Mercy Is a Person: Pope Francis and the Christological Turn in Moral Theology

Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2017): 48-69 Mercy Is a Person: Pope Francis and the Christological Turn in Moral Theology Alessandro Rovati Before all else, the Gospel invites us to respond to the God of love who saves us, to see God in others and to go forth from ourselves to seek the good of others. […] If this invitation does not radiate forcefully and attractively, the edifice of the Church’s moral teaching risks becoming a house of cards, and this is our greatest risk. It would mean that it is not the Gospel which is being preached, but certain doctrinal or moral points based on specific ideological options. The message will run the risk of losing its freshness and will cease to have ‘the fragrance of the Gospel’ (Evangelii Gaudium, no. 39). HESE WORDS FROM THE APOSTOLIC Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium represent one of the main concerns of Francis’s pontificate, namely, the desire to call the Church back to the heart of the Gospel message so that her preaching may not T 1 be distorted or reduced to some of its secondary aspects. Francis put it strongly in the famous interview he released to his Jesuit brother Antonio Spadaro, “The Church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn. … The proposal of the gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”2 Francis’s witness and invitation challenge moral theologians to reflect about the ways in which their work too might contribute to the renewal of the Church’s missionary presence in the world. I want to 1 This emphasis has been present from the beginning of Francis’s Petrine ministry. In fact, in his very first homily he described walking, building, and confessing Jesus Christ crucified as his main concern for the pontificate and nothing else. See “Homily at the ‘Missa Pro Ecclesia’ with the Cardinal Electors,” March 14, 2013. In her biography, Elisabetta Piqué reports that Bergoglio expressed similar sentiments even during the General Congregations that preceded the Conclave, something that clearly was very well received by the cardinals in the audience. See Elisabetta Piqué, Pope Francis: Life and Revolution (Illinois: Loyola Press, 2013), 186. 2 Antonio Spadaro, A Big Heart Open to God: A Conversation with Pope Francis (New York: Harper One, 2013), 34-35. Mercy Is a Person 49 suggest that this entails at least three things for the way we understand, study, and teach Christian morality. First, Francis emphasizes that the foundation of Christian morality is the relationship with the Lord and not one’s own capacity for coherence and perfection. Again and again, the Pope has insisted on the primacy of grace, the “beacon which constantly illuminates our reflections” (Evangelii Gaudium, no. 112).3 While human beings are called to participate with generosity in God’s plan for humanity, the life of discipleship is not a matter of individual heroism (no. 12). In fact, the Church and all the faithful need first and foremost to make themselves available to the Lord, for “the first word, the true initiative, the true activity comes from God” (no. 112).4 Second, Francis shows us that Christian morality is the response to God’s gratuitous initiative and not faithfulness to some abstract principles, for it is the encounter with God’s love that liberates people from narrowness and self-absorption (no. 8), transfiguring their lives and leading them onto a path that has distinctive moral implications (no. 177). Third, Pope Francis indicates that Christian morality is not a matter for isolated individuals but rather a response to Christ’s initiative that always implies embarking on a communal journey. “God had found a way to unite Himself to every human being in every age,” explains Francis, but “He has chosen to call them together as a people and not as isolated individuals. …This people which God has chosen and called is the Church” (no. 113).5 According to Francis, these three elements are the foundation of Christian morality and should thus shape the work of moral theology. Commenting on the legacy of the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Ratzinger identified one of its most significant features with the desire to “return to a substantially biblical and Christological 3 Francis insisted on the transformative power of the grace even as a bishop. For example, see Jorge M. Bergoglio, Nuestra Fe Es Revolutionaria (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2013), 155-177. 4 Francis is here making his own an expression of Benedict XVI. See his “Meditation During the First General Congregation of the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops,” October 8, 2012. Unless otherwise indicated, all the quotes from Papal meditations, meetings, general audiences, addresses, homilies, and letters come from the online version that can be found on the official Vatican website, w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en.html. 5 Francis expanded this thought in one of his weekly catecheses. “Certainly faith is a personal act: ‘I believe,’ I personally respond to God who makes himself known and wants to enter into friendship with me (cf. Lumen Fidei, no. 39). But […] we do not become Christians in a laboratory, we do not become Christians alone and by our own effort. […] Faith is a gift from God given to us in the Church and through the Church.” Francis, “General Audience,” September 18, 2013. 50 Alessandro Rovati ethics, inspired by the encounter with Christ.”6 From the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors by articulating a moral vision that is rooted in the Gospel and in a deep relationship with the living Christ.7 It is no coincidence that Francis has recalled on many occasions the opening words of Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (no. 1).8 Before delving into his Christocentric vision, it is important to notice that Francis’s call for a return to the essential is void of any dissent with or diminishing of the Catholic moral tradition, and, in fact, the Pope has time and again forcefully defended the Church’s teachings in the public square.9 His insistence on the need to go back to the origin of Christian morality cannot be mistaken either with the dismissal of the wisdom that the Church has accumulated over her long history or with an opposition to particular Church’s teachings.10 Rather, it should be understood as a going back to its source, so that the faithful might rediscover the joy that comes from following Christ 6 Joseph Ratzinger, “The Renewal of Moral Theology: Perspectives of Vatican II and Veritatis Splendor,” Communio: International Catholic Review 32, no. 2 (2005): 358- 359. 7 For a description of Benedict XVI’s Christological focus, see Emery De Gaal, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The judgment about John Paul II’s moral teachings is more contested, but the importance of his description of Christian morality as “following Jesus Christ” (Veritatis Splendor, no. 119) is not denied even by his most outspoken critics. 8 Pope Francis has disclosed his fondness for this passage in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. In it he describes Benedict XVI’s insight as something that “take[s] us to the very heart of the Gospel.” Evangelii Gaudium, no. 7. For another example of Francis’s use of this passage, see his “Address to the Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of the Ivory Coast on Their ‘Ad Limina’ Visit,” September 18, 2014. Also, “Address to the Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Senegal- Mauritania-Cape Verde-Guinea Bissau on Their ‘Ad Limina’ Visit,” November 10, 2014. 9 Pope Francis’s 2015 visit to the United States, for example, stands as a remarkable witness of his commitment to the full breadth of the Church’s moral teachings and his passionate advocacy for them. See Francis, “Meeting with the Bishops of the United States of America,” September 23, 2015. Francis, “Address to the Joint Session of the United States Congress,” September 24, 2015. Francis, “Meeting with the Members of the General Assembly of the United Nations,” September 25, 2015. 10 For example, in the aforementioned interview, Pope Francis’s followed his criticism of an exaggerated insistence on the Church’s position about abortion, gay marriage, and contraception by describing himself as a “son of the Church” who follows teachings that are clear and that, accordingly, do not need to be talked about all the time. See Spadaro, A Big Heart Open to God, 34. Mercy Is a Person 51 and his commandments.11 In this sense, Francis’s approach to Christian morality represents both a correction of certain legalistic attitudes that reduce faith to the application of rules of conduct12 and a bold reaffirmation of the Church’s moral proposal that stressing the attractiveness of the Christian life makes the rejection of certain evils more understandable.13 In this way, explains Francis, the faithful will stand amidst the world as “joyful messengers of challenging proposals, guardians of the goodness and beauty which shines forth in a life of fidelity to the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium, no. 168). Discipleship entails a new life whose true spring is the “yes” that we say to God’s infinite preference for us.

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