“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand,”

Finding Christ with Francis: 

A Hermeneutic of Traditions

by Michael Bradley

When a friend excitedly forwarded me the New York Times articleon remarks made by Pope Francis in his recent interview, I closed the page just as soon as I had clicked the link. The sensational headline—“Pope Says Church Is ‘Obsessed’ With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control”—told me everything I needed to know about what the Pope had not said in his interview. So I decided to wait and see what hehad said before reading any pop interpretations.

The meanings of the Pope’s remarks will be debated at length in other forums, by people whose competence for discussing such matters far surpasses my own. I offer here just a cursory reflection on the themes of Francis’ interview.

Needless to say, the degree to which persons find the Pope’s words fantastic (in the descriptive, not evaluative sense) probably mirrors the degree to which those persons don’t quite understand what the Catholic Church is and is not, or much more tellingly, who Pope Francis is and is not. If the past few days have taught us anything, it’s that real hermeneutical literacy consists in more than a front-to-back reading of a text. Indeed, one can hardly hope to understand the place out of which Francis speaks without a deep familiarity with Catholic teaching, Catholic history and even Catholic spirituality—especially, and this cannot be stressed enough, the Pope’s identity as a priest of the Society of Jesus.

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