Posted on 11/19/2014 12:20:09 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
The high five, which left some Catholics I know muttering, he explained in the Huffington Post a few days afterward. At a three-hour meeting at the Vatican, Francis listened to several Evangelical leaders talk about their faith and their passion for evangelism. He then responded with “a dynamic evangelical message.” He “wanted everyone to have a personal life-changing encounter with Christ and enter into a personal relationship with Jesus and become bold witnesses for the Gospel. Religion is not the way; Jesus is.”
Robison, sitting next to the pope, was pleased. “So fervent was his message that as he concluded I said, ‘As an evangelist, I want you to know what you just said deserves a high five!’” The translator apparently had to explain this idiom to the pope and when he understood what his Evangelical friend wanted, Francis raised his hand. In the picture, both men are smiling, though one of them looks as if he hadn’t done this before.
As I say, some Catholic friends muttered and grumbled at what they apparently thought was an unpapal act. It was, I think obviously, an act of kindness and friendship, with Francis adapting himself to someone else’s way of doing things. If Jesus could eat with prostitutes and tax collectors, popes can exchange high fives with American Evangelicals.
James Robison comes from a world very different from mine, and even more different from Francis’. Part of the difference is cultural, but the more important difference is religious. The Catholic and the Southern Baptist understand the Church differently, the Bible differently, the way God forms and transforms us differently. Our churches have a crucifix and a Tabernacle, theirs may have a cross (but probably don’t) and definitely don’t have a Tabernacle. It would be wrong to understate the differences in the spirit of Christian friendship. The Catholic forced to worship in a Baptist church would feel the room empty, the Baptist forced to worship in a Catholic church would feel it filled with idols. Each might, out of charity, treat the other’s church as if it were a version of his own, but that would be only a polite fiction.
And yet. Eating together in Rome, the Catholic pope and the Evangelical pastors listening to each other listened to men who spoke of souls and of Jesus Christ in the same way, who talked in similar ways about someone they knew and served, who shared the desire that others come to know and serve him too.
Sitting round a table with Robison and his peers and two other Catholics, I felt the same thing. They speak a different language than I do as a Catholic. Our Lady and the saints were not presences they felt and friends they would claim. They do not enjoy the sacraments. They do not look to the Magisterium for help in knowing what Christians believe and how they ought to live. They do not, the Catholic would say, have all the gifts of God that bring us happiness.
And yet. Here are men who love Jesus. If Jesus walked into the room, they’d hit their knees as fast, if not faster, than the Catholics with them. If he told them, “You go join their Church,” they’d do it. Perhaps not right away, and not without grumbling, and only after double- and triple-checking, but they would do it.
“The enemy has kept many Christians from loving one another as Christ loves us and have failed to recognize the importance of supernatural unity even with all of the unique diversity,” Robison wrote in the Huffington Post article. “We know it is God's will for those who have been born from above to become bold witnesses for His glory and Kingdom purpose and to go into all the world and make disciples of Christ. We have been commanded to love God with all of our heart and our neighbors as ourselves.”
We can explain the growing friendship of Evangelicals and Catholics as the result of culture: two once-dominant and now increasingly marginalized groups find each other to be allies in their marginalization, while sharing a belief in the moral law much of their society rejects. They find themselves friends, like the lonely kids on the playground who won’t have any friends if they don’t band together or the nerds in the computer club everyone else teases.
That’s certainly a reason. But what Robison calls supernatural unity seems to be a reason as well. In this meeting and others I’ve attended, people sharply divided by the Reformation felt themselves brothers not only because they found themselves huddled together in the cultural doghouse, but because they shared a friendship with the Lord. I suspect Francis saw this in his meeting, that he knew that he and the Evangelicals met, as Robison writes, “in the presence of the Lord.”
Meeting in the presence of the Lord does not erase the real differences. Whether those hosts in the Tabernacle are really Jesus or only pieces of bread remains a serious and divisive question, and a difference that epitomizes all the others. That two men share a close friendship with Jesus does not mean they will agree. One friend may be quite wrong about what Jesus wants. He may not be listening very well.
But Evangelicals and Cathoilcs see more and more that they are friends, not just allies but friends, and that counts for a lot in this world. I would never in a million years high five the pope. But I’m pleased that James Robison felt he could, and in fact that he felt he must.
David Mills, former executive editor of First Things, is a writer and author of Discovering Mary. His webblog can be found at www.patheos.com/blogs/davidmills.
James Robison?
Doesn’t he run some kooky conservative internet site?
Pope Francis is not an American, not even English or French. It’s very likely he did not know the significance of the raised palm as being a ‘high five’. Pope most likely have to deal with all manner of strange acting out from the starstruck faithful. Maybe he thought it was more a “star trekky’ type mannerism.
No, you’re thinking of Jim Thompson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Robison_%28televangelist%29
Robison is one more blow-dried phony-baloney who convinces little old ladies across America to sent him their Social Security checks in the name of Jesus. He does have a lot in common with Frankie Finocchio.
Other than the fact that Pope Francis is not blow-dried, not a televangelist, and not a person who has ever used a print, broadcast or digital or social medium to make a financial appeal, I suppose you’ve got something there.
The Church has always looked to enter into proper dialogue with other religions in order to point to what everyone finds what they all have in common.
The Church doesn't do it in order to convert others, but it is done because dialogue is the way we all find our way to the Truth.
The Pope is a Jesuit. That should explain things a bit.
That’d be Jim Thompson. No relation....... :-)
Jesuits all.
Ad Maiorem De Gloriam.
Also Father Mitch Pacwa.
This isn’t the first time a prominent Catholic had good words for a Protestant counterpart. Half a century ago, Bishop Fulton Sheen said that when Billy Graham died, the Catholic Church should declare him a saint. This was praise from one great evangelist to another.
Also Fr. Joe Fessio!
I like it too. Pope Francis is a man, a human being, and if he wasn’t offended by it, I’m not.
I’ll bet he gets tired of all of the formality.
“Here are men who love Jesus. If Jesus walked into the room, they’d hit their knees as fast, if not faster, than the Catholics with them.”
I am sorry to disappoint you: Pope Francis himself in “consecrating” the hose, is observed to not even genuflect. See Ann Barnhardt’s blog back when she presented the feed from his first mass as pope. That was likely the first time ever that a pope showed no such reverence at consecration.
Conclusion: Either he doesn’t believe in the Catholic doctrine of trans-substantiation or he would not fall on his knees as the author erroneously asserts.
And the late Father John Hardon. Also, Father Richard Ho Lung, founder of the Missionaries of the Poor, was a Jesuit before he started the MOP.
Making global generalities off of literal rubrical foot-faults.
I could be he has arthritic knees that periodically flare up. I "get" this because I have R.A. myself. If I genuflcted, let alone knelt in church, it's doubtful I could get up without a stout yeoman to hoist me right and left.
There are things you can well criticize about Pope Francis. I don't like his appointments, many of them. I don't like his insouciance about stuff like the Scalfari "interviews." But don't pick a something that might be more about tendons than theological tendencies.
Catholic ping!
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