Editorial: The Path to Compassion

Pope Francis likes to see the Catholic Church as a “field hospital” to heal wounds through a pastoral mission that demands total immersion in their community out of every priest.

The recent exhortation made by the Pope entitled “The Joy of Love” lay out a vision to follow that trail. In the text, he challenges the faithful to use their conscience and religious servants to make their own decisions, given that appropriate solutions are different for every part of the world and not everything can be seen as black and white, because by doing so “we sometimes close off the way of grace and growth.”

The document was carefully developed after two annual meetings and one global consultation. In his comments, the pontiff made known his wishes for a more modern and inclusive Church in which condemnation is replaced by understanding.

This is a victory for realism that Francis is trying to introduce into the Church without changing its fundamentals. An example of this is his acknowledgement of the situation in which divorced Catholics find themselves, being forbidden from taking communion. The Church needs to get closer to these believers, not to censure them but to help them to fully reincorporate. To do this, the Pope is allowing priests to evaluate instances on a case-by-case basis.

It was not realistic to expect changes in the traditional Catholic definition of family, but the Pope reiterated the Church’s opposition to discrimination against gays by saying that they are to be given a dignified and respectable treatment.

Conservative critics say that the document deprives the Church of its clarity at a moment defined by confusion, and that it should maintain its traditional hierarchism, stating that the Vatican’s word should be followed as an absolute mandate. The response to this is contained in the Pope’s exhortation when he stated: “We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them.”

It is not right to compare different religions, but it is inevitable to contrast the Pope’s message of compassion towards gays to the increasingly restrictive laws against homosexual men and women that are being approved in a number of states in our country under the false premise of “religious freedom,” giving people permission to reject and harm their fellow human beings.

Pope Francis is a transformative force, and this document is part of that. He is bringing the Church out into the street again, dusting it off and engaging it in current issues to make it respond to its faithful with more compassion and understanding instead of exclusion and condemnation.