that we be against the death penal­ty like she demands that we be against abor­tion. But Pope St. John Paul II tells us, in Evan­geli­um Vitae 27, why it is right to be against it.

Among the signs of hope we should also count the spread, at many lev­els of pub­lic opin­ion, of a new sen­si­tiv­i­ty ever more opposed to war as an instru­ment for the res­o­lu­tion of con­flicts between peo­ples, and increas­ing­ly ori­ent­ed to find­ing effec­tive but “non-vio­lent” means to counter the armed aggres­sor. In the same per­spec­tive there is evi­dence of a grow­ing pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, even when such a penal­ty is seen as a kind of “legit­i­mate defence” on the part of soci­ety. Mod­ern soci­ety in fact has the means of effec­tive­ly sup­press­ing crime by ren­der­ing crim­i­nals harm­less with­out defin­i­tive­ly deny­ing them the chance to reform.

John Paul II, like Fran­cis, frames the issue around a desire for reform. The death penal­ty has always been a pro-life issue, in that the rea­son for it—the only rea­son for it—is to pro­tect inno­cent life against an unjust aggres­sor. St. John Paul II’s point was that improved prison secu­ri­ty gives us a way to achieve that goal with­out tak­ing the life of the crim­i­nal. Both lives—the inno­cent and the guilty—may now be saved.

Though it is lic­it to sup­port the death penal­ty, one needs to take St. John Paul II seri­ous­ly. The only moral­ly accept­able rea­son to take a life is to pro­tect life. But much more often than not, that is no longer nec­es­sary. As those who defend life in the womb say, when “dan­ger to the life of the moth­er” is used as a rea­son to be in favor of abor­tion, “Save them both.”

Pope Francis: Pro-Life is Not Just Abortion

I won­der great­ly at the notion that Pope Fran­cis some­how needs to bring up abor­tion in front of the pres­i­dent; or in front of the Con­gress. Is the Church’s posi­tion unclear? Is the pope’s posi­tion unclear? Behold, we have been told before.

Or is the belief that, for some rea­son, the pope needs to call out Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and Nan­cy Pelosi to their face? For he must shame them in front of the cam­eras. After all, Moth­er Tere­sa spoke clear­ly about the evil of abor­tion in front of the Clin­tons. At that point they duly and at once repent­ed.

Oh, wait.

I would have liked the pope to be firm about this too. But what he wants to do, I think, is to remind us that the life issue is larg­er than just abor­tion. (Or euthana­sia.) This does not dimin­ish abor­tion so much as it enlarges life. Catholics talk about the sanc­ti­ty of life at the begin­ning and at the end. But how often do we talk about the sanc­ti­ty of life in the mid­dle? How often do we talk about the right to life of the guilty? Christ broke the prison bars of death for the guilty. He came to set sin­ners free.

The pope is try­ing to tell us, not what we have heard and know well, but what we lit­tle hear and need to know bet­ter.

That is how he shocks us. We keep want­i­ng him to real­ly give it to the Con­gress about being pro-life; and instead he gives it to us about being pro-life.

But pro-life, and the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son, do not just apply to the baby in the womb or the old per­son with demen­tia in the nurs­ing home. It also means the refugee. It means the immi­grant. It means the poor. It means the pris­on­er. It means all of us in the mid­dle between birth and death, who are in via, and whose dig­ni­ty and whose redemp­tion and sal­va­tion mat­ter. “What­ev­er you did to the least of these, you did to me”; and the pope tells us that the guilty too, not just the inno­cent, are “the least of these.” Their life, and their souls, mat­ter to God.

It is shock­ing. Chris­tian­i­ty has always been.

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Catholic Stand, Sep­tem­ber 25, 2015.