“How many divisions has the Pope?”

Reading the “News Frenzy” regarding the breaking story this week about Francis’ support of LGBTQ civil unions, I misremembered the context of this old quote. It came to mind because of Francis DeBernardo’s comment in New Ways Ministry’s response: “If the pope supports such couples, what should prevent lower-level Catholic officials from doing so?” One such lower-level person is my own Archbishop of Philadelphia, whose case against the City of Philadelphia will be heard on November 4 by the United States Supreme Court. Archbishop Perez did not initiate the case, but could he now say we’ll allow couples in civil unions to foster children through Catholic Social Services? Would that be enough for the City to again place its children in their care?

If you want a spirited review of the issues at stake in this case, check out Elie Mystal in The Nation. He’s harsher than most of those in the Catholic LGBTQ community as he reviews the history of free exercise of religion cases. He concludes: “I expect the Supreme Court to force Philadelphia to use a foster service that is openly bigoted and call it religious freedom.”

Is that what the Pope would want? Care of children seems to be foremost in Francis’s mind. Why should otherwise qualified LGBTQ families not be allowed to do that caring through Catholic Social Services?  It would be a step. But Perez is not part of any division following this Pope; he’s marching with the catechism, the banner raised by other church leaders.

The film that started this frenzy is Francesco, summarized by Joshua McElwee in NCR. It’s about several groups on the margins, including the Rohingya and other refugees, and portrays the isolation Francis experiences as his travel is curtailed because of the pandemic. I find this summary most thoughtful because he deals with the caring Pope, not the political one. The film will be available virtually Oct. 25 as part of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, with a six-day window to stream at home.

There’s a lovely promo photo of sex abuse survivor Juan Carlos Cruz in one of his regular meetings with the Pope. La Croix International headlines its coverage of the film on what the Pope said on pedophilia: “It is the great monstrosity. It is more serious than anything else…A priest is supposed to bring Jesus to the child. (But) these acts destroy the child.” Loup Besmond de Senneville lists other topics in the film as well, but none are the same kind of news as the LGBTQ comment is in the US.  

Christopher White gathers many responses to the film in NCR. Lisa Fullam says it all. This “professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, California, warned that any time a pope talks about sex, he’s going to get attention. ‘When something new comes out from the pope, people look for changes in teaching. I think they saw this as a change of teaching, even though the pope has spoken this way in the past.’” That’s what the guardedly hopeful advocates for gay rights are saying; here Francis is just a little more emphatic than he’s been before. He has a perhaps unintentional genius for generating publicity, especially on film. Colleen Dulle, in an “Explainer” in America, updates as of Thursday night various commentary on the Pope, the film, and civil unions if you want an approach that attempts to untangle some of the controversies.

LGBTQ people are on a margin that Francis sees and hears. Christopher Lamb in The Tablet recounts a conversation that deeply affected the Pope: “Andrea Rubera, a gay man who with his partner adopted three children…says in the film that he told the Pope in a letter he and his partner wanted to bring their children up as Catholics in the local parish but did not want to cause any trauma for the children. Rubera said the Pope telephoned him several days later, telling him he thought the letter was ‘beautiful’ and urging the couple to introduce their children to the parish but to be ready for opposition.” [Emphasis added.] For the parents, this was about protecting the children. They report that their family has successfully been integrated into their community, mentioning no opposition.

For Francis, any hint of caring about LGBTQ people and their families will generate a frantic response from his opponents, the conservative Episcopate who drag out the appalling sections of the Catechism. Rather than quoting them, covered in the Times and the Post and in some of the Catholic press, I will pivot to women and remind you of Lilian Medina Romero’s excellent post this week in this blog. She details the struggle of those trying to reconcile existing theology with feminism, who “carefully picked powerful human rights words to rebrand their traditional teachings and get people to find new meaning in their relationship with the Church…International human rights law and secular feminist movements have pushed the Church into a position where they cannot longer dismiss the conversation on equality. In many ways, Church leaders have realized that they must join the push for women’s equality in public life, as evidenced by Pope Francis’ calls for equal rights for women in the workplaces and civil society.”

That call and Francis’s actions to appoint more women apparently made a brief appearance in the film as well. But women are barely on the margins of this conversation. It’s not going to be a major theme in evaluations of Francis’s papacy, either. When it comes to women, most of the divisions are right behind the Pope.

Remember the quote? “How many divisions has the Pope?” How did I misremember it? I thought it must refer to the 19^th century battles about the papal states and the unification of Italy, when the Pope was defended by the armed forces of reaction. No, it’s a perhaps apocryphal quote from Stalin at the Teheran Conference in 1943. When it was suggested that the Pope might not want to be associated with the military strategy of the leaders of the World War II Great Powers alliance, Stalin dismissed the relevance of any moral concerns. Maybe. I discovered a new resource, Wordhistories.net, which has pages and pages about the use and misuse of this phrase, including Pope Pius XII’s perhaps apocryphal response, “When you see Our son Joseph again tell him that he will meet Our divisions in heaven.” Generous of the Pope to imagine Stalin in heaven, and perhaps overly confident that his own divisions would be there.

Our present Pope must sometimes hope that he will meet his divisions in heaven, over some rainbow only he seems to be seeing. Francis has yet to figure out how to motivate those lower-level officials who might support his stance to act or even to speak out in favor of it – or how to change the direction of those who are still marching behind his predecessors.