We often use the phrases “preaching to the choir” or “preaching to the converted” to describe an exercise in futility, but the way that I came to understand much of what Pope Francis had to say is that he believed preaching to the converted was not only fruitful, but urgent.
Consider Pope Francis’ famous and oft-cited line, “Who am I to judge?”
Preached to an already secularised and faithless world, this statement could be (and was) interpreted as license for a person to do whatever they pleased. Directed, however, to those already in the pews, who were not at risk of living a life of licentiousness, the phrase might have a different effect, encouraging us to reflect on our own weakness and sinfulness before seeking to condemn others.
Or take his position on abortion. Just six months after his election to the papacy, Pope Francis said that it was “not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” and in his 2018 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, he wrote that equally sacred to the life of the unborn are “the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection.”
Preached to a culture of death, the pope’s suggestion that the church had become obsessed with abortion and should not talk about it so much would have been seen as downplaying its grave sinfulness. But this was not the pope’s belief, because he elsewhere condemned the taking of unborn human life as murder or “hiring a hitman.”
Preached to those already trying to build a culture of life and love, these comments are a reminder that if we are serious about the sanctity of every human life, we must make sure that we are advocating for the life and dignity of all. In some respects, Pope Francis was inviting an examination of conscience, and challenging Catholics to engage with issues involving all vulnerable human life, where the answers might be complex.
Even the pope’s more recent cry of “todos, todos, todos” has different meanings depending on the audience. To those outside and with little interest in the church, it signified an all-inclusive approach, with no call to conversion. To those already “inside,” it is a push towards an evangelical zeal that desires every single person to know Christ through his church.
I did not always find the late pope’s focus on those inside the church consoling.
Sometimes, it challenged and convicted me, calling me out of my culture war comfort zone into the broader Christian life. Other times, I simply did not agree. For example, I never understood the pope’s consistent warning to priests that the confessional should not be a “torture chamber,” because I have never experienced the “torture chamber” confessional and do not know any priest who treats it that way.
Nor could I accept his seeming dislike for young, traditionally-minded priests, because I know scores of these priests and they are nothing like the caricature he seemed to describe. But even this talk of confessionals and clericalism related to “internal” church matters.
The paradigm of “preaching to the converted” is how I came to understand the Francis papacy. As much as he was embraced by the “outside” world and hailed as “the people’s pope,” I think the opposite is true.
I think that Pope Francis’ attention was not on non-Catholics, nor was it even on non-practising or lukewarm Catholics. I think he was laser-focused on those of us already firmly within the Barque of Peter. Somehow, Francis managed to simultaneously be the “Pope of the Peripheries” and a pope whose gaze was fixed on those on the inside of the inside.
I think Pope Francis realised that the reason you preach to the choir is so that you can get them to sing.
May he rest in peace.