Pope Francis Puts Up A Syrian Refugee Family: An Opportunity to Clean House

During wars, houses of worship have become temporary hospitals meeting very practical needs. Caring for the suffering is particularly close to the message and example that Jesus provided. In response to Pope Francis’s call for each parish in Europe to take in at least one refugee family amid the tremendous influx of mostly Syrian refugees in 2015, the pope himself arranged to take in a family. Leading by example is certainly fitting for a follower of Jesus. I submit that the pope could have gone even further to drive home the message of what it means to be a Christian.

The pope put up a Christian family from Damascus in a Vatican apartment.[1] Given the tens of thousands of mostly Syrian refugees pouring into the E.U. at the time, the impact of the pope’s move is of course symbolic in nature. Given the tremendous power that symbols can have, I submit that the pope missed an opportunity to realize the symbolic potential in Christian terms.

Firstly, putting up a Christian rather than a Muslim family misses the opportunity to stand up for a more marginalized people in Europe. Just as Jesus tended to ritually unclean people of his day rather than to people who could worship at the Temple in Jerusalem, and more generally to social outcasts such as the poor and the sick, the pope could have taken in a Muslim family. The move would have been further out of his comfort zone, and thus even more Christian in terms of following Jesus’ preaching and example. Consider, for example, how Muslims in the Middle East would have thought of such a gesture. I submit that it would have been of much more importance than any official dialogue between Catholic and Islamic clerics.

Secondly, the pope could have housed the family in the papal apartment, while he continued to reside in a room in a relatively simple place for visiting priests. In the spiritual logic of the kingdom of God of which Jesus preached, the last are first and the first are last. Put another way, the kingdom upends societal logic. Putting a family in the papal apartment would have highlighted the status of the downtrodden and marginalized in the true Christian’s kingdom, as well as the servant quality of the pope and his subordinates. The gesture would dwarf that of the pope washing feet in the liturgy of Holy Thursday just before Easter.

Pope Francis washing the feet of men and women in a juvenile detention center on Holy Thursday in 2013. That he washed women's feet flustered some people in the Vatican who missed the main point of the ritual. 

Were the pope to have opened up the papal apartment to an “ordinary” family—Islamic no less!—surely a bureaucrat in the Vatican would have protested that the pope would be violating some rule or at least custom long held. To such a pedestrian mentality, the pope might conceivably have retorted, “Get behind me, Satan!” For anyone who puts a rule or custom ahead of a person following Christ cannot be reckoned as Christian. The pope would have sent the message in the Vatican that even its ensconced functionaries may not be Christian, after all—the matter of their creedal beliefs being nugatory in retrospect.

The first in human terms are bound to be reckoned as last, while most of the last are hopefully first in the eyes of God. To add greater certainty to the sentence would be impious for a mere mortal, and yet how many so-called religious people presume as much without even realizing the presumptuous that is implied. Were the pope to have opened up the regal apartment rather than one of many of the ordinary sort in the Vatican, a much larger project of house-cleaning might have ensued.

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1. Vincenzo Pinto, “Pope Francis Puts Up Syrian Refugee Family,” AFP, September 18, 2015.

Pope Francis On Taking In Refugees In Europe: A Basis For An Alternative Approach To Christianity

As tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East were seeking refuge in the E.U., Pope Francis “called on every parish, religious community, monastery and sanctuary in Europe to shelter refugees.”[1] It was not enough, he said, to tell them, “have courage, hang in there.”[2] 

Hungarian officials threw bread to the refugees in holding pens like zookeepers feeding animals.  In credibly, the migrants did not fight for food. The "animals" were more civilized than the "zookeepers."  (Michaela Spritzendorfer/Ehrenhauser)

Providing the Christian basis, he said that “the Gospel calls us to be close to the smallest and to those who have been abandoned.”[3] Jesus went to those who had been abandoned by the hegemonic Temple-centric Judaism of his day, and healed them. In the Gospel of Mark, it is the strangers rather than the disciples who understand his message. I submit that this approach to Christianity could serve as an alternative to the dominant one that applies Christianity to every issue.

Pope Francis making the appeal. (Riccardo De Luca/AP)

In the Gospels, Jesus says nothing about abortion or gay marriage. Fittingly, Pope Francis chastised the bishops who obsess over these two ideological issues, trying to get them to focus on the core religious area of the religion. To be sure, those bishops could find a basis in the Church’s magisterium, or continuing teaching authority, which, unlike the Gospels themselves, can potentially touch on any issue. Opposing ideology, such as that which goes against action on climate change, may be the only pushback constraining the overreaching. Australian Cardinal George Pell, whose “lavish personal tastes” had only months earlier been leaked, said in July 2015, “The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.”[4] Too late for Galileo, but significant nonetheless as a potential precedent for constraining the reach of the magisterium.

One problem with applying the Gospels to every issue is that the leaps of inference required can result in positions at odds with Jesus' example and teachings in the Gospels. For example, the pastor of largest Catholic Church in my hometown fired the music director because he was gay. Whereas Jesus is mute on homosexuality in the Gospels, he does preach on reaching out to people who are marginalized in society as well as by a religion! For a religion presumably based on Jesus Christ to abandon the marginalized bears the sting of hypocrisy. That the pastor moved on to become the bishop of North Dakota when Joe Ratzinger was the pope suggests that acting antithetically to the Jesus in the Gospels was laudatory “all the way up,” in terms of the human chain of command. Perhaps the leaps of inference involved in coming up with a Christian position on virtually any issue are antithetical to the leaps of faith required for the courage to embrace the abandoned as Jesus does in the Gospels.

Moreover, the presupposition that Christianity should be applied to any issue may be ripe for critique. Jesus did not have a position on every issue of his day, and if he did, the writers of the Gospels chose not to include Jesus’ various stances. Rather, Jesus of the Gospels focuses on a theme, or particular approach, as a way into the kingdom of God. Healing the sick, feeding the poor, loving those who are marginalized or abandoned by society—these coalesce into a distinctive approach. The pope’s call for Christians to take in the refugees resonates. In fact, we can take the call as a potential new direction for Christianity. In place of being “all over the map” on issues, Christian clergy and laity could try to limit themselves to what Jesus exemplifies and preaches in the Gospels. Such an approach would not only be in line with following Jesus; it would also avoid unintended hypocrisy.

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[1] Alison Smale, “Pope Calls on All of Europe’s Catholics to Shelter Refugees,” The New York Times, September 6, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.
[4] Anthony Faiola, “Conservative Dissent Is Brewing Inside the Vatican,” The Washington Post, September 7, 2015.