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Pope Francis in His Own Words

Editor’s note: The following quotes are taken from comments made by then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in conversations with his friend Rabbi Abraham Sorka and collected in the New York Times best-selling book On Heaven and Earth. They provide insight into the new pontiff’s thought on a variety of social and spiritual topics.

On Atheists

When I speak with atheists, I will sometimes discuss social concerns, but I do not propose the problem of God as a starting point, except in the case that they propose it to me. If this occurs, I tell them why I believe. . . . I do not approach the relationship in order to proselytize, or convert the atheist; I respect him and show myself as I am. Where there is knowledge there begins to appear esteem, affection, and friendship. . . .

At any rate, I know more agnostic people than atheists; the first are more uncertain, the second are more convinced. We have to be coherent with the message that we receive from the Bible: Every man is the image of God, whether he is a believer or not. For that reason alone everyone has a series of virtues, qualities, and a greatness of his own. If he has some vileness, as I do, we can share that in order to mutually help one another and overcome it.

On Guilt

Guilt can be understood in two senses: as a transgression and as a psychological feeling. The latter is not religious. Moreover, I would dare to say that it can even supplant a religious feeling; something like that interior voice that points out that I made a mistake, that I did something wrong. There are people who are overly scrupulous because they need to live with guilt, but that psychological feeling is unhealthy. Then coming to terms with the mercy of God is much easier while I have this feeling of guilt, because I can go to confession and that’s that: The Lord has forgiven me.

But it is not that easy, because you just want to remove the blemish; the transgression is something more serious than a mere blemish. There are people who play this guilt game, and then in the encounter with the mercy of God they transform the experience into one of going to a dry cleaner, only going to clean their blemishes; just like that they degrade things.

On Women

[I]n Christianity the High Priest is Jesus, a male. In the theologically grounded tradition the priesthood passes through man. The woman has another function in Christianity, reflected in the figure of Mary. . . . The woman has the gift of maternity, of tenderness; if all these riches are not integrated, a religious community not only transforms into a chauvinistic society but also into one that is austere, hard, and hardly sacred.

The fact that a woman cannot exercise the priesthood does not make her less than the man. Moreover, in our understanding the Virgin Mary is greater than the apostles. According to a monk from the second century, there are three feminine dimensions among Christians: Mary as Mother of the Lord, the Church, and the soul. The feminine presence in the Church has not been emphasized much, because the temptation of chauvinism has not allowed for the place that belongs to the women of the community to be made very visible.

On Abortion

The moral problem with abortion is of a pre-religious nature, because the genetic code of the person is present at the moment of conception. There is already a human being. I separate the issue of abortion from any religious concept. It is a scientific problem. To not allow further progress in the development of a being that already has the entire genetic code of a human being is not ethical. The right to life is the first human right. Abortion is killing someone who cannot defend himself.

On Same-Sex Marriage

[I]n order to define [same-sex marriage] I would use the expression “anthropological regression,” a weakening of an institution that is thousands of years old and that was forged according to nature and anthropology. . . . Today, living together before getting married, even though it is not right from a religious point of view, does not have the same negative connotation in society that it had fifty years ago. It is a sociological fact that co-habitation certainly does not have the fullness or the greatness of marriage, which has thousands of years of value that deserves to be defended. It is because of this that we warn about its possible devaluation and, before modifying the law, one must reflect a lot about all that will put in play.

For us, what . . . is also important [is] the foundation of natural law that appears in the Bible that speaks about the union between a man and a woman. There have always been homosexuals. The island of Lesbos was known because homosexual women lived there, but it never occurred historically that they would seek to give them the same status of marriage. They were tolerated or they were not, they were admired or they were not, but they were never put on the same level.

We know that in times of momentous change the homosexual phenomenon grew, but in this period it is the first time that the legal problem of assimilating it to marriage has arisen, and this I consider an anti-value and an anthropological regression. . . .

The religious minister, at times, draws attention to certain points of private or public life because he is the parishioners’ guide. However, he does not have the right to force anything on anyone’s private life. If God, in creation, ran the risk of making us free, who am I to get involved? We condemn spiritual harassment that takes place when a minister imposes directives, conduct, and demands in such a way that it takes away the freedom of another person. God left the freedom to sin in our hands. One has to speak very clearly about values, limits, commandments, but spiritual and pastoral harassment is not allowed.

On Catholics Who Publicly Oppose Church Teaching

In his moment, David was an adulterer and an intellectual assassin, but nevertheless we venerate him as a saint because he had the courage to say, “I have sinned.” He humbled himself before God. One can do something horrible, but one can also realize his mistake, change his life, and repair what he did.

It is true that among the faithful there are those who have not only killed intellectually or physically but also have killed indirectly through the poor use of resources by paying unjust wages. In public they may form welfare societies, but they do not pay their employees a wage corresponding to their work, or they hide them “under the table.”. . . To be certain, we know their résumés, we know that they pretend to be Catholics, but they have the indecent attitude of those who never repent.

That is why, in certain situations, I do not give communion myself; I stay back and I let the ministers give it because I do not want those people to come to me for the photo op. . . . Those cases of spiritual hypocrisy occur in many people who hide within the Church and do not live according to the justice that God proclaims. They do show repentance, either. It is what we commonly call leading a double life.

On Preaching and Politics

There should be a distinction between politics with a capital P and politics with a lowercase p. Any act that a religious minister makes is a political act with a capital P, but there are some that would mix in politics with a lowercase p. The religious have the obligation to preach values, the lines of conduct, of education or to say a word, if requested, regarding a specific social situation. . . .

[W]hat happens is that the political world can become overly scrupulous: It listens to a pastor and they say he is preaching against so and so. We do not preach against anyone; we refer to the value that is in danger and that must be safeguarded. The media, which are sometimes infected with hepatitis—and I say this because of their yellow color—jump out and say: “Harsh rebuke to so and so!”

On Poverty

In Christianity, the attitude we must have toward the poor is, in its essence, that of true commitment. And He added something else: This commitment must be person to person, in the flesh. It is not enough to mediate this commitment through institutions, which obviously help because they have a multiplying effect, but that is not enough. They do not excuse us from our obligation of establishing personal contact with the needy. The sick must be cared for, even when we find them repulsive and repugnant. Those in prison must be visited. . . . It is terribly difficult for me to go to a prison because of the harshness of life there. But I go anyway, because the Lord wants me to be there in the flesh, alongside those in need, in poverty, in pain.

The first attention we pay to poverty is assistance: “Are you hungry? Here, here is something to eat.” But our aid cannot end there. . . . We have to help them earn a living. What is degrading to the poor is not giving them the oil that anoints them with dignity: a job. A poor man must not be looked at with disgust; he must be looked at in the eyes. Sometimes it may be uncomfortable but we have to be up to the task.

The great danger—or great temptation—when aiding the poor is falling into an attitude of protective paternalism that, at the end of the day, does not allow them to grow. A Christian’s obligation is to integrate the most deprived into his community in whatever way possible.

On the Devil

The Devil is, theologically, a being that opted not to accept the plan of God. The masterpiece of the Lord is man; some angels did not accept it and they rebelled. The Devil is one of them. . . . [T]he book of Wisdom says that sin entered the world through the Devil’s envy of God’s masterpiece. His fruits are always destruction: division, hate, and slander. And in my personal experience, I feel him every time that I am tempted to do something that is not what Gods wants for me.

I believe that the Devil exists. Maybe his greatest achievement in these times has been to make us believe that he does not exist and that all can be fixed on a purely human level. Man’s life on Earth is warfare; Job says it, meaning that people are constantly put to the test; that is to say, a test to overcome a situation and overcome oneself. . . . I want to point out that the Devil is one thing. It is quite another matter to demonize things or people. Man is tempted, but there is no need to demonize him.

On God

I would say that one encounters God walking, moving, seeking him and allowing oneself to be sought by him. They are two paths that meet. On one hand, there is our path that seeks him, driven by that instinct that flows from the heart; and after, when we have encountered each other, we realize that he was the one who had been searching for us from the start. . . .

I would tell the people of today to seek the experience of entering into the intimacy of their hearts, to know the experience, the face of God. That is why I love what Job says after his difficult experience and the dialogues that did not help him in any way: By hearsay I had heard of you, but now my eye has seen you” (Job 42:5). What I tell people is not to know God only by hearing. The living God is he that you may see with your eyes within your heart.

Excerpted fromOn Heaven and Earth by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, available from Catholic Answers (shop.catholic.com). Copyright © 2013 by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka. Excerpted by permission of Image, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.


Photo of Pope Francis by Edgar Jiménez. From Wikimedia Commons

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