Mark Binelli rolling stoned on Pope Francis, part deux.

ven­tu­al­ly,” Rolling Stoned tells us, at the begin­ning of a remark­able para­graph, Pope Fran­cis “moves to greet the crowd. Bene­dict, a dour aca­d­e­m­ic”—[Hmm, I see.]—“kept this part of the gen­er­al audi­ence to a min­i­mum.”

POPE FRANCIS THE GOOD HUMAN

Yes, dear read­er, that is the kind of use­less non­sense that greets us in near­ly every para­graph of Mark Binel­li’s dumb arti­cle. Bene­dict XVI nev­er stood beloved of crowds. Nev­er. Nor does Mr. Binel­li tell us what is so bad about being “dour” or “aca­d­e­m­ic.” (Jesuits are quite known, in fact, for their intel­lec­tu­al achieve­ments.) But Stoned means for us to infer that there is some­thing sin­is­ter and upset­ting about it all. Mr. Binel­li will tell us, in due course, that Fran­cis is to be praised for refus­ing to judge homo­sex­u­als. He him­self, how­ev­er, can judge the “dour” as much as he likes. He is par­tic­u­lar­ly mes­mer­ized by the “shrill” and “inces­sant” crowd who swarm ador­ing­ly around Fran­cis; as though the old pope, the dour Bene­dict, had not been like­wise swarmed. No, dear read­er, every­one kept their dis­tance from poor Bene­dict.

But of Pope Fran­cis, Mr. Binel­li has this to say: “His rec­og­niz­able human­i­ty comes off as pos­i­tive­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary.” Yes. Now, I know this is going to be a dis­putable point, but here it is: That is quite pos­si­bly the dumb­est sen­tence writ by man. No pope before Fran­cis was human—not even rec­og­niz­ably so? What about that dour old crab Bene­dict? It is not human to be dour? Is dour­ness the exclu­sive prop­er­ty of owls? Or what about the gre­gar­i­ous John Paul II? Has Mr. Binel­li for­got­ten him? What does he mean, Fran­cis is rev­o­lu­tion­ary because he is human? Does that make sense? Is Mr. Binel­li try­ing to make sense? What were all those 265 popes before Fran­cis? Frogs? Rep­tiles? Mon­sters of the deep?

Fran­cis, it would seem—if we lis­ten to Stoned—is not just the first pope from the Amer­i­c­as; he’s the first pope from the human race! And in what fol­lows, Mr. Binel­li engages in a gross and bald and offen­sive attempt to por­tray the for­mer pope as, not a human being, but a hor­ror movie slash­er. Have a look at this garbage, but make sure you’ve swal­lowed your cof­fee and digest­ed your food first.

After the dis­as­trous papa­cy of Bene­dict, a staunch tra­di­tion­al­ist who—[Pre­pare your­self.]—looked like he should be wear­ing a striped shirt with knife-fin­gered gloves and men­ac­ing teenagers in their night­mares, Francis’[s] basic mas­tery of skills like smil­ing in pub­lic [Bene­dict nev­er smiled.] seemed a small mir­a­cle to the aver­age Catholic.

Take as much time as you need to recov­er from what­ev­er fit of pique, or laugh­ter, all that rot has thrown you into. I’ll wait.

Back? Okay, we pick up where we left off:

But he had far more rad­i­cal changes in mind. [Smil­ing isn’t rad­i­cal enough for this pope. Fran­cis will real­ly upset the sta­tus quo! Per­haps he will even go so far as to laugh.] By eschew­ing the papal palace for a mod­est two-room apart­ment, by pub­licly scold­ing church lead­ers for being “obsessed” with divi­sive social issues like same-sex mar­riage, birth con­trol, and abor­tion (“Who am I to judge?” Fran­cis famous­ly replied when asked his views on homo­sex­u­al priests) and—perhaps most aston­ish­ing­ly of all—by devot­ing much of his first major writ­ten teach­ing to a scathing cri­tique of unchecked free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism—[No pope, least of all Bene­dict, has ever spo­ken on this sub­ject before.] the pope revealed his own obses­sions to be more in line with the boss’[s] son.

(A side note to Rolling Stoned here: You real­ly need to learn the dif­fer­ence between s’ and s’s. A hint: It is writ just as it is pro­nounced. Glad to be of help.)

Okay. Now, for those who might be too young to get the striped shirt and knife-fin­gered glove ref­er­ence, this is who Mr. Binel­li just com­pared Bene­dict XVI to.

Should I find it offen­sive and crude that Mr. Binel­li should com­pare Bene­dict XVI to the slash­er from “Night­mare on Elm Street”? Should I find it crude that this is his view of what it means to be a “staunch tra­di­tion­al­ist”?

Per­haps we should be grate­ful he did not com­pare Bene­dict XVI to a Sith lord. I’ve read that before.

More to the point: What does it mean that it is a “small mir­a­cle” to have, in Fran­cis, a pope who smiles in pub­lic? Mr. Binel­li must not look around Google Images too much; for I go to that valu­able resource and in less than a minute find this. Maybe Google Images is bro­ken on Mr. Binel­li’s com­put­er; you’d think Rolling Stoned could get that fixed. Are they not sell­ing enough mag­a­zines over there to jus­ti­fy the expense? I also go there and in less than a minute find this bleak and dour pic­ture of Pope Fran­cis! Stoned real­ly needs to get that com­put­er fixed if Mr. Binel­li is not able to find out these things, as I did sit­ting here in my pover­ty.

VS. POPE BENEDICT THE EVIL SLASHER

When Mr. Binel­li is not engag­ing in slurs against the for­mer pope, he is get­ting some basic truths about Fran­cis plain wrong. There are as many as three of them in the para­graph I quot­ed.

(By the way, I do not much care where Fran­cis wants to live as pope—a palace, a small apart­ment, a sty, a barge on the Tiber with or with­out moorings—the ques­tion bores me.)

But the first mis­take Mr. Binel­li makes is in his claim that the pope “scold­ed” those in the Church who are “obsessed” with abor­tion, same-sex mar­riage, and birth con­trol. When he points this out, he wants us to think that Fran­cis shrugs at these issues and says, “Meh. Not impor­tant.” We should look into that.

Here, for exam­ple, is Pope Fran­cis in a speech to health­care pro­fes­sion­als and gyne­col­o­gists, on Sep­tem­ber 20, 2013:

“Every child who, rather than being born, is con­demned unjust­ly to being abort­ed, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who even before he was born, and then just after birth, expe­ri­enced the world’s rejec­tion. And every elder­ly person—I spoke of chil­dren: let us move to the elder­ly, anoth­er point! And every elder­ly per­son, even if he is ill or at the end of his days, bears the face of Christ. They can­not be dis­card­ed, as the cul­ture of waste sug­gests! They can­not be thrown away!

Those are strong words. (Would­n’t you say, Mr. Binel­li?) A child in the womb has the face of Christ! A 90-year-old with demen­tia who can’t feed him­self has the face of Christ! To say oth­er­wise and “dis­card” them is to suc­cumb to a “cul­ture of waste.” These sound like the kind of words one uses when he thinks that the point—oh, I don’t know—mat­ters. (Would­n’t you say, Mr. Binel­li?)

And here is the pope again (do some home­work, Mr. Binel­li!), in a speech to diplo­mats, on Jan­u­ary 13—a mere two weeks before Stoned pub­lished its ludi­crous arti­cle. The pope con­tin­ues his obser­va­tions about what he calls the “cul­ture of waste”:

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, what is thrown away is not only food and dis­pens­able objects, but often human beings them­selves, who are dis­card­ed as “unnec­es­sary.” For exam­ple, it is fright­ful even to think there are chil­dren, vic­tims of abor­tion, who will nev­er see the light of day; chil­dren being used as sol­diers, abused and killed in armed con­flicts; and chil­dren being bought and sold in that ter­ri­ble form of mod­ern slav­ery which is human traf­fick­ing, which is a crime against human­i­ty.

Abor­tion “fright­ful.” Abor­tion, like sex traf­fick­ing, a “crime against human­i­ty.” Any more talk like this and I might start to think (Stoned for­fend!) that this is—oh, shall we say an obses­sion?—with this pope.

And lo! here it is. For as Car­di­nal Bergoglio, this is what Pope Fran­cis had to say:

Defend the unborn against abor­tion even if they per­se­cute you, calum­ni­ate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you.

Speak out against abor­tion even if they kill you! You know, this does sound to me like a man who is obsessed.

Well, okay, you say. Yes, the pope is pro-life. I under­stand that. But what about same-sex mar­riage! What about judg­ing homo­sex­u­als?

Yes. Well, let’s look at that one too. Per­haps the right place to begin is with a let­ter the pope wrote, while he was still a car­di­nal, to the Carmelite nuns of Buenos Aires. This was dur­ing the time when there was a huge push for same-sex mar­riage in the coun­try. And in that let­ter, this is what Car­di­nal Bergoglio had to say:

Do not be naive: [This] is not a sim­ple polit­i­cal strug­gle; it is [a] destruc­tive attempt toward God’s plan. It is not a mere leg­isla­tive project … but a machi­na­tion of the father of lies [who] seeks to con­fuse and deceive the chil­dren of God.

Now, that sounds down­right judg­men­tal, does­n’t it? That sounds mean and nasty and hor­ri­ble and pos­si­bly tra­di­tion­al­ist! Dour too! Same sex “mar­riage” a “machi­na­tion of the father of lies”! Where’s my fuzzy Fran­cis?

And what could he have ever meant by say­ing that Church lead­ers are “obsessed” with these ques­tions? For he him­self sounds quite nasty and reac­tionary.

To get to the bot­tom of this conun­drum for lib­er­als, it will be help­ful to look at the pope’s actu­al words in their actu­al con­text. So let us go back to August 19, 2013, when the pope gave an inter­view to Fr. Anto­nio Spadaro. Here is what the pope actu­al­ly said:

“The church some­times has locked itself up in small things, in small-mind­ed rules. The most impor­tant thing is the first procla­ma­tion: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the min­is­ters of the Church must be min­is­ters of mer­cy above all. … The rig­orist wash­es his hands so that he leaves it to the com­mand­ment. The loose min­is­ter wash­es his hands by sim­ply say­ing, ‘This is not a sin’ or some­thing like that. In pas­toral min­istry we must accom­pany peo­ple, and we must heal their wounds.

Now, we should make note here of one sim­ple thing: The Church can hard­ly be a “min­is­ter of mer­cy” to those who have not sinned. To be a “min­is­ter of mer­cy” does imply that sin has tak­en place. But what the Holy Father says is that priests must be nei­ther “rig­orists” who small-mind­ed­ly say “the law, the law” with no heart for mer­cy, nor “loose min­is­ters” who deny that sin is sin. Rather, the law of mer­cy means to heal the wounds that have been caused by sin.

To put this in sim­pler terms for Stoned. What Fran­cis is get­ting at—all he is get­ting at—is that priests must not become obsessed with the moral law to the exclu­sion of grace. Sin­ners must be offered not just moral lessons (though they have their place), but the chance to repent. God wants them to repent. God wants them to do good. God wants them to expe­ri­ence grace.

And a pope who thought that homo­sex­u­ality and abor­tion were just fine would not talk in such a way—as did Christ—about sin, mer­cy, and the heal­ing of wounds. The pope cer­tain­ly did not mean that abor­tion, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, and con­tra­cep­tion do not mat­ter.

But wait! you say. I don’t under­stand. Did not Pope Fran­cis say that he was no one to judge peo­ple who are gay?

Well, not so loose with the mean­ing. Here is how the Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed that exchange (as quot­ed in Huff­Po):

The pon­tiff broached the del­i­cate ques­tion of how he would respond to learn­ing that a cler­ic in his ranks was gay, though not sex­u­al­ly active. [Yeah, that part kind of makes a dif­fer­ence.] For decades, the Vat­i­can has regard­ed homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a “dis­or­der”—[Which it still does.]—and Pope Francis’[s] pre­de­ces­sor Pope Bene­dict XVI for­mal­ly barred men with what the Vat­i­can deemed “deep-seat­ed” homo­sex­u­al­i­ty from enter­ing the priest­hood.

“Who am I to judge a gay per­son of good will who seeks the Lord?”—[Anoth­er impor­tant qual­i­fi­ca­tion.]—the pon­tiff said, speak­ing in Ital­ian. “You can’t mar­gin­al­ize these peo­ple.”

Of course, dis­tinc­tion does mat­ter. The pope is speak­ing about priests here, not Elton John. More than that, these are priests—oy vey, one would hope!—who are not sex­u­al­ly active. Big news flash: Priests are not sup­posed to be “sex­u­al­ly active” whether they are gay or not. So what the pope says has no appli­ca­tion to peo­ple out in the world who have gay part­ners and seek to have the state rec­og­nize them as mar­ried cou­ples.

And it is always impor­tant to stress: The Church has nev­er said that homo­sex­u­al attrac­tion, of itself, is sin­ful. It is dis­or­dered, yes, but that is not the same thing. Only homo­sex­u­al acts are sin­ful (as are any sex­u­al acts out­side mar­riage as prop­er­ly under­stood). The Church, nor any pope, has ever said or taught oth­er­wise.

The kind of priest Fran­cis is talk­ing about in this hypo­thet­i­cal example—it was a hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion, remember?—are priests “of good will” who “seek the Lord.” Now, what does it mean for a priest to be of good will and seek the Lord? Does it mean to just go around and have sex with­out regard for a your vows or the moral law? I would not think so. Would you? A gay priest of good will who seeks the Lord, as I under­stand that, is a priest who ful­ly well knows that his homo­sex­u­al ten­den­cies are dis­or­dered and is seek­ing, through his ser­vice to the Church and con­se­cra­tion to the Lord, to sub­li­mate them for the sake of his sal­va­tion and oth­ers’.

Why that is sur­pris­ing or shock­ing I con­fess to not under­stand; for the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church has told us the same thing:

2358. The num­ber of men and women who have deep-seat­ed homo­sex­ual ten­den­cies is not neg­li­gi­ble. This incli­na­tion, which is objec­tively dis­or­dered—[“Objec­tive­ly”; that means, not accord­ing to any­one’s opin­ion.]—con­sti­tutes for most of them a tri­al. [But:] They must be accept­ed with respect, com­pas­sion, and sen­si­tiv­ity. Every sign of unjust dis­crim­i­na­tion in their regard should be avoid­ed. These per­sons are called to ful­fill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Chris­tians, to unite to the sac­ri­fice of the Lord’s Cross the dif­fi­cul­ties they may encounter from their con­di­tion.

2359. [Note now.] Homo­sex­ual per­sons are called to chasti­ty. By the virtues of self-mas­tery that teach them inner free­dom, at times by sup­port of dis­in­ter­ested friend­ship, by prayer and sacra­men­tal grace, they can and should grad­u­ally and res­olutely approach Chris­t­ian per­fec­tion [i.e., seek the Lord

Also (note care­ful­ly, Mr. Binel­li) what has been said by both Fran­cis and the Cat­e­chism has also been said—gird your loins now—by Bene­dict XVI. In a let­ter to bish­ops on the Pas­toral Care of Homo­sex­u­al Per­sons, dat­ed Octo­ber 1, 1986, Bene­dict XVI (then Car­di­nal Ratzinger) does indeed call homo­sex­u­al­i­ty “objec­tive­ly dis­or­dered.” But he also says this:

“What, then, are homo­sex­u­al per­sons to do who seek to fol­low the Lord? [There’s that “seek the Lord” lan­guage again!] Fun­da­men­tal­ly, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by join­ing what­ev­er suf­fer­ings and dif­fi­cul­ties they expe­ri­ence in virtue of their con­di­tion to the sac­ri­fice of the Lord’s Cross. That Cross, for the believ­er, is a fruit­ful sac­ri­fice since from that death come life and redemp­tion. While any call to car­ry the cross or to under­stand a Chris­tian’s suf­fer­ing in this way will pre­dictably be met with bit­ter ridicule by some, it should be remem­bered that—[Note this, now.]—this is the way to eter­nal life for all who fol­low Christ.

Was that the dour slash­er Ratzinger who just said that homo­sex­u­als who car­ry their cross show the way to eter­nal life? Why, that’s the same thing that fuzzy Fran­cis, who is now our hope and joy, said!

But it is those who car­ry their cross—not those who obsti­nate­ly per­sist in homo­sex­u­al behavior—to whom Fran­cis is refer­ring. He was talk­ing about celi­bate priests, not the bul­lies who march in the Gay Pride Parade.

This is a chal­lenge for our cul­ture to under­stand, and one good anti­dote to it would be to read and digest the full text of Car­di­nal Ratzinger’s let­ter to bish­ops. At the root of the chal­lenge is a fail­ure to dis­tin­guish the indi­vid­ual him­self from the sin he does. Thus when some­one says that homo­sex­u­al acts are grave­ly dis­or­dered, our world assumes that the moti­va­tion is hatred of gays. And when some­one says that homo­sex­u­als are not to be judged as per­sons but to be treat­ed with love and respect, our world assumes that an impri­matur has just been giv­en to gay sex and gay mar­riage. The truth, how­ev­er, is that both state­ments have been equal­ly made by Pope Fran­cis and Pope Bene­dict XVI. To love and respect a per­son does not mean to approve of every­thing he does; to con­demn a sin­ful action does not mean that you hate the per­son.

All peo­ple, no mat­ter their sin, no mat­ter their cross, must be shown the mer­cy and love of God. But that does not mean that their sin is not sin, or that it does not mat­ter. The offer of mer­cy implies repen­tance.

Because he con­fus­es love of the sin­ner with love of the sin, Mr. Binel­li is grave­ly con­fused.

His third point of con­fu­sion has to do with what he feels to be a “most aston­ish­ing” cri­tique of cap­i­tal­ism in Evan­gelii Gaudi­um. To ful­ly address how “aston­ish­ing” it is, or is not, in light of what for­mer popes have said on this sub­ject, will require some space. And so I will leave that for Part 3.