Papa Is All About Our Mother

I get it; about Pope Francis, that is.

Do you?

New Chicago Archbishop Blase J. Cupich does. Sister Mary Ann Walsh included the following quote from Archbishop Cupich in a Nov. 16 “America” magazine blog entry called, “A close look at the new Archbishop of Chicago.”

“It’s about how he looks at people. How he sees them. He doesn’t see them as a problem, a challenge, as people who should be judged by whether or not they’re orthodox or not orthodox, whether or not they have sinned or not sinned. But he looks at them with respect that they’re a child of God. That’s where he begins. And that God wants to offer his mercy. People pick up on that. That’s why he is wildly popular. He’s telling people their lives count. And I think that’s created an enormous positive feedback that people are responding to.”

For months, I’ve seen our Holy Father’s popularity through a similar lens.

Here, however, I say that Pope Francis has become so popular because he focuses on the Church as our Mother more than on the Church as our teacher.

He has never denied the latter; but his pastoral approach far more closely represents the former, in my opinion.

We “cradle Catholics” realized early in our formation that the Church is our teacher – especially those of us who attended Catholic school. And all of us billion-plus Catholics across the world have benefited tremendously from the popes who focused more on the Church as a teacher.

You may disagree, but I viewed St. John Paul II as a teacher. Just consider that group of 123 weekly catechetical talks that we now know as “Theology of the Body” – arguably one of the most important catecheses of modern times.

Certainly, Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI was a teacher; and Pope Francis recognizes it. As Bishop Thompson has noted multiple times in presentations and homilies, the Holy Father quotes from Benedict XVI often. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity, in my last job, to work on the promotional effort for “Jesus of Nazareth II,” the second of Benedict XVI’s three volumes on the life of our Savior.

All of us have favorite teachers – maybe yours is from elementary school or high school. Maybe he or she taught you in college.

My hunch is that no matter how much you think of those teachers, you don’t love them like you love your parents. We see that kind of affection for Pope Francis, I believe.

He has not changed one element – not even the most minute element – of Church teaching. He has, however, exposed to the world the nature of “our Mother the Church” – more so, I believe, than any Holy Father in modern times.

Re-read this portion of the quote above from Archbishop Cupich – and consider that he now is talking about a parent instead of a pope: “He doesn’t see them as a problem, a challenge, as people who should be judged by whether or not they’re orthodox or not orthodox, whether or not they have sinned or not sinned.”

How many times have you seen or heard him referred to as Papa Francis? To me, at least, that supports the notion that our Holy Father chooses to focus on the Church as our Mother.