Since his papacy began in March, Pope Francis has shown to be comfortable charting new waters for both himself and the Church as a whole. His endeavors, from washing prisoners' feet or hugging a disabled child after Easter Mass to making impromptu phone calls to letter-writers have embraced a set of principles that his predecessors did not. Even more radically, Francis has reached out to atheists, gays and divorcees. In an interview released last week, Francis went farther still in his effort to reorient the Catholic Church toward a broader and more inclusive view of its membership. The Pope's affirmation of his support for gays and lesbians is an admission that the Vatican has fixated for too long on a narrow set of issues and "small-minded rules." It is a signal that this new papacy might represent a much-needed transition toward a more modern and culturally aware Catholic Church for the 21st century.
In stark contrast to his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, Francis noted that the Church, like any other institution in the modern world, needs to change alongside human self-understanding and consciousness. Additionally, in a blunt rebuke of the Church's previous stance on homosexuality, Francis noted that a failure to balance upholding rules and demonstrating mercy could cause "even the moral edifice of the Church...to fall like a house of cards." This ideological transition is a radical one for a Church that has hemorrhaged membership over a number of modern issues including divorce, homosexuality and birth control. Francis' argument for the Church's evolution increases the Church's odds of appealing to increasingly secular societies, and allows the Church to move beyond the role that it has often played as a voice of reaction and conservative sexual politics in the developed world.
Over the course of the 21st century, the Church's leadership has struggled with its membership's increasingly progressive views. That 70 percent of the Catholic Church's membership now lives in the developing world speaks to its diminishing foothold in increasingly secularized nations, where disenchantment with the Church's politics is a major driver in its loss of membership.
Perhaps more importantly, Francis' efforts to move the Church beyond issues surrounding homosexuality, abortion and contraception gives it room to focus on other more important issues. In Francis' view, that means humanizing the religious endeavor. In practice, that may mean putting the Church's tremendous economic and political clout behind the issues that have traditionally made it an institution for the betterment of society. These efforts may include, but not be limited to, the expansion of Church-sponsored educational and philanthropic endeavors, a greater attention to righting the wrongs of decades of Church abuses on the ground level and a renewed commitment to moral leadership on contemporary human rights issues. All of these endeavors are in line with Francis' personal commitment to merciful leadership, and they carry the additional benefit of bringing the Church's policies in line with the views of a greater proportion of its membership in the developed world.
As Francis begins to define his papal legacy in the coming years, it may be helpful for him to consider the Church's teachings on social justice. The adage asking, "what would Jesus do?" may prove to be a simple but effective litmus test for the modern Church as its new leader steers it into more moderate waters on social issues while refocusing on the core institutional values service, stewardship for the good of humanity, and the pursuit of spiritual well-being that are the ideological core of its foundation.
If Pope Francis' papacy continues along its current ideological trajectory, it is not unreasonable to think that the Catholic Church 20 or 30 years from now will be an institution that is no longer defined by its backwardness on social issues. Ideally, the Catholic Church of the future will align itself, in Francis' words, "with mercy toward and the embrace of all." Such ideological evolution is essential to the Church as an institution that, in current college students' lifetimes, has too often stood for institutional oversight of abuses within its own leadership and condemnation of individuals for their very identities and personal choices without regard for their characters as people.
