Book of the month
IanMcCormack finds this collection from Pope Francis both satisfying and challenging.
THE CHURCH OF MERCY His first major book: A message of hope for all people Pope Francis DLT, 192pp, pbk 978 0232531244, £9.99
Pope Francis really gets under your skin. I mean that as the highest form of compliment. Te Church of Mercy is not a book of comforting platitudes or complacent clichés. Tis is a book full of startling insights and unsetling demands. In this, the Holy Father follows in the footsteps of Jesus Christ himself. And like the teaching of Our Lord – which the religious elites of his time found so difficult to accept – these words of Pope Francis have a habit of setling in the subconscious of the reader and dramatically reappearing at the most challenging and downright awkward moments. Tey resurface with a direct challenge: what does this mean for me? What does this mean for the Church? What must I do to play my part in the call to dangerous discipleship which runs through this book like leters in a stick of rock? It strikes me as I write this that there is an
irony here for NEW DIRECTIONS readers. If these sorts of questions – and much of the phraseology used in Te Church of Mercy – were employed by a Fresh Expressions merchant with a fancy title and a big desk in the diocesan office, we would dismiss them out of hand. Yet coming from the pen of the Holy Father, with the full weight of the teaching office of the Church behind them, they carry authority and conviction, and cannot be ignored. As I say, this is an unsetling book – and all the more valuable for that. Te subtitle of the book is misleading. Tis is not a full-
length monograph, but a collection of the Pope’s sermons, addresses and general audiences. It is one of many that have appeared since Francis became Pope – and it is among the best. Te English translation is excellent, the layout atracive, and the sources properly annotated (albeit at the back of the book, which is slightly irritating). But it is the words of Pope Francis himself which make Te Church of Mercy truly valuable. Several themes emerge as central to the Pope’s message.
Foremost among them is a challenge to each and every baptised Christian: ‘How do I let myself be guided by the Holy Spirit in such a way that my life and witness of faith is both unity and communion? Do I convey the word of reconciliation and of love, which is the Gosel, to the milieus in which I live?
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… Do I create unity around me? Or do I cause division, by gossip, criticism or envy? What do I do?’ For those whose vocation is to ordained ministry, the
challenges become even more telling. Priests are called to walk with their people: sometimes in front to guide the community; sometimes in the middle to encourage and support; and some times at the back to keep the community united and ensure that nobody lags too far behind to remain within. ‘What could be more beautiful’, the Pope asks, than a parish priest who knows the lives of his people, even down to the name of each family’s dog? But there is a dangerous and difficult side to priesthood as well: pastors must be prepared to allow themselves to be led, like St Peter, to places that they do not wish to go. Bishops do not escape: to be an apostle is
first and foremost to be a person who prays. When we think of a bishop, we must ask ourselves ‘if this successor of the apostles prays first and then proclaims the Gosel’? All of this culminates in a challenge to the
Church as a whole: she is called constantly to go out to the edges of society, to the ‘outskirts of existence’ to proclaim the Gosel to al the world. ‘Are we missionaries by our words … or are we Christians closed in our hearts and in our churches, sacristy Christians? Are we Christians in name only, who live like pagans?’ ‘Sacristy Christians’ is a wonderful phrase,
and a phenomenon which will be instantly recognisable to most of us. But one of the
surprising joys in reading this book was in discovering that Pope Francis has a giſt for the memorable turn of phrase. God’s touch is a ‘caress of love’. Christians must be ‘revolutionaries through grace!’ Priests are called to be ‘shepherds with the “odour of the sheep”’. One final point: there are those who have atempted to
portray, in the Pope’s fluent ease with modern forms of communication and media, and in some of his pastoral encounters, a deep-seated shiſt in the teaching of the Church, and in particular a drastic discontinuity between Francis and his predecessor. Tis book suggests that nothing could be further from the truth: Benedict XVI is quoted frequently here, and the Holy Father writes (as we would expect) from a position of solid doctrinal orthodoxy. Tat is precisely what makes Te Church of Mercy such a satisfying and yet challenging read.
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