Everybody has
something good to say to me about the Papal visit, which has made for some
delightful conversations this past week.
Everyone who encountered our Holy Father found some strength, joy, and
love in the encounter. Regardless of what else they may have encountered – such
as shamefully long and slow security processes, or rude people with bullhorns -- everybody was eager to speak about the
good.
I had all sorts of
fun during the visit. As you know, I
love to see folks get excited about going to Mass. I also love to see our parishioners working
as part of the larger Archdiocesan church to make something big and beautiful
happen. This was something extraordinarily
big and beautiful, and you all were very much a part of it.
Apparently we are not
the only ones basking in the afterglow.
Pope Francis himself, now safely at home in Rome, has been talking about
the visit. His comments are both
positive and enlightening. At this
week’s Wednesday audience in Saint Peter’s Square, the Holy Father concluded by
greeting the archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, noting his great love
for the family made manifest in the organization of the event. “It is
not by chance, but rather providential that … the witness of the World Meeting
of Families came at this moment from the United States of America – that is,
the country that during the last century reached the highest level of economic
and technological development without renouncing its religious roots. Now these same roots are asking to be
replanted in the family, to rethink and change the model of development, for
the good of the entire human family”.
I was delighted by
our Holy Father’s juxtaposition of the United States’ high level of
development, both economic and technological, with its fidelity to its
religious roots. These two dimensions
are held by many to be contradictory or mutually exclusive, but our Holy Father
sees that our nation is good evidence that this is not the case.
That must have been a
welcome discovery for him. In Europe, where
he lives now, the advancement in economic and technological sophistication is
unquestionable, and has come simultaneously with the collapse of religion,
particularly Christian faith and practice.
It would be easy to conclude that this is a natural and related course
of events. Add to that his experience
with areas less developed technologically and economically, like much of Latin
America, where he is from, and he might have been inclined to think that the
religious strength he found there was aided by the developmental weakness.
Imagine his surprise to
find both thriving
side-by-side here in the US! The Church
in our nation is alive and thriving – just ask anybody who went to Mass this
summer while in a vacation area. Study
after study proclaims the deterioration of faith and practice, and while that
cannot be ignored, it would be wrong to think it the whole story. No doubt many people raised Catholic have
failed to pass on to their children or grandchildren life in Christ. But at the same time, many lost souls have
followed the light to the truth that sets them free.
Add to that a robust,
widespread core of faithful souls who continue to respond to Christ’s challenge
and grow in faith, even as the world around them grows in sophistication and
cynicism, and you have a Church who nurtures her own while welcoming the
(faith) immigrant. This is perhaps one
aspect of the the gift that our national experience of Catholic faith can bring
to the universal Church’s nurturing of the human family, and the families that
are vital to its thriving.
That would seem to be
at least part of what the Pope himself has good to say about his visit.
Monsignor
Smith
