Ecclesiastical Rock 'n' Roll

New Testament scholar Tom Wright tells of a moment of spiritual enlightenment in the back of a taxi en route to a university conference.

His cab driver asked, ‘What are you going to do there?’

‘It’s a conference on Christology,’ replied Wright.

‘Well if you ask me, guv,’ said the cabbie, ‘Jesus died, Jesus rose again and all the rest is rock ‘n’ roll’.

There’s been an awful lot of rock ‘n’ roll this week following the death of Pope Francis on Monday. And a great deal more at the funeral on Saturday. Wright’s cabbie voiced what so many people must have felt and will feel about religious organisations of all kinds - that all the paraphernalia is superfluous. The traditional the expensive vestments, the bands of richly dressed cardinals, bishops and soldiers accompanying the Pope on his last journeys all seem a long way from the road to the cross which we celebrated just last week. Francis’s gesture of refusing to wear the papal red slippers or live in the luxurious papal apartments suggest he himself recognised that papal and religious paraphernalia is a long way from the rough sandals of the peasant carpenter and simple life of the itinerant preacher who had ‘nowhere to lay his head’.

From Francis’ biography, Untying the Knots  by Catholic journalist, Paul Vallely,  we learn that it was during his ministry in the slums of Buenos Aires, where he was ultimately to become Archbishop, that he embraced the plight of the poor. His simple lifestyle in the Vatican and his concern that poor and homeless people should be included in his funeral both aligned with that value. But we cannot deny that there were episodes in the earlier ministry of Jorge Mario Bergoglio which look decidedly murky.

Not connected with Francis himself but part of the background to the events of the last week are the tragic and oft-recurring stories of child molestation and sexual abuse victims silenced for the sake of the church’s reputation. Money laundering stories involving papal organisations at the highest levels associated with the Roman Catholic church and other religious organisations at all levels. And it’s impossible to tell from such a great distance how to separate the workings of the papal PR machine and the tabloid media from the lived reality.

Whatever we may think of Francis’ remarkable life, two things are important. First, in the church as everywhere else we are looking at mortal men. In the recent film, Conclave, one of the fictional cardinals puts it well when he says, ‘We’re mortal men. We serve an ideal. We cannot always be ideal’.

And then, however difficult it is, we need the discernment not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We need to try and hold on to the ideal, to distinguish between the rock ‘n’ roll and the real heart of the matter. And this is to be found in the simple life and sayings of the Man from Nazareth and not in any carefully crafted creed or dogma. It’s a lifework for would-be people of faith!

Photo: National Geographic