There was a time in America when the very idea of a pope speaking before Congress would have been unthinkable, let alone that he would be received with almost universal deference and respect.
After all, the pope was once considered by many in this country to be the leader of a reactionary, absolutist threat to American liberty and to Protestant dominance. Anti-Catholic bigotry was rampant. The cartoonist Thomas Nast even depicted a pope on the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica pointing ominously across the Atlantic to “The Promised Land.”
As recently as 1960, the Catholic John F. Kennedy would go before Protestant ministers in Houston to assure them, in so many words, of his independence from the pope.
But how times have changed. So there was Pope Francis on Thursday, not only speaking before Congress but, with soft voice and gentle rhetoric, lecturing its members on a host of issues, both secular and spiritual. And he did it with remarkable skill, too, always appealing to their better instincts even when saying something that many of them simply do not believe — whether it was that immigrants and refugees should be welcomed, the death penalty abolished, human life protected at “every stage of development,” global warming addressed, or his vision of marriage and family be defended.
Of course, Pope Francis’ views on these matters were already known to virtually everyone in his audience and it is unlikely that he changed a single mind. But maybe his example will be beneficial in another respect: No less important than the details of his message was his style in a nation in which it has become customary to accuse one’s political opponents of bad faith.
Francis addressed this tendency to demonize opponents head on. After noting the importance of combating violence in the name of “a religion, an ideology or an economic system,” he warned against the “simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.”
If the pope can see beyond the categories of good and evil, righteous and sinners, then surely Washington politicians should be able to as well.
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