Mark Binelli rolling stoned on Pope Francis, part un

n its sub­ti­tle, Rolling Stoned calls Fran­cis’s papa­cy a “gen­tle rev­o­lu­tion.” One nat­u­ral­ly won­ders whether it has in mind a play on “vel­vet rev­o­lu­tion.” The Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion took place in Czecho­slo­va­kia in 1989, when the Com­mu­nists peace­ful­ly ced­ed pow­er back to the Czechs. Mark Binel­li, who pens the long piece, seems to be sug­gest­ing that Fran­cis’s papa­cy rep­re­sents a sim­i­lar change in ideology—not from the bad old days of the Com­mu­nists, but from the bad old days of Bene­dict XVI. That is a com­mon delu­sion among lib­er­als; so much so, that Stoned alludes to Bob Dylan in the title and pro­claims, with acid cer­ti­tude: “The Times They Are A‑Changin.’ ” But no: The times, they are a‑not.

COME ON! WRITERS AND CRITICS WHO PROPHESY WITH YOUR PEN

By now, dear read­er, you have prob­a­bly heard that Pope Fran­cis made the cov­er of still anoth­er pop cul­ture mag­a­zine. The arti­cle, which is long and boor­ish and blind, is bent to advance a stan­dard theme: that the new pope is a fuzzy and pro­gres­sive-lean­ing mav­er­ick and will stand Church teach­ing on its head; where­as, the old pope, the evil Bene­dict, was a sour old man who beat us all over the pate with the ham­mer of dog­ma. That is a car­i­ca­ture, and it belies the facts. But Mr. Binel­li will insist upon this blue­bird land over the lib­er­al rain­bow where Jesuit popes smash all the old dog­mas; even if on the way he must rely upon non-truth, and half-truth, and no small amount of tired old myth and stereo­type about the Catholic Church.

And it is for that rea­son that I want to take the time, over a short series of posts, to go through the Stoned cov­er sto­ry para­graph by para­graph. Per­haps by doing so we shall turn the rough places plain and the crooked places straight.

Watch close­ly how Mr. Binel­li begins:

Up close, Pope Fran­cis, the 266th vic­ar of Jesus Christ on earth, a man whose obvi­ous humil­i­ty[;] empa­thy[;] and, above all, devo­tion to the eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised has come to feel per­fect­ly suit­ed to our times, looks stouter than on tele­vi­sion. Hav­ing famous­ly dis­pensed with the more flam­boy­ant papal acces­sories, he’s also sur­pris­ing­ly styl­ish, today wear­ing a dou­ble-breast­ed white over­coat, white scarf[,] and slight­ly creami­er cas­sock, all impec­ca­bly tai­lored.

Rolling Stoned’s house style would ben­e­fit from the Oxford com­ma, but that’s not what I want to point out here. Did you catch the remark­able dis­junc­tion in all of that wind? What begins as praise of Fran­cis’s “humil­i­ty” ends as a praise of his “styl­ish” dress. (And the pope is a man who wears the same plain white habit every day.) Remem­ber when Bene­dict XVI was sneered at for hav­ing the pre­sump­tion to wear styl­ish red shoes by Pra­da? (See this piece of snark from New York Mag for an exam­ple. In truth—lo!—they weren’t by Pra­da but by a local street­side cob­bler.) But now that we have Fran­cis, and he is some­how sup­posed to change Church teach­ing to line up with our own pol­i­tics, styl­ish­ness is hum­ble and back in fash­ion.

All this is a small point, but Stoned means to set a con­text for what is to come. What Mr. Binel­li says about Fran­cis we are meant to under­stand as a fresh con­trast to “dour” old Bene­dict. (That will become evi­dent as we con­tin­ue read­ing the arti­cle; if we read the arti­cle.) Fran­cis, says Mr. Binel­li, has “obvi­ous humil­i­ty”; Bene­dict, the sub­text goes, was a self-right­eous old sonuvabitch. Fran­cis has “empa­thy”; Bene­dict, the sub­text goes, repeat­ed­ly snubbed and stomped on the down­trod­den. Fran­cis is devot­ed to the poor; Bene­dict, the sub­text goes, reg­u­lar­ly fet­ed the Koch broth­ers while Lazarus sat hun­gry in St. Peter’s Square. There is the added sub­text that humil­i­ty, empa­thy, and con­cern for the poor are some­how new dis­cov­er­ies in Catholi­cism.

Per­haps you are already think­ing that I am read­ing too much into all of this. But see what instant­ly fol­lows in Mr. Binel­li’s arti­cle:

The top­ic of Fran­cis’s cat­e­ch­esis, or teach­ing, is Judg­ment Day, though true to form, he does not try to con­jure images of fire and brim­stone.

[No, but in the very same gen­er­al audi­ence, on Decem­ber 11, the pope did say that judg­ment is real and that how we respond to Christ mat­ters.]

His pre­de­ces­sor, Bene­dict XVI, speak­ing on the top­ic, once said, “Today, we are used to think­ing: ‘What is sin? God is great, he under­stands us, so sin does not count; in the end God will be good toward all.’ It’s a nice hope. But there is jus­tice, and there is real blame.”

See, I told you that con­trast with mean old Bene­dict was com­ing. Do not doubt: Any time the sec­u­lar media prais­es some­thing in Fran­cis, they mean for us to under­stand that Bene­dict was some­how the oppo­site. Mr. Binel­li’s entire arti­cle is an exer­cise in bring­ing that sub­text out into the open:

Fran­cis, 77, by con­trast—[There you are.]—implores the crowd to think of the prospect of meet­ing one’s mak­er as some­thing to look for­ward to, like a wed­ding, where Jesus and all the saints in heav­en will be wait­ing with open arms.

With­out regard for how we have lived or what we have done? We may live as we please and do as we wish? Real­ly? Is that what the pope said, or what he meant?

DON’T SPEAK TOO SOON, FOR THE WHEEL’S STILL IN SPIN

Now, there are sev­er­al wild untruths in all of this. In the first place, Mr. Binel­li quotes the above pas­sage from Fran­cis as though Fran­cis nev­er talks about sin or judg­ment, like the wicked Bene­dict did; and that is sim­ply not true. In fact, it has often been not­ed that the cur­rent pope speaks about the Dev­il and spir­i­tu­al war­fare more than Bene­dict XVI ever did (as not­ed, for exam­ple, here). To get a taste of that, look at the pope’s words from a papal morn­ing Mass of Octo­ber 11:

“We do not have a right to sim­pli­fy the mat­ter, as if to say all of these [peo­ple whom Jesus healed] were not pos­sessed, [that they were just] men­tal­ly ill. No! The pres­ence of the Dev­il is on the very first page of the Bible, and the Bible ends with the pres­ence of the Dev­il.

[What hell­fire is this, and what brim­stone?]

Today’s Gospel begins with the Dev­il being cast out and ends with the Dev­il com­ing back. St. Peter said, “It’s like a fierce lion that cir­cles us.” It is like that. … Some may say, but Fr., you’re too old-fash­ioned, you’re fright­en­ing us with these things. No, it’s not me! It is the Gospel! And these are not lies; it is the word of the Lord. Let us ask the Lord for the grace to take these things seri­ous­ly. He came to fight for our sal­va­tion. He won against the Dev­il. Please, let’s not do busi­ness with the Dev­il. He wants to come back home, to take pos­ses­sion. … Don’t accept rel­a­tivism, be vig­i­lant!

Wait! did Fran­cis just say that rel­a­tivism was of the Dev­il? Did he just say that there are absolute truths that are unchange­able and we must live accord­ing­ly, and that any­thing else con­sti­tutes a form of demon­ic pos­ses­sion? Why, that sounds so … medieval! That sounds pos­i­tive­ly like … Bene­dict!

If Fran­cis talks about wed­ding days, he does not do so with­out also talk­ing about demon­ic pos­ses­sion and lions that cir­cle us. He does not do so with­out also warn­ing us, fair­ly stern­ly, to resist the Dev­il. The pope clear­ly wants us to arrive at the wed­ding feast, but he is con­scious that there are snares along the way and not nec­es­sar­i­ly all of us will get there. Oth­er­wise, there would be no rea­son for him to plead with us so strong­ly to resist rel­a­tivism.

And what of Bene­dict? Are we to believe this stereo­type that all he ever did was talk about the judg­ment of God and pun­ish­ment for sin? What, then, should we make of these words from one of the pope’s gen­er­al audi­ences:

[T]he eccle­sial com­mu­ni­ty is invit­ed nev­er to lose hope, but to remain firm in the belief that the appar­ent omnipo­tence of the Evil One in fact comes up against the true omnipo­tence, that of God. … There is an impor­tant point for us too: As Chris­tians we can nev­er be pes­simists. … Prayer, above all, edu­cates us to see the signs of God, His pres­ence, and His action; or rather, it edu­cates us to become lights of good­ness. … God is not obliv­i­ous to our prayers. … When faced with evil we often have the sen­sa­tion that we can do noth­ing, but our prayers are in fact the first and most effec­tive response we can give. They strength­en our dai­ly com­mit­ment to good­ness.

Just as Fran­cis does not speak of the wed­ding feast with­out also speak­ing of spir­i­tu­al war­fare, so Bene­dict does not talk about judg­ment with­out also telling us of the pow­er of prayer to over­come evil and lead us to God.

DON’T CRITICIZE WHAT YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND

The dif­fi­cul­ty Mr. Binel­li seems to be hav­ing is in a false dichoto­my, name­ly this: that either you believe in the mer­cy of God or you believe in the jus­tice of God. Thus he sets the two in con­trast to each oth­er: This pope talks about mer­cy, while that pope talked about judg­ment. As if Christ him­self did not con­stant­ly talk to us about both. Indeed, not only is that a false read­ing of both Fran­cis and Bene­dict, but it is also a mis­un­der­stand­ing of God Him­self. God is both infi­nite­ly mer­ci­ful and infi­nite­ly just, and nei­ther His mer­cy nor His jus­tice can fail. There is indeed a mys­tery in that; and, at heart, it is beyond our human abil­i­ty to ful­ly com­pre­hend truth so high. But Mr. Binel­li ought at least to acknowl­edge the real­i­ty of the mys­tery if he is to under­stand the faith that Fran­cis is teach­ing and why he is not telling us any­thing new.

We have been told these things for two thou­sand years, but we are (with Thomas Aquinas) dumb oxen and need to be told every day. Per­haps the rea­son what Fran­cis says is so star­tling is not because it is new but because it is old. But what Bene­dict said star­tles too. And both warn us about the real­i­ty of evil and judg­ment pre­cise­ly so that we can get to the wed­ding feast. Christ, they both know, wants to be able to wel­come us all home. But He is not going to do so just because. Bene­dict does not deny Christ’s mer­cy, and Fran­cis does not guar­an­tee it for any par­tic­u­lar per­son. There is spir­i­tu­al war­fare we must go through first. Fran­cis tells us about the wed­ding feast so we may desire it enough to bat­tle the Dev­il and give up our evil ways. He is not say­ing, “No,don’t wor­ry, Heav­en will fling its doors open to all.” He wants us to desire Heav­en, but he does not promise us Heav­en.

At the same time, Francis—like Bene­dict him­self, who told us “we can nev­er be pessimistic”—understands that despair is of the Dev­il and we must fight against it. So again he tells us of the wed­ding feast, in the same way and for the same rea­son as Bene­dict reas­sures us of the pow­er of prayer. Spir­i­tu­al war­fare does not mean going about with our heads hung in gloom: Both Fran­cis and Bene­dict tell us this. And there is no con­trast, Mr. Binel­li: It is the same mes­sage from both popes.