Question: "The media have referred to the intense correspondence John Paul II and the American philosopher, Ana Teresa Tymieniecka. … According to His Holiness, can a Pope have such an intimate relationship with a woman?"
Pope Francis: "I would say that a man who does not know how to have a relationship of friendship with a woman … well, he is a man who is missing something. … A friendship with a woman is not a sin. It is a friendship. … But the Pope is a man. The Pope needs the input of women, too. And the Pope, too, has a heart that can have a healthy, holy friendship with a woman. There are saint-friends – Francis and Clare, Teresa and John of the Cross. … But women are still not well considered; we have not understood the good a woman can do for the life of a priest and of the church in the sense of counsel, help and healthy friendship".
–Conversation with reporters, February 18, 2016
37 responses to “”
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I guess the good side to the whole Trump thing was that it deflected attention away from that correspondence.
I was wondering where this came from, so I went looking and found it pretty easily. I think it’s interesting that after there having been so much hand-wringing over whether or not he was going to let divorced and remarried couples receive Communion, when he said something pretty clear and definitive, it seems to have been overlooked–or maybe I’m just not looking in the right places.
AMDG -
What amazes me is how many people in the media seem only able to express themselves in stereotypes and clichés. I don’t imagine their private conversation is limited in at all the same way, but of course I don’t know that for sure.
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At the risk of sounding reflexively cynical, it doesn’t amaze me at all.
I didn’t mean to be uninformative about the context of these comments. I assumed the date would suffice to indicate that this was from the same session as the Trump-wall comments, but that was probably not a reasonable assumption. Even if you realized it was the same date it could possibly have been from a different conversation. -
Oh, I didn’t think you were uninformative, I was just curious.
AMDG -
And when I read it–I mean it’s just one big thing after another. The birth control thing–I haven’t said anything about that yet because I wanted to find out what actually happened with those nuns in the Congo because it just didn’t sound right–and it wasn’t really right.
AMDG -
I look at Google News several times a day. It’s a page of links to the news stories of the day. After this interview, there were at least four or five stories each on the Trump and birth control bits, little or nothing on anything else he said.
I think what drives me the craziest is the journalistic treatment of Catholic teaching as the Pope’s “policy.” -
I think they just have no idea what they are talking about. They think we make it all up as we go along. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t drive me crazy. I miss the kind of journalism that involves doing the kind of research that gives you a good understanding of what you are reporting. Your wife was telling me once that it is more the fault of the way news is done nowadays than the reporters. They don’t have time to do in-depth research. At least, I think that’s what she was saying. It’s been a while. I could do some research on that, but it would probably mean a solid month of scrolling backward on Facebook, and I don’t have time.
AMDG -
It shouldn’t amaze me, I know. Chesterton commented on it a hundred years ago already. But I still can’t imagine that their conversation could be as vacuous as their writing, especially when writing must of necessity take more thought than conversing.
I thought it was common knowledge that nuns were at extremely high risk of being raped in Congo (for all sorts of reasons, some analogous to those discussed here), and that their superiors allowed them to use contraceptives to prevent any rape leading to pregnancy. (Weirdly a lot of the mentions of this I’ve found in the past few minutes on Google, trying to check why I think this is common knowledge, talk of “white nuns in the Congo”, but most of them weren’t white, and one of them is now a beata.) I suppose some correction or clarification would have been issued if the Pope were wrong in saying Paul VI had authorised it. I had heard that something similar happened during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, but that is just hearsay. It doesn’t really affect the question of contraception as such, because using contraceptives in a war zone where many of the soldiers think rape makes their juju work and that sex with virgins cures disease (as well as that white people and those working with them can legitimately be punished in any way imaginable) is hardly comparable to any other situation. -
Missed an opening and closing “a” in that first hyperlink.
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Fixed.
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“…using contraceptives in a war zone…is hardly comparable to any other situation.”
That’s the kind of distinction that’s beyond the reach of most of the people making public commentary on such matters. I don’t mean just journalists, but pundits, academics, people in general. I say beyond their reach but there’s a certain refusal in operation there, too. The attempt to make the distinction typically meets with sneers. I keep mentioning Facebook memes. I can just see this one: a picture of the pope–or a pope, not necessarily Francis–preferably with some goofy or unpleasant look on his face–with “ORDERS NUNS TO USE BIRTH CONTROL” at the top and “TELLS TEENAGE GIRLS NOT TO” at the bottom. -
” They think we make it all up as we go along.”
The big problem, as you’re no doubt aware, is that they see the world so entirely in political terms. They can’t see anything the pope says in any other terms except those of a politician trying to implement his own “policies” and dealing with the pressures exerted by his various constituencies. -
John L. Allen Jr., writing at Crux about birth control in Congo used by nuns facing sexual violence in the late 1950s and early 1960s:
Francis said Paul VI “permitted” birth control in that context, which, to Anglo-Saxon ears, implies a formal juridical act. The line sparked a frenzy of fruitless Internet searches, as people went looking for a Vatican edict or decree that just doesn’t exist.
Here’s what happened: In December 1961, the influential Italian journal Studi Cattolici (“Catholic Studies”) published an issue in which three Catholic moral theologians agreed that in the Congo case, contraception could be justified.
The future Paul VI, at that stage, was still the Archbishop of Milan, and close to the currents that shaped Studi Cattolici. It was assumed the conclusions reflected his thinking. That appeared to be confirmed later when Paul VI made one of the authors, Pietro Palazzini, a cardinal.
Paul became pope in 1963, and never issued any edict writing that position into law. Thus, when pressed about it some years later, a Vatican spokesman could accurately say, “I am not aware of official documents from the Holy See in this regard.”
Still, the Vatican never repudiated the 1961 position, so the takeaway was that it remained a legitimate option. To Italians — and remember, Francis’ ancestry is Italian, and he’s very wired into the country’s ecclesiastical scene — that meant Paul VI approved. -
I started to mention that there are some journalists who cover religion who know what they’re talking about, and John Allen is the best example.
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Nothing seems to cloud the mind as much as sex, unless it’s money. Not a novel observation, I know.
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When we’re talking about birth control which these nuns were allegedly using, I assume this was the pill. It’s not likely that they could get rapists to use condoms.
But why did the Pope even refer to this at all? As usual he’s making a big mess and not in a good way.
All I can say is that I’m really angry about Church leadership right now – across the board. -
So, you’re praying for them all everyday–seriously–right?
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It’s a little trying to explain that the Church doesn’t teach teenagers should be having “unprotected” sex; it teaches that they shouldn’t be having sex at all outside marriage.
Pills that would prevent ovulation, Louise. In the relevant timeframe (1960-1965) a number of people thought these might in any case be counted as an enhanced form of NFP (Humanae Vitae cleared that up, and obviously a lot more is known about their other effects now). I don’t think the pope’s making any more of a mess than Benedict XVI did. Which is to say, I don’t think it’s the pope who’s making the mess. -
I’m pretty sure that at that time (1960-1965) BC pills did not have an abortifacient component. It was when they found that the pills were too strong and causing problems that they weakened them and added the backup drugs.
AMDG -
The keen desire for easy answers to hard questions is one of the things that most frustrates me about my students. I always assume they’ll grow out of it, but perhaps when people become journalists it only gets worse.
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There’s that, and also the whole cultural climate, in which most of the most influential people are committed to a quasi-religion of progressive politics, and sexual liberation is a major component of that. It clearly bothers them a lot that the Catholic Church won’t get with the program. And so reporters prod the pope whenever they get a chance, hoping to find an opening. At minimum an opportunity to say “Ha! You’re actually not 101% consistent” with the implication that the only logical response to that is to drop the teaching altogether.
Quite a while back (years), Grumpy made a comment that has stuck with me. She was quoting Elisabeth Anscombe to the effect that if you want to get young people to give up on some moral principle, you construct a case, no matter how far-fetched, where there seems no alternative to violating the principle. They will then conclude that the principle is wrong. That’s part of what’s going on with the journalists (and progressives in general) on this question. -
Thanks for the link to that Benedict story, Paul. I thought I remembered something of that sort.
‘It’s a little trying to explain that the Church doesn’t teach teenagers should be having “unprotected” sex; it teaches that they shouldn’t be having sex at all outside marriage.’
Yes. Discussing contraception in the context of rape or even any kind of illicit sex is like discussing what kind of gun should be used in a murder to minimize the possibility of injuring someone besides the victim. The point is that you shouldn’t be committing murder in the first place.
Facebook meme version of the preceding: “Horton says there’s no difference between pre-marital sex and murder.” -
I am praying and fasting for the Church, including her leaders – and have been for months
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I haven’t commented much on these posts because I refuse to get into a stoush with people here, whom I love. But I think Pope Francis is bad news. I can’t square all the circles. I don’t believe silence is an option any more, if it ever was. But I won’t be discussing it here much.
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I just don’t understand how talking about it will fix it.
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It’s important, so one naturally talks about it. But although I have my reservations about Francis, there is an awful lot that is really good in what he says and does. That’s the bulk of it, I think. So I find it helpful to give attention to those things. With the exception of my snark about the Trump remarks, I find these things I’ve been quoting very helpful, even inspiring. It does seem to me, Louise, that a lot of the people who are worried about Francis are focusing too much on the negative.
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Well yes, that, but what I mean is that no amount of talk can change anything. Even if he is the reincarnation of Pope Alexander VI, there is nothing we can do about it (except pray, of course). We can’t impeach him or vote him out of office.
Talking for understanding, or in the worst case to figure out what we are called to do in our own lives to deal with what is going on (or for consolation even) is understandable, but it can’t fix anything. Some people on Facebook, etc., seem like they are campaigning, and I wonder to what end.
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There are people both in and out of the Church who are probably going to go to hell because of his ramblings. That’s why I can no longer remain silent.
Perhaps you are right, Maclin, that he’s not that bad. I hope you’re right and I hope I’m wrong, but I think he has done a lot of damage already. I’m not into gossip, in real life – in fact I hate it. I can easily keep my own counsel and mostly have done over the last three years on this issue, but that’s not the point. My conscience – rightly or wrongly – is telling me to be prepared to speak about it when necessary. At his inauguration Mass (I think) he didn’t genuflect or bow at the consecration. That’s a big problem in my book. This whole contraception thing (along with rabbitgate) is very disturbing to me, but I won’t go on about it here, beyond what I’ve said. -
1 hour, 43 minutes, 43 seconds
53 minutes and 5 seconds
Louise, I say this out of love, but I fear you have been giving too much credence to liars who place their own pride above the respect due the papal office. Perhaps in the past you have found them reliable exposers of liberal humbug. Here they are playing Chicken Little. -
Yes. As is very plain for all to see, I have my reservations about Francis, and have at several points been pretty frustrated by some of his off-the-cuff comments. And I have a friend who’s considerably more knowledgeable about theology and liturgy than I am, who also has concerns. But they are about the quality of his leadership, not his fundamental commitment to the faith.
There seem to be people who are going way beyond reasonable concern. I hope they aren’t actually lying, as Paul suspects, but they are definitely engaging in alarmism, and from the little I’ve seen appear to have no more use for any pope since Pius XII than for Francis. I have not seen anything reliably reported that made me think Francis is unfaithful. Questionable judgment at worst, not heresy or apostasy.
I think we are obligated to look for the best in any pope, and there is so much good in this one. -
Well thanks. I’m not really going to debate this of course, but I have felt concerned right from the start, not based on other people’s views. I’ll check those links.
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Well, he is very clearly bowing and very reverent.
AMDG -
I watched the parts of those videos that Paul kindly pointed us to. And it’s true that the pope does not genuflect, but he does bow, very deeply and reverently. I certainly don’t see anything disrespectful or irreverent going on. I think we’re obliged to assume that there’s some good reason why he doesn’t genuflect, just as we would with anyone else. I know several people who can’t, for physical reasons, and they’re considerably younger than Francis.
I think (obviously) that it’s ok to criticize the pope. Even ok to criticize him severely if it’s warranted. There’s certainly precedent for that. But what worries me in some of the radical criticism of Francis (and indeed the whole hierarchy, going back decades) is that it doesn’t seem to be done in a spirit of humility and service to the Church. I hear a lot of bitterness in some of it–and I don’t mean just lately, regarding Francis, but for as long as I’ve been Catholic (1981). Sometimes it’s understandable, but it’s not a fruit of the Holy Spirit. -
I have to say that the video I originally saw was edited differently – possibly deliberately, possibly not. That at least is a weight off my mind. Thanks, Paul.
I can hardly genuflect, myself, at times. -
Yes. I was thinking that if I genuflected all the way to the floor, it would take 6 strong men and a horse to get me up.
AMDG -
After posting I did wonder if “liars” wasn’t a bit strong, but it was so easy to find visual evidence of the pope’s reverence that I was somewhat indignant.
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Fair enough, Paul. It’s getting like that for me already, Janet.
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