Pope Francis has lamented a “very strong reactionary attitude” in the US Catholic Church, saying that ideology had replaced faith in some parts of it and some members had failed to understand “there is an appropriate evolution in understanding matters of faith and morals.”

During his decade as pontiff, Francis has often faced criticism from conservative sectors of the US church, opposed to reforms such as giving women and lay Catholics more roles and making the church more welcoming and less judgmental towards some, including LGBT people.

The comments were made in Portugal on August 5, during a private meeting on Francis’ trip to Lisbon with members of the Jesuit order the pope belongs to, but were scheduled to be published in full as part of the Italian Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica’s end-of-August edition. Daily paper La Repubblica published excerpts in advance on Monday

During the question-and-answer session, a Portuguese Jesuit said that he was saddened while on a sabbatical in the US to find many Catholics, including some bishops, who were hostile to Francis’ leadership.

“You have seen that in the United States the situation is not easy: there is a very strong reactionary attitude,” Francis said. “It is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally.”

The liberal Argentine pontiff, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has also faced criticism from religious leaders and conservative media in the US on a host of his other stances, including climate change, immigration, social justice, gun control and opposing the death penalty as “neither human nor Christian.”

“You have been to the United States and you say you have felt a climate of closure. Yes, this climate can be experienced in some situations,” Francis told the questioner. “And there, one can lose the true tradition and turn to ideologies for support. In other words, ideology replaces faith, membership in a sector of the church replaces membership in the church.”

Francis said his critics needed to understand that “there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals,” and that being backward-looking was “useless” for the church.

He said it was an “error” to consider church teachings to be a “monolith.”

Francis gave both a historical and a more recent example to try to illustrate this, saying there was a time when many in the Catholic Church would have supported slavery. In the more recent case of homosexuality, he said, “it is apparent that perception of this issue has changed in the course of history.”

“But what I really dislike more generally is when you look at the so-called sins of the flesh through a magnifying glass, as people did for so long,” Francis said. He argued that pastoral care required “sensitivity and creativity,” also mentioning his first meeting with trans people. “It’s become clear to me that they feel spurned. And that’s really hard,” he said.

One of the pope’s fiercest American critics is Rome-based Cardinal Raymond Burke. He wrote in an introduction for a recent book that a meeting of bishops called by Francis for this October to try to help chart the future of the church risked sowing “confusion and error and division.”

  • Volkditty
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    431 year ago

    This isn’t going to go down with the strongly Catholic members of my family, all of whom believe they know Church doctrine better than the pope.

    • @Yokozuna
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      151 year ago

      Yea I’m sending this to my right wing catholic pastor cousin right now lol.

      • @Yokozuna
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        11 year ago

        Just an update on his response that I will edit out only names and identifying remarks.

        “My thoughts? I could write an encyclopedia. You just went down a rabbit hole that enters a wonder land of nightmares. Francis is an “anti-pope.” We had them before in history. Your (cousin) is in the middle of a civil war in the Catholic Church. It is about ready to spill out into the secular world and vice versa. It’s a great time to be alive.”

        He’s generally a great person to be around, I actually play TTRPG’s with him. He respects my beliefs about spirituality without being overly pushy about his. He’s been in the peace corps, and has worked for the state with helping children that are affected by terrible situations as well as hqving done many other generally good things though his life. I only say this because of the context of this discussion which isn’t in the best of light which does not reflect his over all character at all.