Pope Francis Chooses Fr. Martin

First Things, 20 August 2021

Pope Francis offered something relatively neutral to someone who would put it to his own purposes.

In late June, just as I was arriving in Kraków, Poland, for the annual seminar in Catholic social teaching organized by George Weigel, there was a minor kerfuffle about a personal letter that Pope Francis had sent to Fr. James Martin, S.J. It brought to mind another private papal letter from twenty-seven years ago. Private correspondence, selectively shared, is one way that popes choose their interpreters.

Just weeks before the letter from Pope Francis, Fr. Martin had lamented that same-sex couples could not have their unions blessed by a priest. Fr. Martin chose to make his private letter public, arguing that the Holy Father supported his ministry of “building a bridge,” as his 2017 book put it, to gay and transgender individuals.

Pope Francis wrote in Spanish, and Fr. Martin provided this translation:

I want to thank you for your pastoral zeal and your ability to be close to people, with the closeness that Jesus had, and which reflects the closeness of God. God’s “style” has three elements: closeness, compassion and tenderness. This is how he comes closer to each one of us. Thinking about your pastoral work, I see that you are continually seeking to imitate this style of God. You are a priest for all, just as God is a Father for all. I pray for you to continue this way, being close, compassionate and with great tenderness. And I pray for your faithful, your “flock” and all those whom the Lord places in your care, so that you protect them, and make them grow in the Love of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

That could be written by almost any bishop to almost any priest, but Fr. Martin chose—not unreasonably, given his profile on the issue—to interpret it this way:

[M]ay the Holy Father’s warm message encourage and inspire all those in the church who minister to LGBTQ Catholics and, moreover, remind LGBTQ people everywhere in the world of God’s “closeness, compassion and tenderness.”

It’s the kind of thing that clever Jesuits are good at—both saying and not saying something at the same time. Pope Francis offered something relatively neutral to someone who would put it to his own purposes.

The same dynamic was at work in September 2019 when Pope Francis granted Fr. Martin a private audience at the Vatican, immediately after which Fr. Martin launched a social media campaign advertising the encounter. That earned a rebuke from Weigel against “PR games that, irrespective of intention, have the effect of deploying the pope as a high-value piece on the chessboard of ecclesiastical controversy.”

There will be more of the same from Fr. Martin in future. But what does Pope Francis get out of it? 

Continue reading at First Things.