A Voice Not Yet Crying in the Wilderness: Pope Francis Misses a Big One

Pope Francis addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, making history as the first pontiff to do so. Listening behind the pope are Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.

A Voice Not Yet Crying in the Wilderness:

Pope Francis Misses a Big One

by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.

I'll just put it out there that I was very disappointed by the Pope's speech before Congress. I say this not as an orthodox/evangelical criticism of Catholicism. Far from it. I say this as one who wished that he had been more Catholic (which is to say more Christian) in two areas that faithful Catholics have fought mightily for: marriage as "male and female" and the sanctity of the life of the unborn. It was not a courageous speech to the political left of this country. He largely spent his moral capital on areas that had either Democratic support or at least bipartisan support.

His discussion of the assault on a male-female foundation for marriage and the slaughter of innocent unborn children was far too muted. The closest he came to addressing abortion directly was when he said, "The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development." Yet then he immediately segued into calling for an end to the death penalty for egregious acts of murder (a position which I do not believe that either Jesus or Paul adopted). Not a word about the scandalous funding of Planned Parenthood, which receives a third of its revenues from executing a third of a million unborn children annually. In the past 40 years the United States has executed 1414 persons pronounced guilty of heinous acts of murder, an average of 35 persons each year (with 35 in 2014). In the same period of time there have been roughly 56 million executions of innocent unborn life, about 40,000 abortions per state execution.

His discussion of the male-female foundation for marriage was even more veiled: "I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without. Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family." Unfortunately, if he meant by "the very basis of marriage and the family" a male-female foundation, he did a very good job of "hiding [his] concern." He then proceeded to talk about "the young" who are "trapped in a hopeless maze of violence, abuse and despair."

The only mention of government assault on religious liberty was in a passing comment: "A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom." This remark came immediately after his rebuke of “fundamentalism,” which despite his caveat (“whether religious or of any other kind”) would surely be heard by the political left as an attack on morally conservative Christian faith.

There was not a single explicit mention of Jesus Christ, let alone of his redemptive death and resurrection for the world. He did mention the Golden Rule without mentioning by name its author. And of course many will point to the Pope's social justice themes as resonating implicitly with their dubious assumptions of Jesus' own concerns: attacks on greedy capitalism (partly justified but without any critique of the excesses of socialism or communism and the problems with forced redistribution of wealth), warfare between nations (without any nod to just-war theory as pertains to ISIS and its extermination of Christians or Iran's nuclear program), harming the environment (presumably through global warming, a theory uncritically embraced), allegedly restrictive immigration laws (without concern for legal, political, and economic harm of open borders), and the death penalty (a reductionistic approach to biblical teaching: Jesus nowhere critiqued the state's right to wield "the sword," only its abuse, and Paul affirmed just such a right).

On these issues, the Pope took no risks vis-à-vis the political left. Basically the Pope presented President Obama's truncated and somewhat distorted vision of Jesus' message and mission. I understand that the Pope was speaking before a political body in a "pluralistic" country. Yet if anyone would be given leeway to focus more clearly and substantively on Jesus as the world's Savior it would be the Pope.

Pope Francis may well be treating in other venues in the United States both the controversial Twin Towers of evil, "gay marriage" and abortion, and the redemption offered by Christ to the world. Even so, he missed his greatest opportunity in speaking before the United States Congress to the nation as a whole. Pope Francis said nothing in this speech that would undermine the widespread assessment of his papacy (true or not) as toning down traditional Catholic concerns for dual-sex marriage and the protection of the unborn.

Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Abingdon Press).